So, how can information professionals approach the changing environment caused by the rapid-fire advancements in AI technology to raise the profile of the information center and provide value? Consider the following five areas where you can play a role: 

1. Copyright questions about using AI in content

Information managers are often seen as copyright experts. Although you are likely not a copyright lawyer, you have a deep well of knowledge around copyright that can be employed to help your company reduce risk. I believe that is going to continue as we see more and more AI use cases.

Consider the risk when departments within the organization begin developing their own AI projects or are licensing tools that leverage AI and they do not know to ask the questions like “what rights do I have around the use of copyrighted content to train this algorithm,” “how do we accurately attribute OA content used to train an algorithm as well as in the output,”  or “how is my own intellectual property protected in this tool?” It’s important before these projects come to fruition that you’re known within your organization as a leader and resource for accurate copyright information, so you can have a seat at the table and help reduce the risk that your company could incur.

Getting Started: CCC’s Intersection of AI and Copyright page serves as a resource for information on the responsible development and use of AI technologies with copyright-protected content. 

2. Licensing content for AI

 Information managers are often already in charge of licensing subscriptions for scientific literature and databases for use across the organization. Information managers are, therefore, uniquely positioned to also determine how best to license externally created copyrighted materials from publishers for use in AI projects. When you are a central hub of content licensing, information managers can evaluate the needs across the organization and license efficiently, removing the licensing burden from siloed groups around the organization that are only thinking about their individual AI project. 

3. Company guidelines and strategic directives around technologies using AI

More and more, we are hearing from information managers that senior leadership within organizations are putting forth goals and setting expectations that technologies adopted by the organization leverage AI to improve efficiency and outcomes.  This is perfectly reasonable given the landscape we’re in, where ChatGPT is being experimented with by everyone and most technologies, for better or worse, are putting some kind of LLM or generative AI into their tools to improve workflows.  These directives may not consider the reality and limitations of where the technology actually is, however, nor the risks in using AI.

While AI holds great promise for R&D if used responsibly, AI systems also have the potential to generate bad science, make false or misleading conclusions, promote misinformation, and lead to harmful results. And by now we have all heard stories about hallucinations from Large Language Models (hallucinations being a fancy word for when the AI makes up facts). Many of these problems relate to the fundamental nature of generative AI as a text predicting tool, not as a system that has real knowledge. The quality, accuracy, or bias of the training data can affect the output (or more simply: garbage in, garbage out). Equally, the application of an LLM to a domain for which it is lacking training, can yield hallucinations. Techniques such as retrieval augmented generation, or RAG, are being explored to address these issues. This also means that a large amount of human validation of the results is required to use AI in the life sciences, which reduces the efficiency promised by AI. So, we’re seeing a healthy skepticism and caution alongside the optimism for an AI powered future. 

In addition, we expect more and more organizations will adopt company guidelines on the use of AI, including what data you can (and more importantly cannot) use in projects, what you can do with the output, and the types of tools you can use.  Many organizations are starting to develop cross-functional AI groups, where legal, IT, and other stakeholders evaluate proposed use cases before green-lighting their use internally. 

Luckily, information managers are experts in information, certainly from a licensing and management side, but also in terms of searching, synthesizing, and validating results, and I have spoken to several information managers who demanded a seat at the table. We are in a key position to help evaluate the output of these tools to make sure they are delivering on the promise of AI.  This is an opportunity to raise the profile of the information center by helping different functional areas assess what they need from a tool, to determine how to use data and content in a way that is copyright compliant and follows internal company guidelines. And, most importantly, help validate the output. 

4. Budget ambiguity

We expect some budgeting issues around the use of content in AI.  We’re seeing direct licenses being negotiated by individuals working on single projects or groups with a targeted need without consulting the information center.  That means that multiple groups may be negotiating with the same publishers without knowing it and without other groups being able to take advantage.  Partly this comes down to who holds the budget. As mentioned previously, if the information center holds the budget, then they can scan across the organization to see all of the need for a particular publisher and negotiate accordingly.  But the budgets for information centers would need to increase to accommodate this.

I think this is where a tight partnership with data science and some executive sponsorship really comes into play.  Simplistically speaking, this works best when the information center hast the authority to manage the licensed content and licensing budget for AI.  Alternatively, AI project negotiations can be successful when there are tight partnerships with data science and other functional areas specifically ones in which they bring the information center into negotiation processes and also support any necessary monetary investments with bill back processes.

