University of California Berkeley Application Deadline: 16 September 2024 The University of California, Berkeley seeks applicants for four tenure-track (Assistant Professor) positions and one tenured (Associate or Full Professor) position in the area of “AI, Inequality, and Society” (AIIS). The AIIS Cluster initiative brings together the Computer Science (CS) division of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) department, the departments of Sociology and Statistics, and the schools of Information and Law to address questions related to the myriad ways in which AI may reshape society and individual lives, possibly exacerbating existing inequalities and creating new ones while changing opportunity structures and participation by individuals and groups in society. The expected start date for these positions is July 1, 2025.

The Department of Information Studies at University College London (UCL) is pleased to announce that its MA Library and Information Studies has now been accredited by the American Library Association (ALA) Committee on Accreditation, with the status of Initial accreditation. The programme is the first outside North America to be granted accreditation status. The Library and Information Studies programme has benefitted from being accredited by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), the UK library profession representatives, for many years. This additional accreditation recognises the importance of the wider global profession and will broaden graduates’ opportunities. [...] UCL was established nearly 200 years ago and was the first university to be established in London, and the first entirely secular university to admit students regardless of religion. It was also the first university to admit women on equal terms with men. UCL has been teaching librarianship for more than 100 years. [...] The accreditation will apply to all students who have graduated from the MA programme since July 2022. The next comprehensive review visit is scheduled for Spring 2031. News submitted by Charles Inskip , UCL University College London , Information Studies

Issue #82 by Gary Marchionini (UNC School of Information & Library Science) A July 11, 2024 article in the New York Times  provides a short briefing on the somewhat frustrating efforts to fight disinformation. The article by Tiffany Tsu and Stuart Thompson is enticingly titled “Even Disinformation Experts Don’t Know How to Stop It.”¹ It uses the case of a dedicated and savvy civic group volunteer who tries to help voters make informed decisions, and focuses on her frustration with not knowing if her efforts make a difference and feeling overwhelmed by the scope and volume of disinformation campaigns. The article cites one large and important (although not yet peer reviewed, posted to PsyArXiv) study   that demonstrates that the usual strategies that information professionals and others use to detect, deflect, and correct disinformation are not having much impact, and quotes a few prominent disinformation scholars in the US and Europe on the growing challenges. From an information science perspective, the article raises awareness but is disheartening by lamenting the sheer magnitude and complexity of the problem. It is typical popular journalism — attention getting and compellingly written problem identification but giving little guidance about solutions.    Why should disinformation be any more complex and challenging than other grand challenges of our time such as climate change, inequality, or war?  We expect thousands of people to be working on these problems — why not information generation use and abuse? Like other global and serious challenges, we should be celebrating the work that is being done and encourage and support continued study. Whether information professionals focus on interventions such as tools and filters or on training and public service campaigns, or work locally like the woman profiled in the article to address the problem, ultimately we all have personal responsibilities to help ourselves and our communities to understand how information is generated in practice (both by humans and increasingly by algorithms), the many economic or political motivations that drive generation and propagation, and systemic strategies and tools that are used to influence or control information exposure and consumption. It is likely that librarians, archivists, journalists, and other information specialists will become heroes of the future — helping us all navigate, find, and evaluate our information diets. However, becoming more active gatekeepers seems like a mistake in the long term. Rather, helping people understand the changing information ecology, taking personal responsibility to evaluate and reflect, and especially helping people not give in to overload and frustration by adopting ignorance as an information strategy.    It is an exciting and important time to be an information scholar and practitioner.   1 :  Thompson, Stuart A., and Tiffany Tsu. “Even the Best Tools to Fight Disinformation Are Not Enough.” The New York Times , 11 July 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/technology/disinformation-tools.html?searchResultPosition=1 .

