Digital Commons Network^™

A Mixed Score Card: Findings And Recommendations From Australia’S National Pid Benchmarking Toolkit, Simon Porter, Ann Campbell, Natasha Simons, Lyle Winton, Matthias Liffers

FORCE 2026

In 2024, Australia launched its National Persistent Identifier (PID) Strategy to accelerate research quality efficiency, and impact through the universal use of connected PIDs. To measure progress against this strategy, the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) commissioned Digital Science to develop a comprehensive PID benchmarking framework and conduct Australia’s first national assessment of PID adoption. This presentation will share the key findings from the final report, the Australian National Per-sistent Identifier (PID) Benchmarking Toolkit (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.29281667).

The report reveals a “mixed score card” for the nation’s research ecosystem. While Australia has achieved world-leading success in ORCID adoption for researchers …

Panel Discussion: The Role And Accessibility Of Open Scholarly Infrastructure In Asia, Rocio Gaudioso Pedraza, Ginny Hendricks, Xiaofeng Guo, Mochammad Tanzil Multazam, Maria Lamury

FORCE 2026

The panel will cover regional perspectives on accessibility of key scholarly infrastructure for research communication in Asia, and reflect on trends in open science across the region.

Rocio Gaudioso Pedraza, Crossref, will moderate, and discuss the research nexus vision for an open, reusable network of connections underpinning research communications. Nearly half of Crossref members are based in Asia. This community’s interest to embrace and participate in global open infrastructure is growing. Ginny will talk about working with local partners to make participation accessible. Guo Xiaofeng, Director of Sin-Chn SCIENTIFIC PRESS, drawing on experience in China and Singapore, will discuss challenges …

Supporting Fair Practices In Scholarly Publishing With The Editorial Reference Handbook, Susanna-Assunta Sansone, Allyson Lister, Rebecca Taylor-Grant, Matthew Cannon

FORCE 2026

Co-produced by academics and publishers (incl. CUP, Cell Press, EMBO Press, Taylor & Francis, GigaScience Press, OUP, PLOS, Springer Nature), the Editorial Reference Handbook (https://publishers.fairassist.org) assists scholarly publishers in supporting the sharing of digital research objects and in operationalising FAIR research practices by addressing gaps in editorial workflows, policy implementation and stakeholder alignment. The Handbook comprises three interrelated components—a checklist, detailed guidance documentation, and a flowchart—intended primarily for in-house editorial staff while also providing value to reviewers, authors, and service providers.

Beside this practical collaboratively developed product, the Handbook is also a socio-technical pilot to improve the culture …

Ten Years Of Tuwhera: A Commitment To Sustaining Open Access Publishing, Donna Coventry

FORCE 2026

Tucked away, far from the conference circuit, is a part of the world which doesn’t tend to make the headlines when it comes to open access initiatives. New Zealand and by extension, the South Pacific, is a region struggling with a history of colonisation and trying to make systematic change around decolonisation - open access to research about ‘our place in the world’ is vitally important. 

Ten years ago Auckland University of Technology’s library (Te Mātāpuna) made the decision to start hosting Diamond open access journals. Starting with two established journals, the service was named Tuwhera which can be translated …

From Notebooks To Knowledge: Curvenote And The Open Ecosystem For Continuous, Computational Science, Mike Morrison, Rowan Cockett

FORCE 2026

Scientific communication is evolving — yet most of today’s research is still trapped in static PDFs that fail to capture the computation, data, and interactivity that define modern science. Curvenote is an open-source Scientific Content Management System and publishing framework that bridges this gap by connecting authoring, computation, and open infrastructure across the research lifecycle.

Built with MyST Markdown (a Jupyter project) and integrated with Jupyter Book, Curvenote enables researchers to author, review, and publish modular scientific content directly from computational notebooks — preserving executable code, metadata, and rich visualizations. The result is a seamless, web-native workflow that transforms a …

Managing Ai Bot Access To Open Scholarly Infrastructures, Petr Knoth

FORCE 2026

The rapid rise of generative AI has created unprecedented demand for large, high-quality research corpora. Open access repositories and other open scholarly infrastructures have therefore become primary sources for AI bots, because they host research that is not universally reliable, but remains far more evidence-based than most web content. This is both an opportunity and a strain: repositories are now more valuable than ever, but machine traffic brings sustainability, capacity and policy challenges. Repositories may be able to scale, but who should fund that scaling, and under what conditions?

