Unlike other journals in the field of movement disorders, Tremor and Other Hyperkinetic Movements (TOHM), an open-access, peer-reviewed medical journal, centers on tremor and hyperkinetic movement disorders, giving home to clinical observations and research in this area. TOHM, a newcomer to the field of movement disorders, has launched with ten new articles at http://tremorjournal.org. The Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS), TOHM’s publisher, provides editorial support, software, design, and hosting for the journal.

In addition to its rolling submission policy and open access policy, which set it apart from other journals in the field, TOHM has a rapid turnaround time. Indeed, the current turnaround time from submission to first decision is only 26 days (3.7 weeks), echoing that of prestigious open-access journals such as PLoS One. TOHM uses an iterative publishing process and therefore does not have fixed deadlines. In addition, TOHM’s online format permits more liberal word limitations than other journals. TOHM’s open-access quality allows for greater visibility of its papers and, in turn, increased impact of its research.

Professor of Epidemiology and Neurology at Columbia University, Elan D. Louis, MD, MS is the founding editor of the journal. Dr. Louis’ research interests include degenerative diseases of the central nervous system, with an emphasis on tremor disorders. Dr. Louis has written over 300 peer-reviewed articles and has been invited to author editorials and reviews for journals such as Annals of Neurology, New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet. TOHM also features an illustrious editorial board with a wide range of leaders in the field of movement disorders.

TOHM has evolved from a mere conversation about a journal to become a reality for the editor. “When I first started talking to CDRS about their journal services, launching TOHM as a journal was just an idea. Over the last year and a half, we’ve worked together to launch the journal, receive submissions, and finally publish the journal’s first set of articles. Making TOHM an open-access journal will allow for greater visibility of these articles and, in turn, increase the impact of our research, which is enormously exciting,” said journal Editor-in-Chief Elan D. Louis.

CDRS is delighted to announce the launch of TOHM’s first ten articles. “It has been a pleasure to continue to partner with TOHM, which provides an international platform for experts and specialists in the field of hyperkinetic movements, and gives center stage to clinical observations and research in the area of non-Parkinsonian movement disorders. We are honored to have had the privilege of working with TOHM to bring their first set of articles online and look forward to our continued partnership,” said CDRS Director Rebecca Kennison.

NEW YORK, November 4, 2011 — Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts (JLA), the leading scholarly journal publishing topics related to law and the arts, has launched a new website at www.lawandarts.org. JLA partnered with the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS) at Columbia University for site development, design, and hosting services.

Run by students at Columbia Law School, JLA publishes commentary on the most relevant issues in intellectual property, entertainment, and media law by the best-respected legal scholars and practitioners in these fields. Contributors include leading international copyright scholars and practitioners such as Columbia Law faculty members Jane Ginsburg and Tim Wu, United States Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante, Harvard Law Professor John Palfrey, and others. According to the Washington and Lee School of Law Submissions and Rankings, JLA is the most highly and most rapidly cited specialized journal in the category of arts, entertainment, and sports law.

The revamped website begins with Volume 34, Issue 2, devoted to topics regarding copyright. Soon to be added to the site will be Issue 3, addressing subjects as diverse as federal boxing legislation and broadcast journalism, along with Issue 4, which is focused on the 2011 Kernochan Center Symposium on Collective Rights Management.

The site will also mark the launch of JLA’s law and arts blog, said editor-in-chief Jocelyn Hanamirian. “It is very exciting that now, in addition to the Journal’s print contribution to the field of arts law, we will be able to offer online content that tackles cutting edge developments in the law, as well as provides coverage of major symposia and arts law-related talks at the law school,” she said.

Outgoing editor-in-chief Lauren Gallo, who was instrumental in determining the look and feel of the site, believes the new website will benefit the journal. “I hope that our new and greatly improved website will help the Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts maintain its preeminence in the field of scholarly art law and also reach a broader audience of interested and like-minded scholars and future scholars. Given the particular relevance of electronic communication to the legal issues in art, entertainment, and intellectual property, it is especially important that our journal adapt to the changed circumstances of scholarly research. I am proud to be a part of this transition and look forward to many great things to come from the journal in the future,” she said.

