Of Schemes and Memes Blog

A day dedicated to research

Springer Nature organizes the first Research Day in Rome at La Sapienza University

This guest blog comes from Nick Barber, Library Director, Southern Europe, Springer 

 

On Oct 3 2017 Springer Nature held the first “Research Day” in coordination with La Sapienza University Library System in Rome and in collaboration with CARE.

The seminar examined the changing face of research today, seeking to understand the evolving needs of research and researchers themselves, and consider the role that academic and research libraries are increasingly required to adapt to.

Furthermore, the spotlight was on approaches and innovations proposed by scientific and academic publishers, including how they can respond to these changes and bring more clarity to the complex publishing process many researchers now face.

In Italy, CARE/CRUI is the principal group responsible for coordinating access to electronic resources for the higher education and research communities, and linked to the Conference of University Rectors CARE. This event in Rome was directed at a mixed audience of librarians, university rectors for research and researchers.

Founded in 1303, La Sapienza University is the largest university in Italy, as well as its top-ranking academic institution in terms of the number of published articles, according to Clarivate Analytics’ InCites 2012-2016.

A call for collaboration

Keynote speakers provided lively presentations, addressing the main issues and topics concerning the changing role of libraries and research over the past several years. This resulted in a passionate call for more collaboration and partnership at all levels to respond to the challenges we all face.

The morning continued with experts from Springer Nature, who discussed various related topics.

  • Dan Penny, Head of Market Intelligence, presented some of the innovations that Springer Nature is now incorporating in its publishing workflows.
  • Grace Baynes, Director, Data and New Product Development, spoke on the increasing presence and importance of ‘big data’ in scientific research, the need to make it open, and how to make the various open data policy requirements increasingly required for article submissions more transparent.

A presentation of Springer Nature SciGraph, given by Grace Baynes, provided further insights into open data initiatives.

  • Elisa De Ranieri, Head of Editorial Process and Data Analytics, Nature journals, provided insights into how publishers are seeking to overcome nagging challenges in terms of integrity, efficiency, reproducibility and the speed of communication of research.

Panel discussion

In the afternoon a lively round table discussion followed, taking a closer look at various questions. A summary of the discussions will be shared on this blog soon.

All presentations are available here and a recorded version of the parallel webinar can be found here.

We invite you to submit any comments or questions on Research Day (in Italian or English) here. (elisa.magistrelli@springer.com)

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