In late September 2020 CNI conducted several follow-up virtual Executive Roundtable events to explore the state of restarting the research enterprise at our member institutions and discuss strategies and approaches for research continuity and resilience. This was a follow on from our April 2020 Roundtables on this topic and once again took a broad view of the research enterprise and how it is supported. The report from these September sessions is now available at

I expect that there will be several sessions exploring aspects of this landscape as part of our Fall virtual CNI Membership meeting and we plan to convene another set of Executive Roundtables on this topic in late Spring 2021 to summarize the 2020-2021 situation and examine thinking for the 2021-2022 Academic year and beyond.

I'd be grateful if CNI-announce readers would share this report widely within their institutions where appropriate, since I think the topic is of broad interest, beyond the established CNI community.

I just learned of a very interesting virtual conference that's taking place next week, under the auspices of the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) and supported by the National Science Foundation. Registration is free. See the conference site for details:

The agenda is here:

The submission deadline for CNI’s fall 2020 virtual membership meeting is fast approaching! The meeting will take place online Nov. 10-Dec. 15.

Week 1 deadline is next Monday, October 19. A limited number of project briefings are accepted. Anyone may submit a proposal, including non-members. For details, and to submit a proposal: https://www.cni.org/mm/fall-2020/project-briefing-proposals-f20

Theme descriptions and deadlines

Week 1: Developing and Managing Networked Information Content Proposals due Oct. 19 CNI has broad interests across all forms of digital content that can be used to support research and education. Some examples of potential topics within this theme would be strategies for the creation, management, presentation, accessibility, and preservation of digital collections, digital libraries, and federated services in support of digital content, or the reassessment of content and collections in light of current developments in diversity, inclusion and equity. Digital scholarship, institutional repositories, and digital preservation are popular issues in this area.

There was an exciting announcement today about a fall series of webinars that are being scheduled among a group of the major Data Science institutes at key research institutes -- UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, Stanford, Rice University, University of Washington and NYU (forgive me if I'v missed anyone). For one version of the announcement see

Not only is this an important development in its own right, as higher education tries to situate the emerging discipline of data science within its institutions, but it begins to suggest how the current pandemic and the shift to virtual venues is changing scholarly communication patterns. Events such as seminars and symposia that were historically institutionally based are moving to much broader (sometimes internationally based ) community participation, with implications that we have yet to understand. This demands closer examination and consideration than I'm aware is occurring, particularly in the context of the growing emergence of what might be called "scientific nationalism" driven by government policies.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

The US National Academies is hosting a virtual public workshop on November 5, 2020 from 11am-2pm EST on Developing a Toolkit for Fostering Open Science Practices, as part of its broader efforts to align incentives to advance open science. There is no charge, but you'll need to register in advance. For full information see

Developing a Toolkit for Fostering Open Science Practices: A Workshop

A virtual public workshop on developing a toolkit for fostering open science practices took place on Thursday, November 5, 2020 in conjunction with the Fall 2020 meeting of the Roundtable on Aligning Incentives for Open Science. The workshop explored the information and resource needs of researchers, research institutions, government agencies, philanthropies, professional societies, and other stakeholders interested in fostering open science practices. Workshop participants also discussed approa...

This promises to be an extremely interesting workshop.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

The Board on Research Data and Information (BRDI) of the US National Academies is hosting a free online workshop on "Data in Motion" on October 14 and 15, 2020. I've included a short description of the workshop focus below. Advance registration is required to participate in the workshop. For more details, see

Data in Motion: New Approaches to Advancing Scientific, Engineering and Medical Progress: A Workshop

On October 14-15, 2020, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Board on Research Data and Information (BRDI) convened a public virtual workshop on how researchers in different domains are utilizing data that undergoes repeated processing, often in real-time, to accelerate discovery and the challenges they are facing. The discussions explored what advances would be needed to enable progress in the future, in areas such as artificial intelligence, cyberinfrastructure, stan...

It's unclear whether video recordings of the session will be available after the sessions, but BRDI will issue a summary of the meeting.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI (Disclosure: I am a former member and co-chair of BRDI)

Proposals are now being accepted for project briefings to be presented during CNI's Fall 2020 Membership Meeting (virtual). The meeting will take place online Nov. 10-Dec. 15, 2020. Anyone may propose a project briefing, including groups/individuals from non-member institutions and organizations.

Project briefings are typically live, 30-minute or one-hour sessions that focus on a discussion of a timely topic, or on a specific institutional/organizational project related to digital information; they can also explore parallel developments across institutions. We are also accepting proposals for shorter, pre-recorded presentations. A limited number of project briefings will be accepted.