The core dilemma is how to curb abusive high-load bot activity …

Integration Of Research Software In Open Scholarship, Michelle Barker, Daniel S. Katz

FORCE 2026

The Research Software Alliance’s Publishing Research Software Forum is a collaboration of publishers committed to recognizing research software as fundamental and vital to research, supporting it, and connecting it and its developers to research publications. The forum provides a formal mechanism for members to share practices and consider how to individually and collectively address common challenges to achieve the significant cultural change needed across the research sector globally.

This presentation will share the forum’s work to increase policy alignment and implementation; incentives and enforcements to support researcher citation of research software; and alignment with broader efforts to improve citation of …

Beyond The Launch: Seven Years Of Sustaining An Open Educational Resource After The Grant Ends, Susan Gardner Archambault

FORCE 2026

This presentation shares seven years of lessons from maintaining Project CORA (Community of Online Research Assignments), an award-winning, open-access platform where librarians and educators share adaptable information literacy assignments. Launched in 2016 with grant support and strong community engagement, CORA saw early success: international page views across 150+ countries, 200+ shared assignments and teaching resources, and community-building features like "adapt this assignment" and leaderboards.

But when funding ended in 2018, Project CORA entered what many open projects experience but few discuss publicly: the precarious post-grant phase, when initial funding and enthusiasm fade but infrastructure still needs support. Annual contributions dropped …

[Birds-Of-A-Feather] Understanding And Handling Software Plagiarism In The Age Of Generative Ai, Daniel S. Katz, Scott C. Edmunds

FORCE 2026

Computing and software have supported research since their inception, and continue to play a significant role in knowledge production. However, the means of communicating research methods and results were developed long before computing existed, and the research community lacks best practices for documenting computational research elements transparently, reproducibly, and reusably.
Publishers are now more accepting of the inclusion of software (typically, source code) associated with submitted manuscripts, and many want to support processes to vouch for the integrity of software just as they do for other content, such as ensuring that ethical and legal concerns such as authorship, plagiarism, copyrights …

Assessment Beyond Transactions: Measuring Library Impact In Knowledge Synthesis And Research Support, Shameem Nilofar Maideen

FORCE 2026

As newer forms of research assessment emerge that move away from narrow bibliometric indicators toward holistic evaluation of scholarly contributions, academic libraries face both an opportunity and a challenge to articulate their value beyond transactional metrics. Traditional library assessments such as circulation statistics, database logins, and reference transactions fail to capture libraries' increasingly sophisticated roles in knowledge synthesis, research integrity support, and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration.

This session explores emerging and possible assessment methodologies that align library evaluation with broader research assessment reform movements. Through examples from Singapore Management University Libraries' transformation toward knowledge partnership models and an analysis of innovative …

Diamond Open Access Journals In India: Status, Sustainability And Challenges, Mallikarjun Dora, Kanagasabai K, Raj Kishor Kampa

FORCE 2026

Open-access publishing has transformed scholarly communication in recent decades. The share of OA articles between 2014 and 2024 increased by 26%, from a modest 14% in 2014 to 40% in 2024. OA journals have evolved over time and exist in various models based on funding mechanisms, including the Gold, Green, Hybrid, and Diamond models. While OA publishing emerged in response to scientific inequality, middle- and low-income countries face the barrier of high Article Processing Charges (APC), which hinder them from publishing in those journals (Alperin, 2022). The Article Processing Charges are part of the Gold and Hybrid OA models, where …

Bridging Metrics And Meaning: Integrating Traditional And Alternative Indicators For Responsible Research Assessment, Junjie Shen, Sarah Ormes

FORCE 2026

How do we recognise great research in all its diverse forms? Around the world, institutions are trying to move beyond simple citation counts toward something fairer and more meaningful. At the University of Bath in the UK, we’ve been experimenting with ways to combine traditional bibliometrics with richer indicators of engagement, such as policy influence, media attention, and real-world impact, to build a more balanced picture of research quality.