Mary Ellen Bates, a highly respected thought leader and consultant in the information management industry, recently conducted a research project for CCC analyzing how information professionals can partner with data professionals to provide intelligence to their clients in an increasingly complex and interconnected information environment.  Partnering with data science, both teams leveraging their unique strengths, we believe is a strategic and valuable path forward. 

Check out our three-part series with Mary Ellen here:  

• Bringing Data Science to the Information Center   
• 5 Tips to Establish Collaborative Relationships Between Info Pros and Data Scientists   
• 3 Ways to Become an Information Tour Guide for Data Scientists    

5. Stay current

There are a lot of responsibilities for information managers in this fast-changing AI landscape – be the AI-copyright expert, license content in new and rapidly changing ways, join cross-functional teams, and advocate for appropriate budget by partnering with stakeholders. You need to stay on top of the rapidly changing advancements in AI-technologies so you can effectively evaluate vendors, the type of AI used, the use cases, and the potential risks. You essentially have to learn a whole new way of thinking and working, which has enormous possibilities.  At a recent Pistoia Alliance conference in Boston, we heard the refrain several times from life science leaders that “your job isn’t going to be replaced by AI, but you will be replaced by someone willing to use AI.” While fear may be a partial motivator, I’ve talked to many informational professionals who are taking on these tasks because they know it will help them stay relevant and help their company to gain efficiency. 

But you still have a day job! One of the most important things to recognize and advocate for is that you need the support and bandwidth to focus on how the information center can support the organization in its strategic AI goals. This is likely a tall order, especially for solo librarians and information centers already working at capacity.  It will require selling the potential benefits internally to key stakeholders and leadership for the new and forward-thinking evolution of library services.  

The post 5 AI-Related Topics Every Information Professional Should Think About in 2024  appeared first on Copyright Clearance Center.

That’s how an information professional at a large pharmaceutical company described what drives the collaboration between info pros and data scientists at his organization. As he noted, “the one thing our researchers and data scientists don’t have is time, and having information specialists who understand the data sources is one thing they need. The scientists appreciate our focus on data quality and our ability to enhance the data with a specialized taxonomy.”

In fact, he sees himself as an information tour guide—helping connect his organization’s data scientists to the right data sources for each project and arranging for text and data mining licenses to enable the scientists to glean intelligence from the data.

Wondering how you can act as an ‘information tour guide?’ Consider the following: 

Reach out to your entry-level colleagues

This is particularly important with data scientists who are recent graduates; while they are familiar with high-powered tools for data analysis, they often need support in working with project stakeholders and applying the tools to specific business problems. As the information professional noted, some new hires come from a linguistics background; applying their knowledge to the pharmaceutical industry requires significant adjustment. 

While information professionals need not have expertise as programmers, he sees the importance of understanding the basic concepts and language of data science. “There is such potential for collaboration, particularly as we are looking at large language models and prompt engineering,” he observed. “It’s easy to get intimidated by the complexity of the data, until we remember that we bring our expertise in information management. While the data scientists get focused on building a new algorithm to solve a particular problem, we info pros can point them to a system we already have in place or to an approach others have taken to address the issue.”   

Share what you’re doing behind the scenes

One of the important roles information professionals can play in supporting data scientists is in evaluating output and identifying ways to bring more structure to unstructured data. As this info pro described it, “we work with the data scientists on entity extraction, making sure that it is normalized according to our ontologies. The scientists assume that this works automatically; they often don’t see that we are evaluating the quality of the search results, determining whether this three-letter acronym references a process or is just the initials in an author’s name, for example. We think about the real-world problems that can pop up when we normalize the data. Sometimes that involves reviewing the output and manually curating the data based on our knowledge of users’ searching behavior.” 

Be adaptable and stay on top of emerging needs

The job of information professionals is to give the scientists more context around the information, he said. “We look for ways to link data more effectively, to help the scientists address the most important business challenges. And we work hard on finding ways to calculate what is relevant and useful to each scientist. This is a moving target—what their interests are today may not be what they are focused in six months from now. We have to stay on top of their priorities so that we are feeding them the information they care about today.” By focusing on the emerging information needs of the data scientists, information professionals can contribute to addressing the most critical issues their enterprise is facing.  