CDRS is proud to offer its services to JLA. “At CDRS, we’re very pleased with the work we’ve done with JLA to highlight the journal’s preeminence in its field. We believe the improved website will allow JLA not only to maintain its status but permit it to forge ahead in its contribution to the important discussions taking place on law and the arts,” said CDRS Director Rebecca Kennison.

The Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS) partners with researchers and scholars to share new knowledge. Using innovative new media and digital technologies, CDRS empowers Columbia’s research community with the online tools and services necessary to make the most of scholarly communication, collaboration, data-sharing, and preservation. More information about our services and projects is available at http://cdrs.columbia.edu. CDRS is part of the Digital Programs and Technology Services division of Columbia University Libraries/Information Services.

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NEW YORK, November 1, 2011 — Founded in 1939, Union Seminary Quarterly Review (USQR), Union Theological Seminary’s journal committed to interfaith, interdenominational, and interdisciplinary dialogue, has launched its open-access website at http://usqr.utsnyc.edu. With the advent of the new site, USQR will release its latest issue, devoted to religion and science. The Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS) at Columbia University is providing design, software, and hosting for the journal.

USQR’s content is freely available for download from the website. With a similar color palette and font, its design complements Union Theological Seminary’s site. The journal will continue to be available in print.

In collaboration with Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Volume 63:1-2 focuses on theology and earth and environmental science. It was guest-edited by Erin Lothes-Biviano with contributors such as Willis Jenkins, Margaret Farley Assistant Professor of Social Ethics at Yale Divinity School; Daniel Maguire, Professor of Ethics at Marquette University; and Matthew C. Ally, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at City University of New York. The next issue will be published in the coming months.

A leader in interfaith, interdenominational, and interdisciplinary content among theological periodicals, USQR began as a venue for inspired and socially engaged religious thought. Prominent early contributors included well-known liberal theologians of the 20^th century such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, and Martin Buber.

USQR will continue its progressive legacy through its new site. “As interreligious, interdenominational, and interdisciplinary discussion becomes more important in the world, especially for theology, I hope having USQR openly accessible online will allow the journal to reach a broader, more diverse readership while serving as a conscientious, socially engaged voice in the conversation as it always has,” said editor-in-chief Jason Wyman.

CDRS is proud to welcome USQR to its fleet of journals. ”We are thrilled to partner with Union Theological Seminary to bring USQR to the Internet and thus make it and the critical discussions within its pages more widely available to the world, continuing online the deep tradition of socially transformative scholarship that has always been the hallmark of this important journal,” said CDRS Director Rebecca Kennison.

The Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS) partners with researchers and scholars to share new knowledge. Using innovative new media and digital technologies, CDRS empowers Columbia’s research community with the online tools and services necessary to make the most of scholarly communication, collaboration, data-sharing, and preservation. More information about our services and projects is available at http://cdrs.columbia.edu. CDRS is part of the Digital Programs and Technology Services division of Columbia University Libraries/Information Services.

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NEW YORK, October 21, 2011 – In the future, will researchers depend on the Semantic Web? On Wednesday, November 2, at 12:00 PM in Columbia University’s Faculty House Presidential Rooms 2 & 3, the event “Harnessing the Semantic Web for Scholarship” will answer that question by offering an introduction to the Semantic Web and exploring how it can be best used for scholarship. The event is free and open to the public.

The Semantic Web links data to other data via machine-readable information. Scholars from a wide variety of fields are applying semantic technologies to their research. At this event, panelists will cover examples of the scholarly use of linked data and its creation. The panel will also consider how linked data is changing the process and outcomes of research.

