Open Password – Friday October 15, 2021
#986
WTI-Frankfurt digital – Jan Halstenbach – Miguel Grosser – FIZ Technology – Federal Ministry of Economics – Small and medium-sized companies – Specialist information programs – Technology and management information – Peter Halstenbach
Special scientific libraries – Sebastian Nix – Digitization – Service portfolio – Library News – Content management system – Information events – Research data management group – FACES – Max Planck Digital Library – E-books – PDA service for new publications – Open access services – Publication funds – Secondary publications – Digital Libraries Connected – Florence Art History Institute – MPI for Legal History and Legal Theory – MPI for the History of Science – Research Data Management – Open Science Policy – Coordinator for Research Data Management – Information, Communication & Concentration Space – Intranet – Face-to-face and online training – Readjustment – Proactive Acquisitions – Institute management – Human resources – Trainees – Leibniz Institute for Psychology – Classifications – Society for Scientific Data Processing – Berlin Science Center for Social Research
LexisNexis – Nexis Entity Search – Webinar – Patent Analytics – AstraZeneca – Holger Ernst – ESG Assessments – Nexis Data Integration – ESG Disclosure Regulation – Greenwashing – Human Rights – Anti-Corruption Compliance – OECD – International Organization of Employees – Human Rights and Environmental Diligence
I
WTI-Frankfurt digital: Filed for bankruptcy – came into its own economically as an employee-owned company, then sold to the wrong people
II.
Cover story
Special academic libraries: Where are we headed? – Workshop report on changes in a medium-sized special library – Conditions for success of strategic changes and “lessons learned” – By Sebastian Nix
III.
LexisNexis
With the launch of Nexis Entity Search API: Full control over negative messages
How Patent Analytics Can Help Transform Businesses:
The Case of AstraZeneca
WTI-Frankfurt digital
Filed for bankruptcy
As an employee-
owned company, it became financially viable, then sold to the wrong people
The managing director of WTI-Frankfurt digital GmbH, Jan Halstenbach, has filed for bankruptcy at the Frankfurt district court. The Frankfurt lawyer Miguel Grosser was appointed as the provisional insolvency administrator. Orders from the previous management are only effective with the consent of the insolvency administrator. Open Password learned from two WTI employees that they had been terminated due to going out of business. Apparently all employees have been terminated.
This means that the WTI appears to be nearing its end. The WTI emerged from FIZ Technik, which was founded in 1979 by the Federal Ministry of Economics as part of the German specialist information programs to familiarize medium-sized industrial companies with the new online technology and to provide them with technical and management information. FIZ Technik took a leading position in the specialist information policy debates in the 80s and 90s.
The first existential crisis occurred when the BMWi stopped its funding. However, against all odds, FIZ Technik was continued in 2011 as WTI in the form of an employee cooperative and became financially independent. With its economic successes, WTI gained twice the popularity in the information industry, after the company’s expertise had already been undisputed. In 2019, WTI was converted into a GmbH and sold to Jan and his father Peter Halstenbach, both of whom are management consultants, among other things. The industry greeted this change with some skepticism, as the Halstenbachs had no specific knowledge of the industry and, contrary to industry practice, were quick to threaten legal action. This skepticism has now proven to be justified.
Special scientific libraries
Where is the journey going?
Workshop report on changes
in a medium-sized special library [1]
Conditions for success of strategic changes
and “lessons learned”
By Sebastian Nix
Second part
[1] This article is based on a lecture by the author at the 38th ASpB conference on September 15, 2021.
Cover of the English-language version of a brochure in which the library and scientific information team at the MPIB presents its work program up to 2023)
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The service developments since 2018
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Even before these strategic priorities for action were formulated, which represent a framework of orientation for both the team members and the management of the institute, the service portfolio was further developed. This was partly due to external influences such as technical requirements: an in-house blog based on WordPress was launched under the name “Library News”, through which the library and scientific information informs about new services.
- As part of the introduction of a new content management system for the MPIB as a whole, the library’s web-based information offerings and scientific information were revised.
- Several information events were held, for example on the then new Copyright and Knowledge Society Act and on bibliometrics in the humanities.
- A “Research Data Management Working Group” consisting of researchers, infrastructure representatives, data protection coordinators and library and scientific information employees was founded in a bottom-up process. This was then formally institutionalized by the management of the MPIB in July 2018 in order to create the conditions for strategic research data management.
- The “FACES” stimulus database was put on a new technical basis together with the Max Planck Digital Library. At the same time, responsibility for providing the FACES stimuli to interested researchers worldwide was transferred to the Library and Scientific Information team.