This is the final installment of Mary Ellen Bates’ series around Info Pros in a Data-Driven Enterprise. To see the previous blog posts in this series, check out:  

• 5 Tips to Establish Collaborative Relationships Between Info Pros & Data Scientists  

• Bringing Data Science to the Information Center  

The post 3 Ways to Become an Information Tour Guide for Data Scientists  appeared first on Copyright Clearance Center.

While plain-language summaries of articles and abstracts are increasingly available, the story is more complicated than plain. In June, ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, based in Geneva, issued principles and guidelines for plain language.

Creating effective plain-language summaries requires looking beyond the language, says Dr. Catherine Richards Golini, a healthcare publications editor at Karger Publishers. She advises editors and scientists to acquire an understanding of health literacy in the general population and an appreciation of patient preferences.

Click below to listen to the latest episode of the Velocity of Content podcast.

“Health literacy is about our ability to understand healthcare information, to evaluate it. Is it reliable? Is it trustworthy?” Dr. Golini tells me.

“Health literacy is about being able to communicate effectively with healthcare providers – asking the right questions, understanding the responses we get back, expressing concern or worry, this kind of thing, and to express our preferences,” she continues.

“I think health literacy is also about being able to act on the information that we’re given or that we read or that we hear to make informed decisions about our healthcare and the healthcare of the people that we’re responsible for – our loved ones, our children, etc.”

The post Plain Language Summaries “Go Beyond Language” appeared first on Copyright Clearance Center.

Now, as the researchers within her organization begin a research project on an issue they influence, and start focusing on their data needs, she is brought in as the information expert. She asks the questions that scientists often don’t consider: 

• Do we have the license that allows you to do what you need?  
• How may people will need access to it? 
• How long do we need access? 

Relationship building over time – becoming part of researchers’ workflows

Her ability to serve effectively as a gatekeeper is due to her success at relationship building over time. As she described it to me, “I had worked with one director on several projects and we had built a strong relationship, so now she makes sure that all her scientists contact me for help at the beginning of every project. I have become part of their workflow, and they know to ask me for literature searches or external data sources. And, looking more broadly, I like to insert myself in the project planning and budgeting process. Before the start of each fiscal year, I send out a reminder to the project budget managers, reminding them of the resources we have available and asking how that fits with their next year’s portfolio.” She emphasized the need to “institutionalize our successes so that people understand the importance of bringing the library into their projects at the outset. The data scientists get better outcomes and less stress—they’re happier people—because the library handles the data acquisition and management and we see the continuum of data needs within the institution.”

Creating a big impact with contract and licensing negotiations

The info pro observed that some of the biggest impacts she has had while serving as the information procurement clearinghouse have been around contract and licensing negotiations. “We have had times when a team might think that they have identified the data that they want, and then we start the negotiation and discover that it’s too expensive, or the publisher can’t offer the right kind of licensing, or they couldn’t do what they thought they could do with the data. At that point, the team may decide to modify the project; I see that as a success, in that we’re not spending money on something we would not be able to use. And, honestly, I am using a basic reference interview technique from librarianship—asking them what the question is that they are trying to answer.”

She also noted that, a year ago, a reorganization moved the data analyst—who was responsible for the internal and external data analytics of the non-profit—to the library. “Since the library serves as a procurement clearinghouse for external information, we have the perspective to start looking at how the data analyst can support our knowledge management and internal data infrastructure,” she said.

Where information science and data science intersect

I asked her whether she thought info pros had any blind spots with respect to working with data scientists and she answered that “sometimes we info pros aren’t viewed as having the relevant data analysis skill sets, so we twist ourselves in knots to position ourselves as a key resource. I do think it is important that we work with the data scientists enough to understand their motivations and their workflow. I have learned to not assume that I understand their perspective.”

Take data cleanup, for example. “I often have to put work in at the start of a project to make the data consistent and avoid ambiguities; I know that, if I don’t do that at the beginning, the project team will have more work to do on their end because the data input is bad. When I explain my process to them with references to resources that they understand like Jupyter Notebook rather than using librarian jargon, they are much more likely to see the value of working with me at the start of the project.”

In her experience, info pros recognize data scientists as being fellow “info nerds” and that can lead to mistaken assumptions. “Take data from the US Census Bureau, for example,” she said. “Librarians understand census data as an entity—we know how it is created, how it’s maintained, what kind of structure it has, what its limitations are, where the ambiguities are. Data scientists, on the other hand, are more focused on how they can transform the data in whatever tool they are using rather than about whether the data needs to be made consistent or whether the structure allows for a particular type of analysis. We have to remember that we look at information from a different, broader perspective and can see issues that the data scientists might not anticipate.”