The speakers are innovators in using the Semantic Web to facilitate scholarship and research. Micki McGee is an assistant professor of Sociology at Fordham University and is project director of the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded Compatible Database Initiative, a project aiming to generate standards for shared, interoperable data sets for humanities‑based network analysis projects. Benno Blumenthal is Data Library Manager at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) at Columbia University. He is currently interested in using semantic technologies to facilitate the distribution of Earth science data for public use, and he is the author of the IRI/Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Climate Data Library, which offers freely accessible climate data via the Web. Cristina Pattuelli is an assistant professor at the Pratt School of Library and Information Science. Her research focuses on information organization and the knowledge representation methods and tools applied to information systems, with a current emphasis on using semantic technologies in cultural heritage resources.

Sponsored by Columbia University’s Scholarly Communication Program and the Digital Humanities Center, the Digital Social Science Center, and the Digital Science Center in the Columbia University Libraries, this event is free and open to the public. It is the second event of this semester in the speaker series, Research Without Borders: The Changing World of Scholarly Communication, organized by the Scholarly Communication Program. Follow the series remotely via Twitter at http://twitter.com/ScholarlyComm. For information about Research without Borders, please email Kathryn Pope at kp2002@columbia.edu, or visit http://scholcomm.columbia.edu/events.

The Scholarly Communication Program (SCP) explores innovative models for sharing new knowledge. The Program, based at the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS) within Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, hosts events and maintains a website to educate the Columbia community about changes taking place within the scholarly communication system. Services provided by the SCP and its sister programs support promising new modes of scholarly exchange.

The Columbia University Libraries Digital Centers offer extensive information and technology services to support teaching, learning, and research. The Digital Social Science Center, the Digital Science Center, and the Digital Humanities Center bring together people, equipment, and information resources in an environment where users can work collaboratively, individually, or in consultation with staff.

Columbia University Libraries/Information Services is one of the top five academic research library systems in North America. The collections include over 11 million volumes, over 150,000 journals and serials, as well as extensive electronic resources, manuscripts, rare books, microforms, maps, and graphic and audio-visual materials. The services and collections are organized into 22 libraries and various academic technology centers. The Libraries employs more than 500 professional and support staff. The website of the Libraries is the gateway to its services and resources: library.columbia.edu.

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CDRS’ new junior web developer Kate Park may have just graduated from Smith College with a computer science degree, but her experience with web development goes way back.

Her exploration started with Xanga, an online diary-like blog site, with which she wielded CSS. “I began to notice that you could customize websites to make them what you wanted, ” she said. In high school, she learned HTML and Javascript, and became skilled at PHP while she was in college.

Early on, Kate noticed the gender disparity in the computer science field. “In high school, I was the only girl in my classes, so I wanted to go to an all-girls college to meet more women who were interested in computer science,” she said of her decision to go to Smith.

After graduating, Kate returned to Korea, where she had attended international high school. In August, she came to New York City and started her job hunt, searching for positions mostly in web development, but also at fashion houses and magazines where she could work in an IT department. “I was looking for a PHP-related job because I really enjoyed learning that in my senior year of college.” she said.

The junior web development position offers Kate a chance to have more hands-on experience with PHP. Of the prospect of working at CDRS, Kate said, “I thought I wouldn’t be bored at work and would be having a lot of fun.”

It’s true, Kate will have many projects to work on, including the CDRS journals and conferences. We hope she has a lot of fun while doing them!

CDRS’ new project coordinator Julie Morris knows more than a thing or two about publishing–a fortuitous attribute for the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship.

Prior to CDRS, Julie worked at D&M Publishers and Bookriff, a start-up publishing company that allows readers to mix content, in Vancouver, Canada. She started her career at D&M as an intern, using her experience to write her thesis for her Master’s in Publishing degree at Simon Fraser University. Her role blossomed into a jack-of-all-trades-esque position in which she coordinated ebook development at D&M, and generated communications and managed projects for the Bookriff website. “The president of Bookriff is a very creative guy. He would communicate some great big idea to me and I would have to figure out how to translate it into actual functionality on the site,” she said.

Julie’s sharpened skills and her degree make her poised to fit in and succeed at CDRS. Simon Fraser is affiliated with the Public Knowledge Project; PKP offers Open Journals System, one of the platforms on which CDRS journals are built.  ”[OJS] was introduced into our curriculum early on, so we knew what the project was about and we developed an understanding of the value of open access and public knowledge,” she said. Scholarly publishing was also addressed as part of her studies. “We were all encouraged to keep it in mind as an important valuable sector of the publishing industry,” she said. Her continued interest in scholarly publishing and open access are, in part, what brought her to CDRS.

