Edition Guide Coalition for Networked Information Pre-Recorded Project Briefing Series November 2023

This edition guide overviews the six contributed videos in the November 2023 edition of CNI’s Pre-Recorded Project Briefing Series . Click the links to watch the videos and see corresponding details and resources.

Tracking technology innovation and its impact on the CNI community is a key part of our work, and there has been no shortage of advancements, opportunities, and controversies surrounding various emerging technologies of late: In the summer of 2022, the University of Leeds commissioned a research project on the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital transformations in libraries. This project culminated in a major report that was released in August 2023. Looking Towards a Brighter Future: The Potentiality of AI and Digital Transformations to Library Spaces overviews the report’s valuable insights and practical guidance, focusing on how AI might meet evolving user needs. Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Libraries Immersion Studio: An Overview of a Shared Immersive Technology Initiative to Enhance Educational Experiences shares TMU’s experience implementing a shared immersive extended reality environment to support teaching, learning, and research. The briefing includes specific domain examples and discusses the impact, limitations, and future of TMU’s Immersion Studio.

A pair of briefings highlight institutional approaches and resources in response to the continued push to “open,” spurred in part by recent guidance on public access to federally funded research outputs. Example of an Integrated Response to the New Data Management and Sharing Policy Context at an Academic Institution shares Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM)’s response to data management policy changes. WCM built upon its pre-existing services and systems to establish a comprehensive global ecosystem assisting users in all aspects of data management across the research data lifecycle. They introduced a novel application, the Weill Cornell Medicine Institutional Data Repository for Research (WIDRR), to streamline data retention processes. Lessons for Librarians in Open Science Principles and Methods provides an update to a 2022 briefing and shares how the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Library, supported by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, is set to develop 14 instructional modules for librarians on open science related topics, including data management; FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and CARE (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, and Ethics) principles; inclusivity; reproducibility; open science hardware; and open science team agreements. The lessons will eventually be publicly accessible through the Carpentries Incubator platform.

We are now accepting proposals for the next edition of the CNI Pre-Recorded Project Briefing Series. More information about this year-round program is available on the CNI website.

Proposals may be submitted via online form: https://www.cni.org/resources/pbvs/submit-a-proposal

Videos should focus on a timely topic or on a project related to digital information. We especially invite briefings on recently published reports, and updates on new or ongoing projects, programs, or organizations that may have reported at CNI in the past. We recommend that these videos run no more than 15-20 minutes, though longer presentations may occasionally make sense; we leave this to the presenters’ discretion.

Anyone may propose a pre-recorded project briefing, including groups/individuals from non-member institutions and organizations. No more than 12 project briefings will be accepted for each edition; we issue calls for proposals approximately every two to three months.

The final draft for public comment of the new revision 3 of NIST Special Publication 800-171, Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information in Nonfederal Systems and Organizations, is now available. Public comment is open through January 12, 2024. This is important for the management of a range of data, including research data, in higher education settings. See

this includes pointers to the document and an analysis of changes between the first draft for public comment and the current version. A large number of comments were submitted on the earlier draft.

My thanks to Gary Price for catching this one.

Lorcan Dempsey has just published the third in what I understand to be a planned 4-part series on developments in Generative AI. Really outstanding reading and strongly recommended (as are his two earlier pieces in the series); Lorcan has a great knack for synthesizing a lot of developments and framing the key questions. I particularly loved the context "AI is weird" which captures some important insights that aren't discussed enough.

Available at

Generative AI and libraries: seven contexts

Libraries are engaging with AI in their educational, service and policy work. This post discusses seven contexts in which that work is taking place.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

Registration is now open for the 2024 International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC), which will take place in Edinburgh, Scotland February 19-21, 2024. Both in-person and virtual options are available. Early registration runs through 8 December 2023 for DCC Associates. For registration and additional information see

Once again, CNI is delighted to serve as a collaborating organization for this important conference.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

Here's a recent article looking at the continued impacts of policy changes by X (formerly known as Twitter) on researchers investigating various aspects of social media and their implications for society. This also raises some important issues about stewardship of the digital cultural record broadly, and about reproducibility of results using data from X. This has been a growing and evolving disaster for some time.