As an info pro who operates primarily as a solo librarian, she finds this kind of collaboration exciting; finding where information science and data science intersect and what her most strategic role can be in furthering the goals of her organization. 

This is the second in a three-part series from Mary Ellen Bates around Info Pros in a Data Driven Enterprise. View the first blog post in this series here: 

• 5 Tips to Establish Collaborative Relationships Between Info Pros & Data Scientists  

The post Bringing Data Science to the Information Center appeared first on Copyright Clearance Center.

According to the latest reports from overall R&D expenditures have resumed their pre-pandemic growth trajectory, increasing by 4.7% in 2021. The top 15 pharmaceutical companies invested $138 billion in R&D in 2022 – an increase of 43% since 2017 as reported by IQVIA. Additionally, the Biden Administration’s 2024 proposed budget includes an increase of approximately $6.5 billion from the 2023 enacted level, for CHIPS and Science Act authorized activities. Meanwhile, in China, R&D spending hit a record $456 billion in 2022, a 10.4% increase from 2021.

Even non-traditional research-heavy companies, such as Tesla and Nintendo, have also announced significant increases in R&D spending. For example, Tesla’s R&D expenses increased by 19% between 2021 and 2022. With the increasing amount of scientific information being published, whether you are an individual researcher or an organization purchasing scientific articles, it’s important to consider some factors when choosing a document delivery provider.

As a provider of document delivery services, CCC delivers more than 1.9 million documents annually and recommends that people consider the following when purchasing scientific, technical, and medical (STM) articles:

Does the provider give me access to details about my rights if I choose to collaborate with others using this article?

Be sure that your document delivery provider gives you full details about the rights you have access to so that you can ensure compliance with copyright laws and regulations. Taking the guesswork out of copyright will allow you to focus on your most important task: the research at hand.

CCC has licensing options that support your workflow. If your use case requires additional rights such as digital reuse, storing, or photocopying within your organization, responsive rights, or including an article copy with a regulatory submission, we can help.

Related Reading: Copyright and Licensing Around the World

Is the provider the most comprehensive document delivery resource available?

When choosing your document delivery provider, you’ll want to ensure that you are utilizing the most comprehensive resource available.

Supplemental data, such as graphics, videos, and raw data, can provide valuable insights beyond an article, but not all providers offer access to this information. Our advice? Look for a provider that features a request tool for those added-value supplementary materials.

How long will it take to receive the article I want?

Time is money when it comes to research, so choose a document delivery provider with strong publisher relationships that can quickly find and deliver the content and articles you need and acquire the rights for your intended use.

Is there an easy way to get additional help if needed?

When you need support, you should be able to access it quickly and in a way that supports the way you work, regardless of what time zone you are operating in. Choose a provider with 24/7 customer support teams available by email, phone, and chat.

“Good customer service should not only be pleasant to interact with, it should also be simple and effortless,” said Tom Ogier, Sr. Director of Client Engagement and leader of CCC’s award-winning customer service department. “An effective support representative should intuitively understand customers’ challenges and offer useful suggestions that solve problems and enhance value.”

Ready to purchase an article or scientific content?

Looking for document delivery? Quickly get full-text journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, standards, and more from CCC’s database, which provides access to the most comprehensive collection of scientific, technical, and medical content on any mobile or desktop device.

Document Delivery with CCC provides a range of options to support the way you work. From individual STM article purchases to enterprise-wide content and literature management solutions, CCC solutions allow you to focus on your research.

As a document delivery provider, CCC is a market leader. Access more than 155 million citations and 10 million + open access articles – where and when you need them, on any device. 87% of articles are available immediately and 97% in less than a day. Our award-winning customer service team can help you to secure hard-to-find content that powers innovation.

Editor’s Note: Updated June 2023

The post Purchasing a Scientific Article? 4 Things to Keep in Mind appeared first on Copyright Clearance Center.

CCC’s Corporate Solutions Director Kevin Barrett welcomes Jamie Hullinger, solo corporate librarian of global medical technology leader Zimmer Biomet, for an informative 30-minute Q & A.

View the recording here.