CDRS’s innovative quality also appealed to Julie. “It seems so forward-thinking. So I was excited to join that,” she said. Coming from the relatively competitive publishing industry, Julie perceives CDRS’ freedom to innovate as an interesting shift for her. “In the trade publishing industry, if your project is not going to make money, you can’t do it. Budgets aren’t totally out of the picture here, but there are resources to enable you to build something if you want to,” she said.

Ultimately, Julie sees herself pursuing publishing in its many forms. “I’m fascinated by the changes in the way we’re consuming everything from books to magazines to journals and so on. I think that transition is going to continue, and I want to be a part of it,” she said.

We hope CDRS opens up a new door to publishing for Julie.

The CDRS Video Team put together three compelling videos for the Columbia University Conservation Lab.

The first video, “A Student’s Experience in Conservation,” features an interview with Columbia College alumna Jeana Poindexter, who was a Conservation Lab student assistant. In the next video, “A Curator Talks About Conservation,” Consuelo Dutschke, curator of Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, talks about the conservation department’s efforts. The final video provides a comprehensive tour of the Conservation Lab.

Brett Bisogno, Vin Aliberto, and Kristian Portella all played integral roles in producing these videos. Brett did most of the editing on the “Curator” and “Tour” videos, while Vin performed the final editing touches to the videos. Music was taken from a royalty-free site. Some of the campus B-roll was previously taken; other instances, such as the footage from the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, were specifically shot for the project.

The videos are a great accomplishment by the exceedingly accomplished Video Team.

NEW YORK, September 13, 2011 — In light of requirements instituted by the National Science Foundation (NSF) earlier this year, managing data has become a hot-button issue for federally funded researchers. On Tuesday, September 27, at 12:00 PM in Columbia University’s Faculty House Presidential Rooms 2 & 3, the event “Data Management and Federal Funding: What Researchers Need to Know” will examine how researchers can best address growing demands for accessible and reusable research data. The event is free and open to the public. We invite those interested to pre-submit questions for the panel; send them to kp2002 [at] columbia.edu or send a direct message on Twitter to @scholarlycomm before 5:00 PM on Friday, September 16, 2011.

The NSF now requires all grant applicants to outline their plan for managing and sharing the data that will result from their sponsored research. Other federal government agencies that sponsor research are also likely to implement similar policies mandating increased openness and access to research data. The panel will explore the goals of these requirements as well as the technical, scientific, and professional challenges resulting from efforts to preserve and share data.

The speakers are recognized leaders in developing best practices for data curation, preservation, and sharing in support of knowledge discovery. Sayeed Choudhury is Associate Dean for Library Digital Programs, Hodson Director of the Digital Research and Curation Center at the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University, and Principal Investigator of the NSF-funded Data Conservancy. Victoria Stodden is Assistant Professor of Statistics at Columbia University and a member of the NSF’s Advisory Committee for Cyberinfrastructure. Kerstin Lehnert is a Senior Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Principal Investigator of the NSF-funded Integrated Earth Data Applications data facility.

Sponsored by Columbia University’s Scholarly Communication Program, the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research, and the Office of Research Compliance and Training, this event is free and open to the public. It is the first event of this semester in the speaker series, Research Without Borders: The Changing World of Scholarly Communication, organized by the Scholarly Communication Program. Follow the series remotely via Twitter at http://twitter.com/ScholarlyComm. For information about Research without Borders, please email Kathryn Pope at kp2002@columbia.edu, or visit http://scholcomm.columbia.edu/events.

The Scholarly Communication Program (SCP) explores innovative models for sharing new knowledge. The Program, based at the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS) within Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, hosts events and maintains a website to educate the Columbia community about changes taking place within the scholarly communication system. Services provided by the SCP and its sister programs support promising new modes of scholarly exchange.