In this lightning talk, we’ll share what we’ve learned so far: how we co-created guidance with researchers, librarians, and research managers; how we built discipline-sensitive approaches; and how we trained our …

Can Ai Help In Systematic Reviews? A Comparative Study Of Manual, Ai-Assisted, And Ai-Dominant Workflows For Librarians And Researchers, Aster Zhao

FORCE 2026

Systematic reviews are essential to evidence-based research but are often time-consuming and labor-intensive, for researchers to conduct, and for librarians to participate in, or teach. The rapid advances in Generative AI and AI-powered research tools, have created a growing interest in whether these technologies can assist—or even automate—parts of the systematic review process. However, questions remain about their effectiveness, reproducibility, and potential bias. This study explores the role of GenAI tools in the early stages of a systematic review: from literature discovery and screening, up to the identification of included studies.

We propose a comparative case study of one systematic …

Oxa: An Open Exchange Architecture For Modular And Computational Scientific Content, Nokome Bentley, Rowan Cockett, Tracy Teal

FORCE 2026

Scientific communication remains bound by legacy formats designed for print, even as research itself has become computational, collaborative, and continuous. The Open Exchange Architecture (OXA, https://oxa.dev), is a community-driven schema and specification for representing scientific documents as structured, interoperable JSON. Developed in collaboration/participation with projects such as Jupyter, MyST, Stencila, Curvenote, Posit (Quarto), openRxiv, PLOS, eLife, Octopus, Creative Common, and the Continuous Science Foundation, OXA defines typed, linkable nodes (text, math, code, figures, metadata) that together form a shared “bedrock” for interoperable, modular, machine-readable, and executable research.

OXA allows for the exchange of scientific content across authoring environments (MyST …

Genai In Qualitative Data Analysis: Framework-Guided Prompt Engineering In Library Research Practice, Debby R. Wegener

FORCE 2026

As Generative AI (GenAI) tools become increasingly integrated across the research lifecycle, researchers need practical, reproducible methods for the responsible use of these technologies. This presentation will demonstrate a systematic approach to using GenAI for qualitative data analysis through a case study of thematic coding in a library website usability study at the Singapore Institute of Technology.

Drawing on prompt engineering frameworks like CLEAR, this session will illustrate how structured prompts can maintain academic rigour and enhance the reliability of GenAI-assisted analysis. The presentation will walk through the complete workflow, that is, from initial data preparation and tool selection to …

Using Ai-Assisted Programming To Develop Research Services Tools For Research Impact, Open Access Publishing & More, Gary Lee

FORCE 2026

Academic libraries play a vital role in scholarly communication, As research practices become more data‑driven and interdisciplinary, librarians can help scholars by creating and sharing flexible, customizable tools that align with local workflows and user needs.

AI Assisted programming (sometimes called “vibe coding”) offers a new way for librarians without extensive programming knowledge to develop such tools . This allows previously non-expert librarians to go from conceptual goals to working applications by rapid prototyping, experimentation, and roll-out, resulting in service innovation and improvement.

This presentation illustrates how librarians at HKUST have explored vibe coding with tools like GROK, POE, and …

Mapping The Landscape Of The Open Access Journals Using Open Journal Systems From Indonesian University Publishers, Maria Lamury

FORCE 2026

This study maps the landscape of open access (OA) journals published by Indonesian university publishers using the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform, highlighting collaborative efforts in advancing scholarly communication across institutional and disciplinary boundaries. Using the latest data from the OJS Beacon dataset and journal websites, this analysis examines the distribution, characteristics, and visibility of open access journals managed by 1,529 university publishers, representing a sample of 15,293 university publishers in Indonesia. Many research stated that Indonesia hosts the world’s largest number of OJS-based journals, with more than half adopting the Gold OA model. This balance reflects both the growing …

Recognizing And Rewarding Peer Review: Rethinking Research Assessment For Openness, Fairness, And Global Equity, Tung Tung Chan, Bernd Pulverer, Johan Rooryck

FORCE 2026

The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) Working Group on Recognizing and Rewarding Peer Review has developed a comprehensive framework for reforming how scholarly review is valued within research careers. Our recommendations address a fundamental question: how can peer review, a critical yet often invisible scholarly contribution, be made visible, credited, and meaningfully integrated into research assessment?