Accelerating the flow of research to drive discovery and innovation is a common goal for information professionals in R&D-intensive organizations of all sizes.  So, whether operating as an information team of one or many, it is essential to have a well-designed information management strategy – one that delivers fast, secure, and compliant access to content, maximizes the value of your content resources, promotes collaboration in a wide range of workflows, and simplifies copyright compliance.

Today’s information managers, however, are also challenged with delivering greater organizational value and meeting the evolving needs of content users across the company.

From her role as corporate librarian, as well as current president of SLA’s Solo Librarian Community, she provides valuable insights on how she is:

• Over-coming the challenges of solo librarianship in an R&D-intensive company to deliver greater insights and organizational value
• Applying information manager best practices for navigating and preparing for change
• Implementing steps and tools to easily scale information management as the company grows

Jamie has been the corporate librarian for Zimmer Biomet, an orthopedic MedTech company in Indiana, since 2018.  She received her Masters in Library and Information Science from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2013. Before turning to Special Librarianship, Jamie got her start in public libraries at sixteen shelving books and working her way up to Youth Services Manager.

Kevin is CCC’s Corporate Solutions Director, responsible for content management software & services including semantic search & enrichment, collaboration, and reference management within the RightFind Suite. He also focuses on market research, participating in product roundtables & industry forums, and collecting direct feedback to keep CCC’s solutions aligned with clients’ changing needs.

The post CCC Hosts Q & A with Solo Corporate Librarian Jamie Hullinger appeared first on Copyright Clearance Center.

With so many competing priorities and limited resources, many small to medium businesses (SMBs) may not be thinking about how their information assets are organized, how individual employees are accessing published articles, or the potential risk associated with whether they have the appropriate rights to do so. Even in companies with a dedicated information manager, there comes a point when manually fulfilling requests for published content and confirming rights to reuse that content is no longer feasible, and opportunities are missed to optimize content spend and utilization without the right tools in place.

Whether just launching your information management strategy or looking to take yours to the next level, securing automated, centralized literature management software can provide many benefits to your company such as:

• maximizing the value of your content investments
• streamlining and promoting companywide access to content
• reinforcing copyright compliance
• accelerating the flow of research to drive innovation

If you and your company have decided it’s time to invest in a literature management solution, here are the top questions you should ask when beginning your search.

1.  Was the software designed for the corporate market?

While there are many great information management software tools on the market today, some were created for academic or individual users and therefore may not be able to meet the specific needs and unique workflows of corporate teams including medical affairs, regulatory affairs, R&D, and more. Be sure to research the company that built the software and for whom they built it, as well as what is shaping their product roadmap.

2.  Is the ability to check permissions fully integrated in your workflow?

While many literature management tools claim they offer an ‘integrated view of copyright permissions,’ different vendors take different approaches to this critical task. Some solutions place a link next to articles that requires the user to manually look up information on available licensed rights using a separate tool. The user may even be required to search again in that second tool in order to check reuse rights information for the relevant content. In comparison, other vendors offer the ability to see accurate licensed rights information at the article level throughout their tools. The difference can make or break a user’s willingness to check content use rights and support an organization’s copyright compliance efforts. Simplifying access to detailed information on copyright permissions for individual users at the point of use not only saves valuable time for busy team members but makes ‘doing the right thing’ as easy as possible.

3.  Does the solution offer flexible billing options that meet your needs?

While it’s common for companies to provide centralized access to content from one place, many companies still require the ability to track spend at various levels. For example, does your company need the flexibility to allow certain teams or departments to pay for their own orders, or pay via credit card? Often when an information management team is responsible for their entire company’s literature management system, they must allocate costs to different departments that are the ultimate budget holders. To simplify this process, look for a solution that provides flexible tracking fields, cost controls, and the ability to split invoices to facilitate chargebacks to different teams, departments or cost centers as needed.

4.  What level of content reporting does the solution provide?

Hand in hand with your ability to invoice charges to the right place is the ability to monitor usage and spend at a granular level. As more companies look to make data-driven decisions, technology can offer a clearer understanding of how users are interacting with content and what content is most valuable for your company. Some tools provide simple order history reports, while others offer granular, customizable reports on usage as well as powerful visualizations that bring together COUNTER statistics across publisher platforms. Some can even support budget forecasting with analytical and predictive tools. Look for a solution that provides you with the data you need to identify strategic content requirements, spot coverage gaps and demonstrate return on investment for your content spend.

