2021: Quarter 4 - EOSC process gaining momentum | Erasmus+ programme | "Gender equality" workshop in CO-VERSATILE project

EOSC process is gaining momentum

TU Wien Bibliothek coordinated the setup of the Austrian EOSC Mandated Organisation, organising the first project milestone, the first General Assembly on 13 October 2021 at the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research. During the next two years, TU Wien Bibliothek will chair the General Assembly and coordinate monitoring of the Austrian initiative. TU Wien Bibliothek also acts as co-chair of the Key Performance Indicators working group together with the Natural History Museum, and participates in the working groups “Austria Country Profile” and “Researcher Engagement”. Beate Guba and Paolo Budroni act as EOSC Reference Points at TU Wien. Paolo Budroni is also responsible for the setup of the EOSC Support Office Austria, headquartered at TU Wien, and delegate of the Austrian Initiative at the EOSC Association in Brussels. On an international level, TU Wien Bibliothek participates in two taskforces of the EOSC Association: the “PID Policy and Implementation Task Force” and the “FAIR Metrics and Data Quality Task Force”.

TU Wien Bibliothek’s Erasmus+ programme in the second year of the COVID pandemic

In order to continue professional exchange between European libraries during the pandemic, TU Wien Bibliothek offered a virtual Erasmus+ programme from 16 to 18 November 2021. 17 selected participants from the EU and Turkey attended the interactive workshop supervised by TU Wien Bibliothek staff members and outside experts. The main focus was the recent foundation of the Austrian EOSC initiative as well as open science, research assessment, subject registries, controlled vocabularies, and the impact of persistent identifiers (PIDs).

"Gender equality" workshop in the CO-VERSATILE project

On 22 October 2021, the Library team together with Brigitte Ratzer (Services Gender Competence) and Marjo Rauhala (Research Ethics Coordinator) held a workshop on "Gender and Intersectionability" within the CO-VERSATILE project. The topic was in harmony with the European Research Area (ERA) policy agenda of deepening the ERA through gender equality.

2021: Quarter 3 - "Smart Campus - Smart Library" results | "Austrian Transition to Open Access 2" project start

"Smart Campus - Smart Library" project shows promising results

The .dcall 2020 project "Smart Campus - Smart Library" proposed the development of a simulation model of the library building for use in teaching and research. During the academic year 2020/202, teachers and students worked on a digital model that will be used in practice. The emphasis on application orientation makes the research topic and subject matter particularly relevant. The prototype simulation model developed in cooperation with the research units of Building Physics and Wireless Communications as well as with Real Estate and Facility Management and TU Wien Campus IT includes datasets on building physics and people flows. The project was concluded with a closing event on 14 October 2021, but the project results encourage the participating institutions to continue using the data in a long-term study and for improving space usage in the library. General information, the simulation model, the datasets and the visualisations, opens an external URL in a new window continue to be available on the project's TUcoLAB learning space for use in teaching and research.

Start of the project "Austrian Transition to Open Access 2" (AT2OA2)

Successful measures from the "AT2OA" project are continued in order to further advance the transformation process from closed to open access and setting up a data hub for publication data from different sources. Subproject 1 presented survey results on existing and possible new transformative agreements with publishers. Subproject 2 set up two working groups to define the metadata schema and technical requirements for an "Austrian Data Hub for Open Access Negotiations and Monitoring". Subproject 3 started researching the current state of publication costs of Austrian universities. Subproject 4 addresses the topic of predatory publishing. Subproject 5 provided access to the Altmetric Explorer to examine the degree to which open access improves visibility of academic publications. TU Wien Bibliothek is active in all five subprojects.

2021: Quarter 2 - TU Wien Bibliothek's Mission Statement | Participation in national and international projects

TU Wien Bibliothek's Mission Statement

A participatory process of "shaping cooperation" over the course of nearly two years was successfully concluded with the approval of TU Wien Bibliothek's mission statement in June 2021. In externally and internally moderated workshops, the library's management team developed guiding principles of a mission statement that was subsequently worked out by the library team using the Lego Serious Play^® method, and finally put in writing.

The mission statement documents TU Wien Bibliothek's commitment to opening doors to knowledge for everyone and connecting people and science. The complete text of the mission statement is published on the library website. On 29 June 2021, the mission statement was adopted in the presence of VR Josef Eberhardsteiner.

TU Wien Bibliothek contributes its expertise to national and international projects

With a coordinating role in setting up the Austrian EOSC Mandated Organisation and the EOSC Support Office Austria, TU Wien Bibliothek is supporting the most important infrastructure initiative of the European Commission on the national level. At the beginning of July 2021, the consensual agreement of this Austrian initiative is to be concluded and in October 2021, the first general assembly will be held.

In July 2021, Paolo Budroni, chair of e-IRG and head of TU Wien Bibliothek's new service unit "EOSC and International Liaison Office", will take up his role as a member of the CLARIN Scientific Advisory Board for the next three years.

In May 2021, two workshops on the "future of <digital> universities 2035" took place at Danube University Krems at the initiative of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research. A panel of national and international high-level experts, including two representatives of TU Wien Bibliothek, were invited to discuss the influence of digitisation on university teaching, research, organisation and on the third mission of universities. The results will provide a basis for the ministry's future strategy.

2021: Quarter 1 - Expansion of the library’s bibliometric services | English proofreading and editing support for doctoral students | Horizon 2020 project CO-VERSATILE

Expansion of the library’s bibliometric services

The library offers a diverse portfolio in the context of bibliometrics to TU Wien’s faculties, institutes, and individual scientists: At the faculty level, the Service Group for Scientometrics and Data Visualisation creates reports on applicants’ research and publication activities within appointment procedures. Institutes are provided with scientometric analyses to support the establishment of international cooperation and strategic partnerships. Individual researchers benefit from training and advice on publication strategies (e.g. media for publication, increasing visibility, author profiles). Last but not least, the monitoring of metadata in research databases and any corrections contribute to better ranking results of TU Wien. A data visualisation engineer will join the team from July 2021 onwards to expand the library’s data visualisation services.

English proofreading and editing support for doctoral students

The new "Editing service for doctoral students of TU Wien", launched in March 2021 by the library, aims to support young scientists at the beginning of their careers by increasing the acceptance rate of journal articles or conference papers. The service is open to doctoral students of all faculties. The students benefit from the library's advice on special topics such as authorship, CC licences and predictive publishing. English-language manuscripts are reviewed by ENAGO Editing Services and IATUL Academic Translation and Editing Service. The library has concluded agreements with both service providers to reduce editing and proofreading prices for TU Wien members.

Horizon 2020 project CO-VERSATILE

CO-VERSATILE is an answer to an EU-initiated funding programme for COVID-19 urgent action. The project brings together 21 partners from Europe and Israel. The manufacturing sector should be able to react quickly and appropriately to health crises in the future. TU Wien Bibliothek leads work package 6 - Data Management, GDPR, IPR and Ethics, ensuring efficient implementation of data management in the project. This task is in accordance with the TU Wien Policy for Research Data Management, which recognises the long-term value of research data for research, academia and industry, and the potential for broad public re-use. The proper handling of legal and ethical aspects will also be a main contribution to the CO-VERSATILE project. The project will run until November 2022.