A new master's degree program offered through Game Studies and Design, an Informatics program hosted by the iSchool, will provide professional training for students who are interested in working in video game studios, game-adjacent industries, or other businesses where game-related skills are increasingly in demand.  The Master of Science in Game Development, which was approved by the Illinois Board of Higher Education on June 26, will launch in fall 2025. The interdisciplinary degree will offer concentrations in the areas of art, design, production, programming, and narrative. It will be offered online with synchronous and asynchronous courses. While designed to be completed in two years, the online program will have a flexible timeline to accommodate both full-time students and working professionals. In the second year of the program, students will gain real-world experience by working on actual video games with industry partners. News submitted by Cindy Ashwill , University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, School of Information Sciences

Issue #81 by Michael Seadle (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) In the International Science Council’s blog¹ (2 July 2024), Geoffrey Boulton and Moumita Koley discuss the reality of access to scientific publication. They see two problems: “Firstly, although many scientific journals and papers maintain high standards, too many lack proper editorial oversight, many lack rigour and integrity, some engage in fraudulent practices, few observe the most basic of scientific essentials, that evidential data and metadata for a truth claim should be exposed in parallel to a published paper, and agreed standards for overall governance of the process are lacking.” ²  This is a relatively harsh judgment, but the evidence for it appears again and again in sites like Retraction Watch*. The second problem addresses the business models of the journals, and the effect that has on who can publish: “... the business models of commercial publishers are based on appropriation of scientific output which is then sold on to readers’ institutions at levels of profitability in excess of 30-40%, (Buranyi, 2017)³ a financial barrier to readers or authors or both that particularly penalizes those in low- and middle-income countries where public funding for science is limited.”²  The authors note that the problem today is not just getting published – it is getting read by the right people. “So-called ‘high impact journals’ offer such access, but at a high price. To rely on such a process when sorting algorithms could readily generate source-agnostic lists of relevant papers and agreed minimum standards could exert quality control reflects a dramatic lack of system governance from the scientific community and a silent acceptance of the actions of commercial publishers.”² Silent acceptance by the publishers is not the only problem. Many university administrators like such lists because it saves them effort. The institutions that create university rankings “... utilize bibliometrics and other indices to generate ordinal lists of university excellence and have persuaded many governments to target funding with the express purpose of enhancing the ranking of selected universities. A key part of such processes is to incentivize publication by academics to increase a university’s total bibliometric score.”²    The point the authors are making is, as the title suggests, incentives for more publication does not guarantee better quality. Unfortunately quality is hard to measure and numbers are not.   1 :   https://council.science/ 2 : Boulton, Geoffrey, and Moumita Koley. “More Is Not Better: The Developing Crisis of Scientific Publishing.” International Science Council, July 2, 2024.   https://council.science/blog/more-is-not-better-the-developing-crisis-of-scientific-publishing/ . * : https://retractionwatch.com/ 3 : Buranyi, Stephen. “Is the Staggeringly Profitable Business of Scientific Publishing Bad for Science?” The Guardian, June 27, 2017, sec. Science. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science .

Issue #80 by Michael Seadle Anna Abalkina  wrote in the Retraction Watch Blog  (2024): “I’ve cataloged 67 cases since 2013 of hijacked journals penetrating the [Scopus] database. I found 23 profiles of journals that contained links to a cloned version, and 33 cases of content from the cloned version of a journal that had not been peer reviewed appearing in the profile of the legitimate journal, while 11 did both.”¹ This represents only one example of the availability of hijacked journals in trusted databases. “Last December, Elsevier’s Scopus index deleted all links to journal homepages in response to the widespread issue of journal hijacking … .”¹ Despite the deletions, there is an ongoing problem. “Now, we have evidence [that] hijacked journals remain in the database and continue to infiltrate it.”¹ Abalkina continues: “Later, unauthorized content from a cloned Pakistan Heart Journal  appeared in Scopus, such as a paper titled “A new strategy for the genetic therapy of oral cancer: an update.” This title doesn’t correspond to the journal’s specialization in heart diseases, a mismatch typical for hijacked journals.” ¹ Sometimes the links appear to be legitimate, but the publisher may have changed or ceased. In the case of the journal Obstetrics & Gynaecology Forum  (ISSN 1029-1962), the publisher “... did not respond to [Abalkina’s] queries about whether the journal had been transferred to another publisher. Neither the editor-in-chief nor the senior editors replied to my requests for information.” ¹ This example makes the aggressiveness and persistence of hijacked journals clear, and combating the economic incentives for hijacking journals is hard in a world where scholars (especially untenured junior scholars) are prepared to pay substantial fees for publication in a Scopus-listed journal. Universities could undercut the economic incentive by giving up their reliance on indexes and on rankings as a key factor in rating the quality of their faculty. The best and most highly respected universities still rely strictly on reading and evaluating articles themselves. The time and effort incentive for trusting rankings and indexes is clear, but until institutions end the economic incentive for faculty to pay to publish in Scopus-indexed journals, the problem will persist. 1 :   Portions of this Story Feature were drawn from my forthcoming book “Information Science: History, Ideas, Applications” (Facet, 2025) 2 :   Abalkina, Anna. “Journal Hijackers Still Infiltrate Scopus despite Its Efforts.” Retraction Watch (blog), June 18, 2024. Link : https://retractionwatch.com/2024/06/18/journal-hijackers-still-infiltrate-scopus-despite-its-efforts/ .

