Category Archives: Announcements

Quick note about an event or service reminder…with or without a deadline.

Announcements, Website Update

Expert Gallery Suite Platform Shutting Down December 31st, 2024

Expert Gallery Suite (EGS, also known as “SelectedWorks”) will be retired by Elsevier on December 31st, 2024, after which data profiles and content will not be accessible. This includes the modules SelectedWorks, the Impact Dashboard, and the Expert Galleries. All pages and metrics will be permanently removed. If you would like a copy, it is very important that you save your content and any data in advance.

What does this mean for Expert Gallery Suite users? 

ALL Expert Gallery Suite (EGS) profiles will be completely removed from the web effective December 31st, 2024. Additionally, we will be unable to provide any assistance regarding SelectedWorks profiles or the Expert Gallery Suite after the sunset occurs.

What do I need to do before December 31st, 2024?

In order to retain a copy of your works, statistics or records, we recommend that you:

  1. Log into your EGS profile.
  2. Save a copy of all of your content. You can do this by directly downloading onto your device, manually uploading to cloud storage, or using a reference manager like Zotero.
  3. Save any metrics you would like to retain from your author dashboard (click on the hamburger menu in the top right horizontal navigation to navigate to “Author Dashboard”).

Further Action-Items for Authors:

  1. Upload your content directly into ScholarWorks. Any information that was pulled into ScholarWorks from Expert Gallery Suite will need to be uploaded directly into ScholarWorks, or it will be lost. For more information, please visit our ScholarWorks LibGuide.
    • Note: ScholarWorks is NOT the same thing as SelectedWorks. ScholarWorks is UMass Boston’s Institutional Repository, and it is here to stay. Ensure that your content has been uploaded by visiting scholarworks.umb.edu and clicking “Submit Your Work” on the left side navigation menu.
  2. Update your email signature and any other locations that link to your SelectedWorks/Expert Gallery Suite profile.
  3. Visit Elsevier’s SelectedWorks Guide for Authors for further information.

Options for you after Expert Gallery Suite ends:

  1. Move your Expert Gallery Suite content into ScholarWorks
  2. Put your profile information on the UMass Boston Directory. Please note that the UMB Directory is separate from the Expert Gallery Suite and ScholarWorks  platforms.
  3. The Office of Research and Sponsored Programs in collaboration with Healey Library will be rolling out a new faculty profile platform for tenured and tenure track faculty, as well as select institute and research center staff. This platform should be ready in Spring of 2025. The Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP) and the Vice Provost for Research (VPR) will be sending out more information to the faculty, colleges, research centers and institutes in the coming weeks about the roll out.

Join Us!

Join Healey Library for our Introduction to ScholarWorks Zoom Workshop on February 11th. We will be addressing topics like browsing the repository, submitting your work, copyright and fair use considerations, and finding your author statistics.

(CLOSED) January 15th Intro to ScholarWorks, 1pm-2pm.

Register for our February 11th Intro to ScholarWorks, 1pm – 2pm.

For further information:

If you do not remember your password, you can use the “Forgot your password?” link to reset it. Please contact egs-support@elsevier.com if you need assistance.

If you have questions about the Expert Gallery Suite sunset, please contact scholarworks@umb.edu.

For information about further resources and tools to host your research and scholarship, please contact Christine Moynihan, Scholarly Communications, Data and Affordable Learning Librarian at christine.moynihan@umb.edu.

Announcements, What's Cool

Healey Library Announces Transformative Agreement with Wiley

Healey Library is pleased to announce a three-year transformative agreement with Wiley, a well-established global publisher of journals with a focus on the sciences. While the new agreement continues to provide traditional read access to all 1,500+ Wiley journals, as of January 1, 2024, it also allows open access publication in Wiley journals for University of Massachusetts Boston authors at no cost to the authors.

UMB faculty who are interested in learning about the Wiley OA process are invited to register for a Wiley UMB author workshop on April 2, 2024. After registering, you will receive an email with information about the session and a join link for that day. Those who register and attend will receive a certificate of attendance and a link to a recording of the session after the training. Those who register but are unable to join will receive a link to the recording as well.

Register for the workshop using the link below: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8393409420347195994

How does this publishing agreement work?

Authors whose articles are accepted in Wiley’s Gold Open Access or Hybrid Open Access journals will be given an option to make their article open access during their submission process. This option is available for current faculty and graduate students who are the corresponding authors on an article. A current University of Massachusetts Boston email address must be used for the submission. This agreement also covers some Hindawi journals; please check before submitting your article.

How many articles are covered in the agreement?

We have an allotment of 24 open access articles per year for 2024. The allotment will go up to 25 per year for 2025 and 2026. This number is based on our average annual Wiley article output for the campus. The number of open access articles, however, has been a much smaller subset of this total—over the last two years, we have averaged 7 open access articles. There is a possibility that the number of articles submitted for the open access option could surpass our allotment near the end of the calendar year. Corresponding authors would be notified that we have reached our limit for the year; in that case, please reach out to the library to discuss the next allotment cycle start date.