The areas of action and priorities that were already apparent here were formulated more specifically in the strategic action program for the period up to 2023. This sets the following priorities:
- Inventory development (print and online):
- Expansion of the acquisition or temporary subscription of e-books, including proof of subscribed e-books via the OPAC;
- increased licensing of database products that are not licensed across all institutes of the Max Planck Society via the Max Planck Digital Library;
- Development of a PDA service integrated into the OPAC in terms of data for new publications on the national and international scientific book market, regardless of the media form;
- Open Access Services:
- Introduction of a local publication fund (also for e-books) by partially reallocating the acquisition budget;
- Expansion of information and training offerings, for example in the form of more detailed FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) about open access publishing on the MPIB intranet or in the form of short presentations by the “Open Access” team integrated into team meetings of the research areas and groups library and scientific information;
- Implementation of a workflow for the systematic open access secondary publication of dependent publications, namely journal articles and book chapters;
- Technical and functional relaunch of the “Digital Libraries Connected” (DLC) platform, through which four Max Planck Institutes offer free, usable digital copies of media, mainly from their own collections. In addition to the MPIB, these are the Florence Art History Institute, the MPI for Legal History and Legal Theory and the MPI for the History of Science;
- Research data management:
- Development of a concept for research data management for the MPIB;
- Carrying out a preliminary project for the development of an open science policy including regulations for the handling of research data;
- Creation of the position of coordinator for research data management (filled since March 2021);
- Further development of the library as a place:
- Development of a spatial functional concept approved by the MPIB management on November 26, 2020 as the basis for the planned conversion of the MPIB library into a flexible-use “Information, Communication & Concentration Space” with areas for both quiet individual work and for working in smaller ones and larger groups, with a meeting room with video conferencing technology that can also be used for training and workshops, as well as an enlarged free-hand area including RFID technology for staff-independent self-booking of media;
- Information and training:
- fundamental structural and content revision of the intranet offering;
- Organization of face-to-face and online training on the topics of “Open Science” and “Research Data Management”.
All of these measures have already been successfully implemented or are currently in progress. This happens “during ongoing operations” and in addition to the routine tasks that the team naturally continues to perform.
Sebastian Nix
Images: MPI for Educational Research
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Conditions for success for the change process and “lessons learned”
_____________________________________________________
In order for new things to emerge and at the same time to rethink, maintain or further develop what already exists, intensive, transparent communication and planning is required. The team members take time once a year to jointly plan upcoming projects, which the employees then work on largely independently within the scope of their areas of responsibility and whose progress they discuss in the team meetings that have taken place weekly (previously: bi-weekly) since the beginning of the corona pandemic, as well as if necessary report in discussions with the library management. So there is always the possibility of readjustment. At the same time, colleagues attend various training courses in order to be better prepared to take on new tasks, for example in areas such as open access and research data management.
In some cases, activities are scaled back in order to create time for new activities. For example, we analyzed in more detail how intensively media was used that was not acquired at the request of the user in the acquisition years 2015 to 2019, but rather proactively by the library and scientific information staff. In light of the corresponding results, it was decided to concentrate the proactive acquisition on a few subject areas (emotional history, human-machine interaction) and types of work (namely reference works available online). This meant that some of the acquisition funds and human resources could be repurposed for other tasks. Another example is the extensive abandonment of binding for magazines that are still available in print form.
Also important is the accompanying communication with the institute management, which at a Max Planck Institute typically passes every two years to a different member of the board of directors – in the case of the MPIB, consisting of four people. It is of great importance to present to the management the strategic priorities in light of their added value for the individual researchers and the institute as a whole in a transparent and easily comprehensible manner in order to prevent misunderstandings and to enable early planning of the distribution of material and human resources.
Incidentally, human resources have remained almost unchanged – with the important exception of the newly created position of coordinator for research data management. This is responsible, among other things, for the cross-institute development and implementation of a research data management workflow and for accompanying information and training offers. This position requires in-depth knowledge of the research process and research methods at the MPIB and was fortunately able to be filled by an in-house scientist with many years of experience. Structurally, the composition of the team has changed in that no new trainees have been trained in the profession of “media and information services specialist” since 2014 [1] . Instead, the range of internships has been expanded, and since September 2021 we have employed two student assistants and one research assistant who are entrusted with both routine tasks, for example in connection with open access secondary publication, as well as project-related tasks. For a project to prepare research data, which will be made available for future use together with the Leibniz Institute of Psychology (ZPID), two research assistants were also hired to take on the processing of the corresponding data.
However, the fact that the number of full-time equivalents remains largely the same does not mean that there cannot at least be changes in the classifications, namely where colleagues take on new, higher-value tasks that result from the offer of new or the further development of existing services. This creates changing job profiles step by step. The first higher groupings have already been made.