4-6 December 2024 (online and onsite conference)   AP-iConference is an annual event for information field researchers in the Asia Pacific region that started in 2014. In recent years, AP-iConference has been held together with ICADL. iSchools, ICADL, A-LIEP and ALIRG have jointly hosted doctoral consortiums there. This event is planned based on this tradition and to provide a larger community for the participants. Highlights: One Keynote: (ICADL/AP-iConference Joint, TBA) Panel for Young Researchers Paper Presentation Sessions Student Symposium Sessions Call For Participation: Papers and Student Symposium Generation Researchers in the Information Field (Jointly Organized by Asia Pacific Chapter of iSchools, ICADL, A-LIEP and ALIRG) The paper sessions offer a great chance for researchers in the information field to share their recent research ideas and results and to get feedback from general and interdisciplinary audiences. The student symposium sessions give a place for graduate students to present and discuss their studies with mentors from iSchools, ICADL, A-LIEP and ALIRG, as well as to build networks for future international collaborations. The organizations have jointly hosted doctoral consortiums for recent years. This symposium is planned based on this tradition and to provide a larger community for the participants. Topics We invite submissions on diverse topics related to digital libraries and related fields including (but not limited to): Information behavior Social, cultural, health and community informatics Human-computer interaction Education in Library and Information Science Information systems Social computing Information policy Knowledge management Information retrieval Information services Information organization Digital curation and preservation Digital libraries Bibliometrics and scholarly communication History and philosophy of information Participatory cultures Digital youth Social computing Human computer interaction Knowledge infrastructures Computer-supported cooperative work Data, text and knowledge mining Computational social science Digital humanities Network science Information and communication technology for development Data science Information economics Information work and workers User experience and design Submission and Presentation We solicit two types of submission: Short Paper : 6-8 pages + references following the Springer Computer Science Proceedings guidelines ( https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines ). The review process is double-blind. At least 3 Program Committee members will review each submission. All accepted papers will be published in the proceeding of ICADL as a special track. Each accepted paper must be presented by at least one of the co-authors. Sufficient time will be given to the oral presentation for accepted papers in all submission categories either in-person or using an online presentation platform to be chosen later. We highly encourage to submit papers on AI for information services that covers a wide range of topics as we are aiming to organize a special issue later for accepted papers (journal TBA). Student Symposium : proposals for presentation from graduate students, including not only Ph.D candidates but also master-level students. The symposium includes two tracks - on going and finished research presentations and research plan for doctoral degree. Members of the organizing team and leading researchers from iSchools, ICADL, A-LIEP and ALIRG will participate in the event and give comments and suggestions to help students brush up the research and to build up their research plans. Track 1 : On-going and finished research. -- Proposals may be made by one or more authors. The first author should be a student and present his/her research at the symposium. Submissions of papers and student symposiums will be via Easychair, the same as ICADL main conference paper submissions ( https://easychair.org/cfp/icadl2024 ). Authors of accepted submissions have to present their work at the paper sessions or graduate student sessions. Important Dates (tentative) The schedule is shown below. All the dates are Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time zone: Submission Deadline: August 25, 2024 Acceptance Notification: September 20, 2024 Camera Ready Copy: September 29, 2024 Please check ICADL 2024 homepage for the updates on the graduate student sessions and general information about ICADL 2024 and AP-iConference 2024. Organizers   Program Committee: Ping Wang (Central China Normal Univerisity) Hui Chen (Central China Normal University) Anita Dewi (Charles Sturt University) Vi Truong (Charles Sturt University) Naya Sucha-xaya (Chulalongkorn University) Linlin Zhu (Jilin University) Yi Song (Jilin University) Md Khalid Hossain (Monash University) Misita Anwar (Monash University) Chao Min (Nanjing University Lei Hou (Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology) Xue Pan (Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology) Qiao Li (Nankai University) Yao Zhang (Nankai University) Lee Chei Sian (Nanyang Technological University) Dion Goh (Nanyang Technological University) Joanna Sin (Nanyang Technological University) Wei Jeng (National Taiwan University) Yi Bu (Peking University) Di Wang (Renmin University of China) Zekun Yang (Renmin University of China) Houqiang Yu (Sun Yat-Sen University) Peng XIAO (Sun Yat-sen University) Youngseek Kim (Sungkyunkwan University) Rahmi (Universitas Indonesia) Iyra S. Buenrostro-Cabbab (University of the Philippines Diliman) Hiroyoshi Ito (University of Tsukuba) Masaki Takeda (University of Tsukuba) Claire Timpany (University of Waikato) Nicholas Vanderschantz (University of Waikato) Shaobo Liang (Wuhan University) Dion Goh (Nanyang Technological University) Joanna Sin (Nanyang Technological University) Jin Cheon Na (Nanyang Technological University) AP-iConference 2024 Co-Chairs: Chei Sian Lee (Nanyang Technological University) Yi Bu (Peking University) AP-iSchool Chair Atsuyuki Morishima (University of Tsukuba) AP-iNext Generation Chairs: Di Wang (Renmin University of China) - Chair Misita Anwar (Monash University) - Chair Elect