Which journals are included in the agreement?

The complete list of Wiley gold and hybrid journal titles can be found on their website: https://authorservices.wiley.com/open-research/open-access/browse-journals.html.

Hindawi titles can be found on the Hindawi website: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/.

Why should you choose to publish Open Access?

The open access model makes research available to a larger audience, since open articles do not require a subscription and are not hidden behind paywalls. A recent study in the journal Scientometrics argues that open access articles receive more citations and also reach a wider range of researchers from less homogenous locations https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-023-04894-0.

One example of an an open access article that has positively impacted download rates can be seen below. This letter titled “Thermodynamic speed limits for mechanical work” by UMB authors Erez Aghion and Jason R. Green in the Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical has 809 downloads since February 2023.

We can also see that the article has been cited 3 times, which is considered an above average amount for the length of time since publication.

screenshot of citation details for IOP articles

The authors took advantage of a two-year transformative agreement that Healey Library has with the Institute of Physics that allows UMB corresponding authors to publish open access with no fee. The article can be found in the Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical online : https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1751-8121/acb5d6.

Another example comes from UMB author Mine Ertugrul. Dr. Etrugrul was the corresponding author for the article “Corporate Patenting, Customer Capital, and Financial Market Outcomes”, published in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. Any UMB faculty, staff or student who is the corresponding author can publish open access in Cambridge University Press journals without paying an APC. The article has 614 downloads and 2 citations since publication.

Dr. Ertugrul said “(O)pen access has been a great opportunity to increase access to our research and the publication process with Cambridge University Press was very smooth. Thank you to everyone involved in creating this opportunity for UMass Boston researchers”.

The article can be found on the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis web page: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-financial-and-quantitative-analysis/article/corporate-patenting-customer-capital-and-financial-market-outcomes/8114349E2CC295C3163A5E97A52A7D64?

What other publishers does Healey Library have agreements with?

For a full list of Healey Library’s publisher agreements, visit our guide: https://umb.libguides.com/apc/publish/apc.

Have questions? Contact Christine Moynihan, Scholarly Communications, Data, and Affordable Learning Librarian at Christine.Moynihan@umb.edu

Announcements, The Dean's Desk

Healey Library Gets 2 New Librarians!

Healey Library is thrilled to announce that 2 wonderful librarians will be joining our staff. 

J Troy is joining us on August 21st as our new Liaison Librarian, in our Reference, Outreach, & Instruction unit. J comes to us with over 10 years of experience as a Teacher/Librarian at Milton High School, where he taught information literacy classes to students, so that they learned to search, evaluate, synthesize, and share information effectively and appropriately. He collaborated with other teachers and staff to provide resources and create new curricula, and handled collection development for the library.  He also advised students in various clubs and activities, and hired, trained, and supervised the Student Technology Assistance Team. J holds a Certificate in Public Policy from U Mass Dartmouth (2020), an MS in Library & Information Science from Drexel University (2012), and a BA in Religious Studies from Stonehill College (2007). With J joining us, we are planning to revive our liaison librarian program and to include more librarians in collection development activities. 

Christine Moynihan is joining us on September 11th as our new Scholarly Communications, Data, & Affordable Learning Librarian.  She is currently the Open Educational Resources and Technology Librarian at Salem State University, and previously, she worked as a Project Coordinator in Instructional Design at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and at the University of Massachusetts T.H. Chan Medical School. She also has prior experience as a grant-funded OER Coordinator at Salem State University, and in administrative and technology roles at Boston University, Labouré College, and the Informed Medical Decisions Foundation. She has also undertaken private consulting roles in archival digitization and historical research. Christine holds a Master of Library & Information Science from the University of Alabama (2018) and 2 degrees from U Mass Boston (hooray!) – a MA in History & Archives (2013) and a BA in English (1999). Christine will be helping us to grow our work in Open Educational Resources, support for Open Access publishing, Research Data Management, ScholarWorks management, and more. 

We’re very excited, and hope you will join us in welcoming J and Christine to Healey Library! 

Announcements, Library Services, The Dean's Desk

Healey Library Updates – Fall 2022

Please read on for updates on Library services for the Fall semester!

Permanent Dean of University Libraries

Dean Stephanie Walker headshotOn August 22, 2022, Dean Stephanie Walker joined the Healey Library and UMass Boston. Stephanie comes to us most recently from the University of North Dakota Libraries, where she led a multi-library system and also oversaw the University’s Art Collections. While at UND, she led the gut-renovation of the state’s largest research library (Chester Fritz Library), started and led an Open Educational Resources (OER) program that saved UND students $11 million over 6 years, led the creation of an Open Access publishing program, oversaw the creation of one of the largest and fastest-growing institutional repositories on the Digital Commons platform, and more. Prior to her time at UND, Stephanie was the Chief Librarian & Executive Director of Academic Information Technologies at the City University of New York’s Brooklyn College. She previously also served as the Manager of Collections, Technical Services, & Library IT at Harvard Medical School’s Countway Library, as Dean & University Librarian at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and as the head of two libraries at the University of Toronto. Stephanie is delighted to join UMass Boston, and looks forward to working with everyone here! Email her any time at stephanie.walker@umb.edu – she’d love to hear from you! 

Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Open Access (OA)

Last year, a number of UMass Boston faculty applied for small grants related to Open Textbooks and other Open Educational Resources. As part of this program, they could a) adopt existing OERs, b) adapt one or more existing OERs for use in their courses, or c) create OERs themselves. This year, we have begun early discussions on expanding our programs by offering some of these options again. We also hope to expand our marketing and promotion of OERs, with upcoming speakers and events. We are still very early in this process, but wanted to let you know that there is much more to come! Dean Stephanie Walker had previously represented her former institution in the National Academy of Sciences’ HELIOS project (Higher Education Leadership In Open Source), which is a multi-institutional program to grow and enhance uptake and usage of OERs in Higher Education. With the support of Provost Joseph Berger, Dean Walker is now representing UMass Boston on this initiative – stay tuned!  

Curbside Pickup Available Monday – Saturday

Curbside pickup for physical Healey Library and interlibrary loan (ILL) materials is available BY APPOINTMENT, Monday – Saturday in the ISC turn-around. To request a book or DVD from Healey Library’s collection for curbside pickup, please sign into UMBrella directly, search for a title, open the item’s record, and click ‘REQUEST OPTIONS: Place Hold for Pickup’ link. When an item is ready for pickup, patrons will receive an email including the details for booking curbside appointments. 

This same request function can be used to pick up items directly from the 2nd floor Circulation Desk as well.

Library Requests Form – Including Reserves Requests!

Use the Healey Library Requests Form to request items for purchase, course reserves, or digitization. Using this form allows library staff to route requests to the appropriate departments and make sure nothing falls through the cracks! 

Library Website Update – Coming Soon!

In addition to the campus-wide website update, Healey Library is in the process of making significant updates to its website based on the user feedback and data we have collected from the community in the past fall and spring. Thank you to all of you who have participated in the library’s website assessment efforts, and stay tuned to see how your feedback will be incorporated into the new Healey Library website!

Mass. Memories Road Show and RoPA

The trailblazing Mass. Memories Road Show (MMRS) program that so many of us know and love has been on a path of growth and expansion over the last few years. Supported in part by a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the University Archives and Special Collections at UMass Boston launched the Roadmap for Participatory Archiving (RoPA). This project makes the MMRS model accessible to libraries and cultural institutions across the globe who are interested in collecting, documenting, and preserving their communities’ history, traditions, and collective memories. Browse the more than 12,000 Massachusetts memories that have already been collected and preserved through MMRS events, and check out RoPA for guidance on initiating similar efforts within your own communities!

There is a great deal happening at Healey Library, and we are thrilled to be fully back on campus and open to all. We also expect to have more news in multiple areas shortly – stay tuned! And we would welcome any suggestions and feedback – like all campus units, Healey Library will be undergoing a strategic planning process over the next several months, and we will be seeking your input! Thank you all for your time and attention – and drop by and visit us anytime!

Announcements, Library Services, Website Update

Update on the Library Website Project

In Fall 2021, Healey Library launched a usability study with the goal of improving the user experience of the library’s website. The users’ feedback and survey data will be used to inform the planning and development of the campus website redesign project and help align the library website’s complexity and unique function with the overall campus redesign project. 

Fall/Winter 2021 Activities

  • Reviewed the project scope of the library website usability study 
  • Learned about current usability and accessibility standards
  • Examined other academic library websites to understand the trends and common practices 
  • Evaluated the functionalities and contents of our own library website
  • Analyzed our patron usage data
  • Launched a campus-wide survey and received 150 responses
  • Conducted 12 key-informant interviews of patron-facing library staff members to gather user feedback to identify potential barriers for improvement 

After careful review and analysis of these data, we concluded that it was imperative to take the immediate steps to conduct an in-depth content review, initiate re-organization of the web content, and re-build the navigation menu in order to improve efficiency in helping users search information. 

Spring/Summer 2022 Activities

  • Reviewed and updated relevant web content 
  • Drafted a new web architecture with a new navigation menu
  • Created an online card-sorting task and invited the entire UMB community to submit their preferences for the re-construction of the navigation menu. We received hundreds of submissions reflecting a total of 453 participants from undergraduate/graduate students, faculty, staff, and other UMB affiliated members

The review and analysis of the card sorting data are currently underway. Healey Library wants to thank everyone who has participated in the usability testing and helped us improve our library services.

Currently, we are working on updating the web pages within a testing environment and designing the new navigation menu in preparation to begin the transition to the new website in late Spring/Summer 2023. We are working with the Division of Marketing & Engagement on the migration plan and timeline for launching the library’s new website. We will provide further updates as we finalize the rollout plan of the new library website. Stay tuned!