See

As an additional footnote, see this recent short Nature piece that reminds us of the importance of continuing to study what's going on at X, inhospitable as the platform may be to researchers. (My thanks to Gary Price for catching and sharing this one).

I am delighted to share the details of the CNI Fall 2023 Membership Meeting plenary talks and to announce that the preliminary project briefing list is now live. In the coming weeks, we will release the final schedule along with full session details. Closer to the meeting, we’ll also share the traditional meeting “roadmap” guide.

I will deliver my customary December opening plenary with a survey of recent key developments and trends in the networked information and research landscapes alongside an update on CNI's programs, strategies, and plans for program year 2023-2024 and beyond. It’s been an extraordinarily eventful year, and there’s lots to talk about. As always, there will be time for questions and discussion.

Closing Plenary: Open Access, Open Scholarship, and Machine Learning: A Panel and Community Conversation

Recent issues surrounding the use of the scholarly literature as training data for machine learning-based systems, particularly large language models (LLMs) and various generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications driven by these systems, are raising new questions about what the community seeks to enable and accomplish through commitments to open access and open scholarship. These questions are shaped in part by assumptions about the extent to which these new machine learning-driven systems will be centralized and controlled by a few large technology firms, as opposed to being diffused and distributed much more widely through open source developments.

Designing Libraries X for the 21st Century October 8-10, 2023 University of Arizona

 Photo: Drennen Brown. An aerial view of the University of Arizona Student Success District.

Dear Colleagues,

Conference presentation slides are now available at designinglibraries.arizona.edu/program .

On October 24, 2023, the Brookings Institute, in partnership with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), is hosting a report release event at the National Academies in Washington DC which will also be available via livestream dealing with critical technology assessment. This includes a superb set of speakers. For more information on the initiative, the agenda for the event, and to register, see

Securing Our Future: A Framework for Critical Technology Assessment | Event | Oct 24, 2023 | ITIF

Please join ITIF, The Hamilton Project at Brookings, and the National Network for Critical Technology Assessment in a press release and showcase event launching the release of the report, Securing America’s Future: A Framework for Critical Technology Assessment.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

Last week was the 2023 Annual EDUCAUSE meeting in in Chicago. In conjunction with this meeting, EDUCAUSE released their top ten issues for the year, introduced via an excellent plenary by Susan Grajek. See

In addition, this overview may be helpful

I share the announcement below on behalf of Martin Halbert of the National Science Foundation. -Diane Goldenberg-Hart, CNI

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We are pleased to announce the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Year of Open Science Recognition Challenge !

This challenge spotlights stories of open science innovation that benefit society. Applications will be accepted until November 22, 2023, in the following categories: Open science to serve communities Open science to advance education Open science to advance global solutions Technical advancement to enable open science Open science to advance innovation Open science to advance interdisciplinary collaborations Background:

This is the final reminder that Tuesday, October 10th is the deadline to submit a project briefing proposal for CNI’s Fall 2023 Membership Meeting (December 11–12) in Washington, D.C.

Submit your proposal via online form: https://www.cni.org/mm/fall-2023/project-briefing-proposals-f23

Anyone may propose a project briefing: you need not be affiliated with a member organization to propose a session. The meeting will be held entirely in person; we intend to record all sessions and to make the videos openly available after the meeting.

Meeting and proposal information is at https://www.cni.org/mm/fall-2023

CNI Director Clifford Lynch will be speaking at the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference on Oct. 12th in Chicago.

He'll report on recent developments in research data management, with a primary focus on federally funded U.S. research. It will include a discussion of experience with the new National Institutes of Health Data Sharing Policy, developments following from the OSTP Nelson memorandum, and interactions with federal research security initiatives, and it will incorporate findings from an early fall 2023 CNI Executive Roundtable examining developments among our member institutions.

As far as we know, this session is not going to be recorded.

Session Title: “Recent Developments in Research Data Management” Date: Thursday, Oct. 12 Time: 8:30-9:15 a.m. CT Location: W183c, Level 1

The US National Academies is hosting a very interesting workshop on AI for Scientific Discovery on October 12-13, 2023; this is taking place both in person and virtually. There's no charge but you do need to register. Details can be found at

AI for Scientific Discovery - A Workshop

Join the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine for a workshop on AI for scientific discovery!The goal for this meeting is to explore the future of AI in terms of its role as an autonomous researcher performing scientific discovery. This includes where AI stands, where it needs to go, and which disciplines should have increased investment for the utilization of AI scientists. Workshop sessions will discuss what it means to be an AI scientist, societal aspects of AI, enabl...