Four weeks will be devoted to project briefings: three weeks based on the three major themes of CNI's Program Plan (https://www.cni.org/program), and the final week devoted to emerging issues and developments related to the current crisis. While there may be some overlap among themes, we ask presenters to choose what they believe to be the best fit for their proposal; conference organizers may request or suggest a different theme. A few presenters may be contacted in advance and invited to participate in a Monday summary session; participation is optional. We aim to notify presenters within one week of submission deadlines. Once accepted, presenters will have an opportunity to sign up for an available slot during the relevant week on a first-come basis.

Project briefing schedule is as follows:

In December 2019, immediately following the CNI Fall Member meeting, the Association of Research Libraries convened an NSF-funded workshop to examine how to improve research data management practices. This was done in partnership with the California Digital Library, the Association of American Universities, and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. They have just issued the final report from this workshop, "Implementing Effective Data Practices: Stakeholder Recommendations for Collaborative Research Support". A summary of the workshop and the report, plus a link to the full report itself, are at:

New Report Provides Recommendations for Effective Data Practices Based on National Science Foundation Research Enterprise Convening — Association of Research Libraries

Today a group of research library and higher education leadership associations released Implementing Effective Data Practices: Stakeholder Recommendations for Collaborative Research Support.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

Rebecca Bryant from OCLC has posted a very useful summary of the launch meeting of the OCLC-LIBER Open Science Webinar Discussion Series, which took place last week, at

(I put out an announcement about this series last week on CNI-announce.)

Note that all of the discussion events are now fully subscribed, but there is a summary webinar on November 5 that's open to everyone which will be of interest to some in the CNI community; Rebecca's posting has information on how to register for this. It's my understanding that the hangingtogether.org blog will be posting summaries of the discussion sessions between now and then.

Carnegie Mellon University has moved two conferences online this year due to the pandemic. The first is Artificial Intelligence for Data Discovery and Reuse (AIDR), on October 19. I had the opportunity to participate in this last year, and it was an outstanding meeting that explored a number of poorly investigated issues about how AI technologies might help to improve data discovery and data reuse. The second Symposium, on October 20, deals with Open Science (OSS). Web sites for these two meetings (which include detailed agendas and registration information) are at:

There is no charge for registration, and you can register for both symposia at once.

A great deal has been written about the security issues, national security and defense implications, and similar matters related to 5G wireless networks in the last year or so, partially driven by the issues around proposed bans of Huawei by the Trump administration in the US and other national governments. I've been following these discussions, which are particularly confusing and complicated given the commercial hype surrounding 5G deployment and rollout, and the somewhat fluid definition of what actually constitutes 5G architecture (consider, for example, the discussions about edge processing). The flood of publications have been of extremely varied and uneven quality, and I've found many to be quite frustrating for various reasons. I've seen several presentations on aspects of 5G networking sponsored by the US National Academies over the past year or so; I've found these to be quite good and if you are interested in the topic, they are certainly worth reading.

Recently the University of California, Berkeley Center for Long Term Cybersecurity (CLTC), which has done some really excellent and unique work in recent years, issued a concise and very useful report titled 'Security Implications of 5G Networks", which is a valuable addition to the discussions on this topic. You can find a brief summary and a link to download the report at:

CLTC Report: “Security Implications of 5G Networks” - CLTC

The PDF linked through this page is archived. It is kept only for reference purposes, so it is no longer being updated and may not meet accessibility standards.…

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

In the summer of 2018, LIBER issued its Open Science Roadmap (see https://libereurope.eu/blog/2018/07/03/liber-launches-open-science-roadmap/), which received extensive discussion, particularly within the European research library community.

OCLC and LIBER has recently announced a series of webinars and intensive interactive discussions on this roadmap and its implementation which I think will be of interest to many CNI member institutions. A summary of the program and registration links can be found at:

OCLC-LIBER Open Science Discussion Series

Note that the series begins on Thursday, September 24. My apologies for the late notice, but the series just came to my attention a few hours ago.

Elsevier is hosting a half-day symposium on October 7, 2020 looking at issues around access management to digital resources and services, which has become particularly important as many institutions have moved extensively to remote instruction models during the pandemic. What's particularly noteworthy about this session is that they've brought together not only library leaders but also some leading CIOs (including some leaders within the InCommon authentication and authorization community), and some people explicitly charged with protecting user privacy. This should be a very worthwhile discussion.

If you cannot attend in realtime, they will make a recording available to registered users.

For further information (pre-registration is required, though there is no charge):

Based on the current public health situation, it’s clear that we must reluctantly move the December 2020 CNI Member Meeting virtual. I wish we could meet in person, but this is not going to be feasible, and I look forward to the time when can gather in person again, hopefully in 2021.

We have designed a virtual meeting for this fall building on what we (and many other organizations) have learned since we led many of our peer organizations in March 2020 by making a very late shift online for our spring member meeting. You’ll note that we’ve already moved to a more flexible schedule for our overall program, taking advantage of the online environment to offer a number of events over the course of the summer and early fall, notably additional Executive Roundtables, the series on digital scholarship planning hosted by Associate Director Emerita Joan Lippincott, and our new Hallway Conversations and Lobby Encounters series. In this message, I want to briefly outline our plans for the fall virtual meeting.