The theme for JCDL 2024 is “ Digital Libraries in the Age of AI: Challenges and Opportunities .”   JCDL  is a major international forum focusing on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, and social issues. Participation is sought from all parts of the world and from the full range of disciplines and professions involved in digital library research and practice, including computer science, information science, librarianship, archival science and practice, museum studies and practice, technology, medicine, social sciences, and humanities. Besides the main conference, JCDL 2024  will host specialized workshops, tutorials, panels, and a doctoral consortium. All domains–academics, government, industry, and others–are encouraged to participate as presenters or attendees. The conference will be held primarily as an in-person event with very limited hybrid options.   Important Dates: July 8, 2024: Deadline for Doctoral Consortium early submissions July 26, 2024: Research paper submissions due ***Research paper submission due date has been extended from July 26, 2024 to Aug. 3, 2024*** July 22, 2024: Notification of acceptance for Doctoral Consortium early submissions July 26, 2024: Panel, workshop, tutorial, poster, and demo submission due Sep. 24, 2024: Notification of acceptance Sep. 17, 2024: Registration for the conference and hotels starts Oct. 12, 2024: Final camera-ready deadline for all submissions Oct. 8, 2024:  Deadline for Doctoral Consortium late submissions Oct. 22, 2024: Notification of acceptance for Doctoral Consortium late submissions   Call for Submissions   The specific instructions for submission type can be found via the JCDL 2024 website:   https://2024.jcdl.org/call-for-research-papers/ https://2024.jcdl.org/call-for-panels/ https://2024.jcdl.org/call-for-workshops-and-tutorials/ https://2024.jcdl.org/call-for-posters-and-demos/ https://2024.jcdl.org/doctoral-consortium-call-for-contributions/   Submission Notes:   “By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies , including ACM's new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects . Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.” “Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID , so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper.  ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors . We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.” Chairs:   Sam Chu , Hong Kong Metropolitan University, HK, SAR, China J. Stephen Downie , University of Illinois, USA Ruixian Yang , Zhengzhou University, China

Alliance Universitaire de Bretagne (AUB): Université de Bretagne Occidentale (UBO) / Université de Bretagne Sud (UBS) / Ecole Nationale d’Ingénieurs de Brest (ENIB) Application Deadline: open until filled The project DISCOBOT's (An engaging discussion robot for mental health preservation) objective is to develop AI-based dialogue generation methods based on personal narratives to foster long-term engagement with a social robot. The person recruited will carry out research at the Lab-STICC within the COMMEDIA and RAMBO teams, which are jointly leading this project. Applicants must have spent at least 18 months out of France between 1 May 2020 and the start of the project, and must have defended their PhD thesis less than 5 years ago. The ideal candidate holds a PhD in computer science in the field of conversational agents or dialogue planning.

Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities Application Deadline: 31 August 2024 The Department of Cultural Sciences at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Linnaeus University is looking for an associate senior lecturer with a clear profile in one or more of the areas of digital cultural heritage, digital history, digital literary studies, digital religion, digital philosophy, and digital art history, who will be able to actively contribute to the development of the subject of digital humanities at Linnaeus University as well as to research, resource development, and the administration of national initiatives related to DARIAH-EU, the pan-European infrastructure for arts and humanities research. The position is primarily focused on research (50%) – partly research and development work within DARIAH-EU, and partly individual research. [...] The position also includes coordinating national DARIAH events at the Swedish institutions involved in the national research infrastructure Huminfra, including conducting their own training sessions at Huminfra events. The position also includes teaching and supervision of degree projects in the international online master’s programme in digital humanities, which includes subject areas such as digital cultural heritage, digital religion, digital history, or digital literary studies.

Issue #79 by Michael Seadle Tomasz Żuradzki and Leszek Wroński contributed a post to the Retraction Watch blog about “How a widely used ranking system ended up with three fake journals in its top 10 philosophy list”. What makes this issue particularly problematic is that many universities including the authors’ own institution depend on ranking systems to evaluate staff. Fake rankings mean that the basis for those evaluations is fundamentally wrong. Many leading institutions rely on Elsevier’s Scopus database, which relies on three main measures: CiteScore, SJR, and SNIP. The authors “checked the Scopus philosophy list and discovered three journals published by Addleton Academic Publishers – which we [the authors] had never heard of – are in the top 10 of the 2023 CiteScore ranking ….”¹ They also investigated how the journals got into Scopus: “The trick is simple: The Addleton journals extensively cross-cite each other. For example, of 541 citations to Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations used to calculate the 2023 CiteScore, 208 come from journals published by Addleton.”¹ The authors then discovered another problem: “These journals are filled with automatically generated papers, all using the same template, extensively using buzzwords ….”¹ The authors also seemed suspicious: “Although our quick search showed that some authors have real affiliations, mostly in Romania, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, a substantial share of authors and their affiliations seem to be fake ….”¹  The authors of the problematic articles seem to have used fake grant numbers. “The same editorial board serves for three journals, with 10 members who are dead.”¹ When the authors tried to contact living members of the editorial board of three journals, one said that she would ask to have her name removed and the others did not respond. This is more important than the usual Retraction Watch problem because a significant number of serious universities rely on the integrity of the Scopus ranking, but it is not just Elsevier that needs to address the problem. Relying on ranking lists saves administrators time, but those same administrators should think seriously about the damage they do to their institutions and to scholars by treating ranking lists as if they represented a credible means of evaluating authors. 1:   Żuradzki, Tomasz, and Leszek Wroński. “How a Widely Used Ranking System Ended up with Three Fake Journals in Its Top 10 Philosophy List.” Retraction Watch (blog), June 12, 2024. https://retractionwatch.com/2024/06/12/how-a-widely-used-ranking-system-ended-up-with-three-fake-journals-in-its-top-10-philosophy-list/.

The iSchools Organisation is happy to announce a new Basic-level member that has joined the organisation: the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Department of Library and Information Science and Book Studies (Slovenia)! The iSchool joined the organisation as the 133th iSchool worldwide. Tanja Merčun Kariž and Polona Vilar represent their iSchool in the iSchools community. Welcome! The Department of Library and Information Science and Book Studies at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs in librarianship, information science, and publishing. The department combines traditional library science with contemporary shifts in the information society and various information services. Students at the bachelor's and master's levels can pursue single or combined courses of study, while the doctoral program in Information Science is part of an interdisciplinary Humanities and Social Sciences curriculum. This program includes both full-time doctoral students funded by the national “young researcher scheme” and part-time students who work full time while pursuing their doctorates. Supported by the Slovenian Research Agency, the core research programme, “Modelling of Bibliographic Information Systems,” integrates diverse areas such as bibliographic information modelling, metadata research, information behaviour and use, user experience, reading habits, and gamification. Additionally, the department collaborats on Erasmus+ and bilateral projects, enhancing the research and international collaborations. Tanja Merčun Kariž and Polona Vilar will represent this new iSchool regionally and internationally. The iSchools organization was founded almost two decades ago. The iSchools educate thought-leaders of the future, and their researchers focus on enhancing the lives of people, the productivity of companies, the innovation cycles of industries, the design of technologies, the policies that govern technology and information use, information services to communities, and much more. The iSchools Organisation currently consists of 133 iSchools worldwide.