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

The journal Nature has recently published a survey of 1600 scientists exploring their views of the impacts and implications of AI on their scientific work. See

AI and science: what 1,600 researchers think

A Nature survey finds that scientists are concerned, as well as excited, by the increasing use of artificial-intelligence tools in research.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

This summer, on June 12-14, I was fortunate to be able to attend a virtual workshop convened by the US National Academies on the applications of Ai technology to support Mathematical Reasoning. This was a very wide-ranging discussion which I found to be extremely informative. Recently, the Academies have published an open access summary of this workshop, which can be found at

Artificial Intelligence to Assist Mathematical Reasoning

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to aid new mathematical discoveries. Particularly as the amount of data available grows beyond what any person can study, AI can be useful in its power to identify patterns in data and refine relationships between properties. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Board on Mathematical Sciences and Analytics convened a 3-day public virtual workshop on June 12-14, 2023, to bring tog...

Today, September 26, 2023, the Academies also hosted a one-hour webinar summarizing the workshop and the report. This was recorded and is available at

Artificial Intelligence to Assist Mathematical Reasoning: Webinar

Artificial intelligence (AI) has great potential to contribute to mathematical discovery, by guiding conjecture generation, assisting in formalizing mathematics, and more. How are AI technologies being used to advance the mathematical sciences, and how can interdisciplinary collaboration open up new opportunities? Join the National Academies for a webinar on the use of AI to assist mathematical reasoning on Tuesday, September 26, 2023 from 3-4pm ET. During the webinar, speakers will discuss curr...

EDUCAUSE, as part of its Horizon Report activities, has just released a document called "2023 EDUCAUSE Horizon Action Plan: Generative AI". It's a fairly short report, which the way I read it is focused on largely on institutional strategies and processes for understanding and planning for the implications of generative AI technologies. It's also very strongly focused on teaching and learning (as opposed to implications for the research enterprise).

Summary of the project

Link to the report proper (also contained in the summary linked above)

The Library at the University of Leeds in the UK has just issued a fascinating report on AI in what they call "library spaces" titled “Looking towards a brighter future: the potentiality of AI and digital transformations to library spaces”. There are a lot of things I really like about this report, including the historical perspective on the development and implications of AI technologies. Overview and background at

and link to the actual report

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Roundtable on Aligning Incentives for Open Scholarship will organize a half-day hybrid public workshop, Developing New Approaches to Promote Equitable and Inclusive Implementation of Open Scholarship Policies on Thursday, October 19 from 9 am to 2:30 pm EDT. The workshop will be held in conjunction with the Fall 2023 meeting of the Roundtable. The public is invited to register to join virtually.

For more details on the workshop, the current agenda, and to register (there is no fee) see

Developing New Approaches to Promote Equitable and Inclusive Implementation of Open Scholarship Policies: A Workshop

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Roundtable on Aligning Incentives for Open Scholarship convened a half-day hybrid public workshop, Developing New Approaches to Promote Equitable and Inclusive Implementation of Open Scholarship Policies on October 19 from 9 am to 2:30 pm EDT. The workshop was held in conjunction with the Fall 2023 meeting of the Roundtable. The workshop explored specific steps and new approaches that research institutions, governmental agencies, re...

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

There's an extremely interesting commentary that appeared recently in Nature; it's framed in terms of sharing data in the highly competitive framework of pharma and biotechnology corporations in ways that can benefit the entire community, but much of the thinking here is also relevant to highly competitive research labs within the academic research world that are simultaneously part of a community working together. Well worth reading and thinking about.

See

AI can help to speed up drug discovery — but only if we give it the right data

Artificial-intelligence tools that enable companies to share data about drug candidates while keeping sensitive information safe can unleash the potential of machine learning and cutting-edge lab techniques, for the common good.

(this may be paywalled, depending on where you are coming from. Apologies.)