5.  How well does the solution handle your direct publisher agreements?

Subscriptions can be complicated, but a comprehensive literature management solution should provide clear insight into every level of subscription management from simple site licensing to the persnickety details of rolling embargoes. An even stronger solution will integrate seamless access to content for users companywide or from site licenses, as well as access to content through pre-paid transactional agreements (tokens) you have put in place. Also, be sure to ask if the solution you are considering provides users with access to actual copies of the content they requested, or if users are simply sent to external websites, on which they will be expected to resolve access issues themselves.

Access our tip sheet for the complete 10 Questions to Ask When Searching for a Corporate Literature Management Solution and see how CCC’s award-winning RightFind Enterprise solution addresses these questions and more.

In the life sciences alone, over 900 companies use CCC products and services. Learn more about how we are meeting the needs of users in corporate environments from startup biotechs to the largest global pharmaceutical companies, across all stages of development with RightFind.

The post 10 Questions to Ask When Searching for a Corporate Literature Management Solution appeared first on Copyright Clearance Center.

Is the ability to have a flexible work environment here to stay? Employees would like to think so. In Deloitte’s marketplace survey on workplace flexibility, 94% of respondents stated they would benefit from work flexibility with the top gains being less stress and more work-life balance. 

Indeed.com recently posted a blog touting the benefits of remote work. Employees mention the ability to work from anywhere, a better work-life balance, and saving time and money commuting as some of the top reasons that they prefer remote work.  

The most recent Information Seeking and Consumption Study reflects this as well, with the latest data indicating that the work environment has undergone a seismic shift – and that this evolution is expected to continue. This study which has been developed by CCC in partnership with Outsell, Inc. since 2007, further shows that the transition to hybrid and remote work has created new dynamics for information sharing. The ways employees engage and collaborate with published content have evolved, with a corresponding shift in enterprise knowledge workers’ behaviors and attitudes around published content. 

New Dynamics for Information Sharing 

This shift in behaviors and attitudes is important to note with published content being at the heart of innovation. Across job roles and verticals, employees reported that weekly access to at least 7.5 publications was critical to their job.  

The ease with which teams can access and share information, such as news, feature articles, research reports, and more, can influence the pace at which organizations and their teams drive innovation and deliver products and services to the market. The latest Information Seeking and Consumption Study surveyed over 600 knowledge workers from global organizations across 14 verticals. Why is the fact that remote and hybrid workers are sharing more often and with more people [fig. 1] so important to note? In one word – risk. The more third-party published content is shared, the higher the risk of copyright infringement. 

The Rise of Collaboration Tools and Risks 

Outsell Inc’s analysis, using data from the 2023 study, stated “…digital replaced physical for all interactions. Gaps in communication emerged and the data shows that users overcompensated.” As people in companies small and large adopted collaboration tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, sharing became “nearly unfettered.” 

The adoption and use of collaboration tools, video conferencing software, and cloud-based file storage services remain strong as many businesses have moved to hybrid and in-person environments. The use of collaboration tools as the preferred method of sharing work-related information more than doubled since the 2020 survey, while email attachments dropped by about 15%. 

Downloading content through any tool makes a new copy of that content – and copying often requires permission. With the rise in the use of collaboration tools, more people may be downloading content from those tools, creating new potential instances of unlicensed sharing, and putting their organizations at risk. 

Education and Resources – Helping You to Address the Challenges of Information Sharing  for Your Remote Workforce 

Ordinary content exchanges that come so naturally in the digital world may increase the risk of copyright infringement, leading to costly lawsuits or settlements and affecting brand reputation. You can support compliance for your remote workforce with education and solutions. Here are five things you can do: 

1. First, if you don’t have a copyright policy, CREATE one, or UPDATE your current one to reflect the way your organization works and shares information today – in person, fully remote, or hybrid. CCC provides guidelines for creating a policy as well as a sample policy to use as a model. 
2. PUBLISH the policy in a central location, like your intranet, and make every employee aware of it and its details, including guidelines for using externally published materials. 
3. PROMOTE awareness of the policy by sending periodic reminders about how employees can access it and why they should. 
4. SECURE needed permissions, annual licenses, and copyright-compliant content workflow software for easy compliance. 

By taking steps to balance employee reuse of published content with a strong compliance and licensing program, your company can leverage published content sharing to help support collaboration and drive innovation.  

Read more: 

The Paradox of Executive Behaviors in Content Sharing and Copyright 

Reckoning with Remote Research 

Managing Scientific Literature Access Across a Remote Workforce 

The post The Great Global Work From Home Experiment and How it Changed the Way We Work Forever appeared first on Copyright Clearance Center.