I ask that you continue to hold the original dates of our in-person meeting: December 14, 3:00-5:00pm EST and December 15, 1:00-5:00pm EST for plenaries (including my own) and other special programming. We will announce detailed scheduling for these days later. We’ll hold our December 2020 Executive Roundtable on December 14, noon-2:30pm EST, and if there is enough demand for additional roundtable sessions on this Roundtable topic, we’ll schedule these on December 16 (and, if necessary, on December 17). We will announce a topic and issue a call for participation around October 10 for the December Executive Roundtable. Note that, as we did in the spring, we may offer additional Executive Roundtable convenings in November 2020 (on a topic distinct from the December set) if events and the development of our programmatic work warrants – Executive Roundtables are now a year-round option, which we want to feel free to exploit as appropriate.

In the weeks leading up to the December dates, we will schedule four weeks of thematically organized project briefings. Basically, these will run from Tuesday to Friday each week, with a session on the following Monday to synthesize and reflect on what we heard the week before. This schedule will allow Monday participants the opportunity to watch session recordings from the preceding week if they wish. There are, of course, some adjustments to accommodate holidays during this period, notably skipping most of the week of November 24 for Thanksgiving. We’ll typically schedule sessions during the 1:00-5:00pm EST window. Here is the rough schedule:

In October 2019 I shared a pointer to an interim report from our colleagues at JISC in the UK had released dealing with what they called "Research 4.0" -- basically the way in which research practices would be transformed by a complex of emerging technologies such as robotics, machine learning, and big data. This report was prepared by an independent research and policy analysis consulting group called Demos.

This week JISC announced the availability of the final version of the report, which can be found here:

direct download link to the PDF is here:

I’m looking forward to keynoting this conference on September 23. If your institution has an interest in ETDs (electronic theses and dissertations), this virtual conference will provide lots of good information.

—Joan Lippincott, Associate Executive Director Emerita, CNI

The USETDA announces our 10th annual conference—USETDA 2020—Making Connections: Scholarly Communication in the Digital Age. In an effort to provide a safe meeting environment as well as to preserve the work and funding already put into this year’s conference, we sought new opportunities for outreach and engagement. As a result, this year we are pleased to announce that the USETDA 2020 Conference will be held as a free online Virtual Town Hall Meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, September 23, 2020 from 1:00 – 6:30 pm (Eastern). Please visit our USETDA 2020 Conference Update – COVID-19 Statement for complete information about this transition. Registration will close on September 22nd. Don't miss out, register today!

On Wednesday, September 9, 2020, the US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology subcommittee on Research and Technology held a two-hour video hearing on the impact of COVID-19 on University Research. The recording is available for viewing here:

There are several minutes of splash screen at the start of the recording that you will want to skip over before the hearing proper begins.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

Apologies for the short notice, I just found out about this today, but I wanted to share this announcement as I know that there are people in the CNI community who will be interested in participating. Again, I don't know if the material will be recorded for later asynchronous viewing.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

The Library of Congress is hosting an Informal Virtual Audio Visual Summit to be held on September 15 from 9am -5:30pm EST https://labs.loc.gov/events/

ExLibris commissioned a consultancy called Alterline to survey senior researchers and research administrators in the US, UK and Australia on priorities and challenges in supporting the research enterprise. The report from this work can be downloaded at:

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

There's a lot of activity in around digitized biological and natural history collections in the next few weeks, which continues a series of NSF-funded community initiatives which go back a number of years to initiatives from the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Marburger years during the George W. Bush administration (you can find pointers to some of the foundational reports in the CNI-announce archives). I wanted to share pointers to several of these.

A US National Academies committee has been looking at the role of Biological Collections in Research and Education in the 21st Century. They have recently issued a report and a video summary of the report, and are going to do a webinar briefing on September 17 (registration required). You can find links to all of this plus some background on the committee at:

Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century

Biological collections are a critical part of the nation’s science infrastructure and a fundamental resource for understanding the natural world. Without enhanced strategic leadership and investments in their infrastructure and growth many biological collections could be lost. This report recommends approaches for biological collections to develop long-term financial sustainability, advance digitization, recruit and support a diverse workforce, and upgrade and maintain a robust physical infrastr...

There's a major annual conference on digital biological collections which has moved online in a compressed format this year; registration is free. It will be preceded by a series of short workshops September 15-17 dealing with natural history collections in the age of COVID-19, with the main conference happening on the afternoons (Eastern US time) on September 22-25. There are some superb sessions here. It's unclear from the web page whether the sessions will be recorded for later asynchronous viewing. See