Quite a few of the service developments outlined would have been possible without collaboration with partners outside the institute. The relaunch of the FACES platform was carried out in close collaboration with the Max Planck Digital Library, and the redesign of the DLC platform was a cooperation project between four Max Planck institutes with an external service provider and the Gesellschaft für forschungsische Datenentwicklung mbH Göttingen (GWDG). . When introducing new open access services, the team also benefited from the know-how and experiences of other institutions such as the Berlin Science Center for Social Research. This list could be continued – although it should not be ignored that collaborations sometimes also cause some transaction costs and the desired result cannot always be achieved in the originally hoped-for time frame.
Likewise, getting involved in new things also means that service offers are not always accepted as hoped, despite feedback from users, good preparation and communication, for example because the actual need is lower than expected or because General conditions – the corona pandemic is “just” a particularly drastic example of this – sometimes change quite quickly and unexpectedly. That’s why no one should be discouraged by “failures” and “setbacks”, especially since you can still learn from every new project and then use these experiences for other projects if necessary.
In recent years, the library and scientific information team at the MPIB has already come a long and strenuous way towards adapting its service portfolio to an overall context that is rapidly changing due to digitalization and to an equally rapidly changing institutional environment. We have learned a lot along the way and are still learning – including that the journey itself may be our destination.
[1] The last trainee successfully completed her training in 2017.
LexisNexis
With the launch of Nexis Entity Search API:
Full control over negative messages
Every day, news spreads uncontrollably like wildfire, especially via social media. This makes it more difficult than ever for companies to keep track of emerging risks. The new Nexis Entity Search API solution gives companies back control of negative news.
The API makes it possible to find relevant mentions of customers, suppliers or other important players in the shortest possible time and to flexibly integrate the raw data into the company’s own systems. More at: https://www.lexisnexis.de/loesungen/data-integration/nexis-entity-search-api?utm_source=link&utm_content=nexis-entity-search-api&utm_campaign=newsletter
How Patent Analytics Can Help Transform Businesses:
The Case of AstraZeneca
Tuesday, October 19, 2021
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m
Prof. Dr. Holger Ernst, Professor of Business Administration at the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, explains how the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca profitably optimized its patent portfolio and thereby identified new and promising business opportunities.
New perspectives and insights especially for senior management and heads of IP, M&A, corporate strategy, corporate venturing and open innovation. Free registration at: https://bis.lexisnexis.com/patent-analytics?utm_source=link&utm_content=webinar-patent-analytics-october-2021&utm_campaign=newsletter
Improve ESG assessment with big data
ESG ratings are becoming increasingly important to analysts, regulators and consumers. In order to better assess their own ESG performance, many companies use ESG intelligence tools. But the results are often distorted by incomplete data. Nexis Data Integration closes existing data gaps and provides more precise insights into your own ESG assessment. More at https://www.lexisnexis.de/blog/data-integration/esg-vergleich-verbessern?utm_source=link&utm_content=esg-vergleich-verbessern&utm_campaign=newsletter
What does the ESG disclosure regulation mean for companies in Europe?
The EU disclosure regulation, which has been in force since March, shows that the ESG trend cannot be stopped. The regulation requires companies to be more transparent and to exercise greater due diligence with regard to sustainability, environmental protection and compliance with human rights. With the new law, the EU wants to combat greenwashing in the finance and banking sector more effectively. More on the topic of ESG and what companies now have to take into account in order to meet the new requirements: https://www.lexisnexis.de/blog/compliance/esg-offenlegenungsverfassung?utm_source=link&utm_content=esg-offenlegenungsverfassung&utm_campaign=newsletter
Before new regulations for human rights and anti-corruption compliance
The Business at OECD network and the International Organization of Employers have published a guide on this. How this approach can be implemented in practice : https://www.lexisnexis.de/blog/compliance/leitfaden-menschenrechts-und-anti-korruptions-compliance?utm_source=link&utm_content=leitfaden-menschenrechts-abc-compliance&utm_campaign=newsletter
New EU law on human rights and environmental diligence
In March, the European Parliament agreed on a Europe-wide legislative proposal that would require due diligence on human rights and the environment (mHRDD). The law is expected to be passed in 2022, and the national policy will come into force in 2023 at the earliest. Companies should start revising their due diligence strategies now to ensure robust compliance, like this: https://www.lexisnexis.de/blog/compliance/eu-gesetz-fur-menschenrechts-und-umwelt -due-diligence?utm_source=link&utm_content=eu-gesetz-menschenrechts-due-diligence&utm_campaign=newsletter
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