A big challenge for major pharma companies these days is to systematically spot promising new ideas from universities and biotechs. The days when a pharma company could base its future on discovering a few new drugs are gone, so to grow a pipeline of new drugs, companies explore new therapy areas and technologies. And in these new areas, even the best companies need input from scientists around the globe. However, the sheer amount of new data coming out makes it impossible to go over everything manually. On a weekly basis a researcher in diabetes, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) or heart disease could easily face 500 new publications, patents, grants, or start-ups that all look relevant on the surface.  

So how do you systematically screen and uncover the most relevant candidates for further review by scientists? 

“Can you build it?”

This was the challenge my colleagues and I were facing when the Head of Early Research contacted the information department a few years ago. “Can you build it? What do you need to get there?”

“Of course we can,” my director said, assembling a team of great information scientists with competencies in surveillance, natural language processing (NLP), information sources, and our therapy areas. To make it all come together I was asked to project manage, a huge – but exciting – challenge for an information professional who has spent most of his career in the intersection between information and IT.    

Now, to create the systematic surveillance requested, we needed three things: 

1. Content from a broad range of sources 
2. An effective way to filter the content 
3. An efficient way to share the relevant content 

When it comes to sources, obviously literature, database pipelines, and patents come to mind, but as the early bird catches the worm, conference presentations, tech transfer offices, and news about startups can be interesting additions to extract new ideas and insights.  

It’s not “just” a search

We wanted to create streams of information targeting specific groups of researchers – maybe even individuals. However, we could not “just” search traditionally because what would be our starting place? When we look for something new – potentially groundbreaking – we do not know the name of the company, the drug, the mode of action, or the gene target.  We just know the overall therapy area and we would want to look at anything in the early phases that can be considered novel.   

To help narrow down the results, a mix of NLP, artificial intelligence (AI), and human review was applied. 

• Using a text mining tool, we could extract key concepts like companies and gene names from the texts. The entity extraction pulls out gene names, drug names, company names and helps normalize them according to ontologies. Suddenly, we had structured data that could be sorted, linked, and reviewed in Excel-like columns rather than thousands of bits of unstructured text.    
• AI helped to determine how similar a new piece of text was to something previously deemed interesting. This looked at the linguistic fingerprint of incoming articles and compared it to training sets. It is far from perfect – but still provides an indication as information. For example, later stage clinical activities would have a different fingerprint than the ones we were looking for on very early exploratory science.  
• Human review is still very valuable as added experience and common sense to override the AI when it´s wrong. An expert with extensive experience in the field will start to see patterns and can alert scientists to these.  

The end result was highly curated newsletters with the most relevant opportunities. These were shared broadly – not just among core scientists – but anyone who was able to give input on the quality and feasibility of the ideas coming in.  Now, a few years later, the service has expanded to eight business areas with good feedback, but the demand is even bigger. Now, the challenge becomes how to scale it – big time.  

Can you do double the work in half the time?

Once we had a working solution, we began turning our attention to scalability. The question became “Can we do double the work in half the time?” We thought we could, but – only if we did it differently.  

Human curation is expensive and limits the ability to scale into new areas as needed.  We already implemented a couple of machine learning algorithms in the process to help rank and extract key points from the unstructured text.  But how could we get AI one step closer to human performance?  

Imagine:  

• What if the algorithm was instantly aware that we have worked on this target before?  
• What if it could see the similar drugs competitors have in the pipeline at this very moment?  
• What if it could see if a piece of news makes a splash on social media?  
• What if it could see the credibility of the research group behind the publication?    
• What if we could see a timeline for the company or research group based on what has been picked up before? 

And what if this information is used to rank and present incoming data?: 

• Would we be able to rank content more efficiently?  
• Would researchers be able to review  more content faster?  
• Would we make better decisions on what to dig deeper into? 

Tantalizingly, all the data needed for this already exists. However, there are practical barriers in terms of access, licensing, and different user interfaces. It is very time consuming to check each source manually. As a result, the information adding value rarely comes into play and doesn’t help decision making. 

What we should aim for is presenting any new piece of information with the context we already have available.  To get there, we need to link and integrate the incoming data to data from existing internal and external systems. Think of this as a fun but challenging job for information professionals, scientists, and developers in collaboration.  