Developed through a collaborative effort across 16 European organisations, the Working Group’s outputs offer targeted recommendations for four key stakeholder groups: research performing organizations, research funding bodies, publishers and editors, and individual researchers. These recommendations are structured across five key dimensions:
(1) Openness: …

Open Research Information - How To Support Publishers To Make Metadata Openly Availble, Bianca Kramer

FORCE 2026

Research information, or scholarly metadata, is important for decision making around strategic priorities, distribution of resources, and evaluation of researchers and institutions. It is also used to assess the effect of policies, and to find and assess research results. Open research information (free to access and free to (re)use) is increasingly valued for fair assessment and equitable decision making, and is also important in digital sovereignty.


The Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information calls on organizations performing, funding and evaluating research to make openness of research information the default, work with services and systems that support and enable open research …

Mapping Themes, Aligning Strategies: Institutional Research Analytics With Bertopic And Genai, Danping Dong, Pin Pin Yeo

FORCE 2026

Libraries and research offices are increasingly tasked with making sense of unstructured institutional data, such as research publications and strategic documents. These insights help inform decision-making and leadership planning. This session shares how SMU Libraries leveraged BERTopic, an open-source topic modeling tool, together with generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude, to extract meaningful insights from faculty publications and support institutional sensemaking.

In one use case, we applied BERTopic to university-authored publications to surface thematic groupings related to research about Asia. Generative AI tools were then used to summarize each cluster into human-readable narratives, enabling research landscape mapping, identification …

Sharing The Load: Building An Open Research Information Collective, Cameron Neylon, Bianca Kramer

FORCE 2026

The rise of open research information resources is transforming the way we track, analyse and study research systems. Increasingly sources like OpenAIRE, OpenAlex, Crossref, DataCite, ORCID, ROR and others are being used as the basis for making decisions, designing interventions

and understanding progress. This operates both at the small scale, where access to data and evidence is easier than it has ever been, to the very large scale analysis of whole systems. Modern open data sources provide access, including access to full copies of the data, but there has been less focus on providing this access in a way that …

Researcher Impact Framework: Building Audience-Focused Evidence-Based Impact Narratives, Giovanna Lima

FORCE 2026

While a wealth of resources has been developed to help researchers plan for and communicate their projects anticipated impact when applying for funding proposals, not many resources have been developed for researchers when communicating their own impact as researchers at an individual level.
To support researchers in doing this Dr Giovanna Lima and Sarah Bowman have developed the Researcher Impact Framework (RIF). This framework helps to better share a broad spectrum of the researcher’s achievements in generation of knowledge, development of individuals, forming collaborations, supporting the research community and broader society.
The RIF provides a structure for crafting audience-focused evidence-based …

A Developing Critical Lens Based On Distinct Scholar Experiences In Scholarly Communication, Angel Y. Ford

FORCE 2026

Scholars around the world, even from core research locations, express frustration at the processes of sharing and disseminating research. Scholars discuss the confusing or conflicting reviews they receive, and the astronomical fees to publish in Open Access (OA) journals, but when these global factors are combined with regional factors for scholars in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the view of the scholarly communication landscape can quickly go from challenging, to treacherous and at times a career stunting topography with a variety of obstacles and barriers. The terrain scholars cross to obtain, produce, and disseminate research outputs looks different based on …

Opening Keynote: From 'Publish Or Perish' To Purpose And People: Going Together On Research Assessment Reform, Lily Kong