Columbia University Libraries/Information Services is one of the top five academic research library systems in North America. The collections include over 11 million volumes, over 150,000 journals and serials, as well as extensive electronic resources, manuscripts, rare books, microforms, maps, and graphic and audio-visual materials. The services and collections are organized into 22 libraries and various academic technology centers. The Libraries employs more than 500 professional and support staff. The website of the Libraries is the gateway to its services and resources: library.columbia.edu.

The Office of Research Compliance and Training helps ensure that Columbia faculty and staff are in compliance with the complex web of regulatory requirements that govern research. ORCT collaborates with many of the other offices listed on this site to foster an integrated research compliance program. ORCT administers the University’s conflict of interest review process for research, serves as a resource for international research compliance issues, and administers Columbia’s Standing Committee on the Conduct of Research, which addresses issues of research misconduct. ORCT works to integrate compliance education programming across the University, and to develop new programming that promotes understanding of compliance issues throughout the research enterprise.

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“Open access” may seem like a relatively basic concept: information is free to whomever wishes to consume it. But it isn’t that simple.

In an intriguing blog post on Scholarly Kitchen, Kent Anderson explores the differences between access and accessibility by way of an essay written by Maria Popova of the Nieman Journalism Lab.

When we say open access, Popova contends, we are actually talking about “open accessibility,” which means that anyone is able to reach information without the obstruction of a paywall. “Access,” however, intends that someone knows that the information exists, has the propensity and curiosity to discover it, and therefore can access it. As Anderson says, “It isn’t access until it’s accessed.”

But there’s more to access than accessibility. Popova writes,

Historically, the two main types of obstacles to information discovery have been barriers of awareness, which encompass all the information we can’t access because we simply don’t know about its existence in the first place, and barriers of accessibility, which refer to the information we do know is out there but remains outside of our practical, infrastructural or legal reach. What the digital convergence has done is solve the latter, by bringing much previously inaccessible information into the public domain, made the former worse in the process, by increasing the net amount of information available to us and thus creating a wealth of information we can’t humanly be aware of due to our cognitive and temporal limitations, and added a third barrier — a barrier of motivation. (emphasis mine)

The barrier of motivation is inversely proportional to the information’s ease of access. She writes, “as the sheer volume of information that becomes available and accessible to us increases, we become increasingly paralyzed to actually access all but the most prominent of it — prominent by way of media coverage, prominent by way of peer recommendation, prominent by way of alignment with our existing interests.” She also discusses Google’s ranking of results and how this leads individuals to access certain information (the highest ranked results, which have been accessed by many people and consequently receive higher rankings).

At the root of her argument, Popova declares that, because of the overabundance of information available, the dearth of motivation, and the prominence of various interests, even the most accessible research (for example, the timeliest and most pertinent open access articles) can remain “tragically rare.”

Open access appears as a solution to efficiently bring information to people who need it – practitioners, researchers, students, the public – but, in reality, there are complex circumstances that surround it. In our conversations about open access, we might consider true access and its ramifications, instead of solely focusing on accessibility.

Ready for lift-off! Tremor and Other Hyperkinetic Movements (TOHM) has officially launched with two papers: a full-length research article and a case report. Both papers are fully available in HTML on the site.

The article, “Blepharospasm plus Cervical Dystonia with Predominant Anterocollis: A Distinctive Subphenotype of Segmental Craniocervical Dystonia?”, was written by Dr. Olga Waln and Dr. Mark S. LeDoux of the University of Tennessee. It investigates the spread of dystonia of the eyelids to other muscles in the craniocervical region while examining certain clinically unique blaspharospasm-plus subphenotypes.

The case report, “Thalamic Deep Brain Stimulation for Orthostatic Tremor”, was authored by Dr. Toby C. Yaltho and Dr. William G. Ondo of Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. The researchers found that bilateral thalamic brain stimulation improved the patient’s ability to stand and may be considered as treatment in refractory cases of orthostatic tremor.

TOHM will continue to publish enriching articles by leaders in the field of movement disorders in the coming months.