The end result will speed up evaluation and opens opportunities to present large amounts of data to scientists in dynamic ways according to their preferences.  You might even consider building a profile around each scientist to learn about these preferences.  

For the scientist, the value is having the latest opportunities match their preferences served on a regular basis. And when it is served with enough context to make a more informed decision, we impact the core process of early discovery.  In pharma, good decisions and time equal money both saved and gained since we then focus resources on the best possible opportunities rather than going into the lab with something that has already failed elsewhere.  

Do you need surveillance too?

If you find yourself in a similar situation – looking for scalable surveillance that helps you effectively identify the most relevant candidates to fill your pipeline – my first suggestion to you would not be to build everything from scratch. Instead, you can evaluate new systems appearing in the marketplace. When looking for a solution, ask yourself these key questions: 

• What kind of content is key for your users?  
• If you cannot find it all in one place: What kind of integrations with other data (internal or external systems) would you need?  
• How automated should it be vs. how much noise can you live with in the alerts?  
• What options do you have to deliver targeted information to key groups in your company?    

CCC’s RightFind Suite offers robust software solutions to fuel scientific research and simplify copyright anytime, anywhere, including personalized search across multiple sources of data for highly relevant discovery, and scientific articles to power AI discovery. CCC’s deep search solutions offer all the market intelligence you need, without the noise.

Related Reading: 

• 3 Tips to Incorporate Full-Text Articles into Your Data Pipeline 
• Using a Knowledge Graph to Identify Researchers & Key Opinion Leaders 
• Accessing and Analyzing Relevant Content in Today’s Information Chaos  

The post Can Info Pros Impact a Global Pharma Company’s Pipeline? Yes. Here’s How appeared first on Copyright Clearance Center.

Most reference management tools are unavailable on PowerPoint and do not cater to the needs of knowledge workers within corporations, but instead focus on features needed by individual, academic researchers. We saw this gap in the market and wanted to develop a solution for corporate medical and scientific writers to incorporate reference management into their familiar tools and workflows. After speaking with small, medium, and large enterprises, we are excited to offer distinct workflows that resonate across all organizational sizes when citing content within PowerPoint.

For example, Medical Information and Medical Communication teams have stressed how important it is to manage references within PowerPoint. These groups frequently communicate with various stakeholders including healthcare professionals (HCPs), regulatory authorities, and key opinion leaders (KOLs), which require responsive educational materials to be made that break down the mechanism, administration, and effectiveness of the drug/medical device available within the company’s portfolio. All of these artifacts require citations to be added consistently and accurately across slides that adhere to regulatory guidelines set forth by the FDA and EMA. Citing meaningful and accurate references alongside these claims helps establish credibility on how the solution is able to treat the problem at hand.

“Time is of the essence when communicating with healthcare professionals. Software that simplifies the authoring experience can be a major win for these responsive teams, and integrating reference management into PowerPoint helps teams to be more efficient and consistent when supplying HCPs with the critical information they need,” said Lauren Tulloch, VP & Managing Director of Corporate Markets at CCC.

RightFind Cite It’s functionality within PowerPoint enables medical and scientific writers to:

• Search for references across the RightFind catalog of 155+ million citations
• Cite references with ease from personal, shared, or company libraries
• Insert and re-order references on slides and have the bibliography update automatically
• Consolidate the bibliography in the footnotes of each slide
• Easily update the citation style on one slide or all slides at once
• Edit references or create new references directly within PowerPoint
• Order full text with appropriate re-use rights for cited references directly from a slide

Within CCC’s RightFind Suite, RightFind Cite It and RightFind Enterprise come together to make a powerful reference management tool for Microsoft Word or PowerPoint on Windows and Mac. Having this accessibility and consistency across products allow corporate medical and scientific writers to develop content in a collaborative and copyright compliant environment.

CCC’s award-winning RightFind research solution is used by hundreds of global R&D teams and other corporate content users from the smallest emerging life sciences companies to the largest global R&D organizations. Learn more about how CCC’s RightFind Suite can provide solutions to support your organization’s content and research needs.

Continue reading about the importance of integrated reference management with these suggested blogs:

Exploring the Added Benefits of an Integrated Corporate Reference Management Tool

5 Considerations When Choosing a Reference Management Tool for a Corporate Environment

The post CCC’s RightFind Cite It Reference Management Software Now Available for PowerPoint appeared first on Copyright Clearance Center.