FORCE 2026

Universities hold a unique position as the brain trusts of society — creating knowledge, countering misinformation, and catalysing innovation that drives societal progress. Yet the cultures of "publish or perish" and competitive rankings have led academia to focus on certain metrics, and in so doing, chase misplaced goals. This has resulted in some misdirections: misconduct, data manipulation, mistreatment of early-career researchers, and a troubling misalignment between what scholars pursue and what society needs. How can we begin to rethink research impact beyond standard metrics to embrace both academic excellence and societal contribution? In the spirit of FORCE 2026's theme, Prof …

Pre-Conference Workshop 4: Global Perspectives On Open Research Information, Dominika Tkaczyk, Bianca Kramer

FORCE 2026

Research information (or metadata) relates to the conduct and communication of research. his includes bibliographic metadata, information about research software, research data, funding, research contributors, and more. It is located in systems such as bibliographic databases, software archives, data repositories, and current research information systems. Many research information infrastructures are closed, and yet they play an important role in research assessment and resource allocation in many countries. The Barcelona Declaration on Open research Information seeks to drive fundamental changes in this landscape. How do these concerns play out in other regions—are they shared globally? In this session, with a series …

Pre-Conference Workshop 3: Pids And Research Integrity: Paths To Increase Provenance For Research For Asia Pacific Universities And Researchers, Brian Minihan

FORCE 2026

Interest in persistent identifiers (PIDs) is growing for metadata simplicity of research, but details of provenance also accompany connections between people, works, and organisations through PIDs. Are there paths of cooperation for those entrusted with curating research in South, South East and East Asia?

The veracity, simplicity and ability to authenticate metadata stored by PIDs is why several nations are exploring national strategies.

This interactive workshop seeks to engage stakeholders with a focus on the Asia Pacific region to discuss methods to bring institutions to consider whether PIDs adoption increases research integrity, or practical methods institutions can undertake in their …

Integrity Under Review: A Global Study Of Retraction Trends, Ethical Practices And Policy Responses In Scholarly Publishing, Nihar Kanta Patra, Abhipsa Sahu

FORCE 2026

No abstract provided.

The Journey To 50,000 Deposits: Open Access And Institutional Repositories At Indiana University Indianapolis, Rachel Molina

FORCE 2026

No abstract provided.

Cycles Of Inequality In The Marketplace: Insights From Macro, Marketer, And Consumer Perspectives, Debora V. Thompson, Amna Kirmani, Rebecca Hamilton, Andy Li, Christilene Du Plessis, Daniel Fernandes, Guillaume Johnson, Brent Mcferren, Jian Ni, Vladmir Pavlov, Francine Petersen, Lisa Scheer, Yan Vieites, Keith Wilcox

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Seeking inequality via differentiation is a fundamental theme in the marketing literature: consumers derive utility from products that convey socially valued attributes, and marketers target consumers by giving them opportunities to differentiate on socially valued attributes. However, as a large body of evidence shows, inequality can reduce consumer well-being and limit economic growth. In this paper, we take a systemic view of marketplace inequality, examining the interdependence among consumers, marketers, and macro forces in shaping inequality in markets for goods and services. Our broad review of the marketing literature across ten marketing journals and a variety of subdomains within the …

Public Acceptance Of Meat-Reduction Policies Across Cultures: Comparing Singapore And Switzerland, Bianca Wassmann, Shu Tian Ng, Mark Chong, Angela K. Y. Leung, Michael Siegrist

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Purpose – As meat-reduction policies are discussed across the globe, many are met with public resistance. Cultural values may help explain this pushback, yet their role in shaping support for food policy remains poorly understood. This study is the first to apply cultural cognition theory to food policy by examining how cultural worldviews shape the acceptance of meat-reduction interventions in Singapore and Switzerland—two economically developed countries with contrasting cultural profiles. Design/methodology/approach – In an online survey, participants (Singapore: n = 357; Switzerland: n = 495) rated their acceptance of 11 meat-reduction interventions (e.g. taxes, subsidies, labelling). We then analysed to …