Topic: Research practices
Past Event
January 20, 2020
Oya Y. Rieger at the ASAPbio January 2020 Workshop
A Roadmap for Transparent and FAIR Preprints in Biology and Medicine
Oya Y. Rieger is one of the organizers of the upcoming ASAPbio January 2020 Workshop: A Roadmap for Transparent and FAIR Preprints in Biology and Medicine. The workshop will take place on January 20-21, in Hinxton, UK. Oya will also lead a session on citations, archiving, sustainability, and adoption on Tuesday January 21 at 11:45 am. To view the complete agenda, please see the workshop website. About the workshop reprints offer an opportunity to advance science through…
Blog Post
January 14, 2020
What Is Humanities Research Now?
Roundtable at the Modern Language Association 2020 Convention
Today, the discipline of modern languages and literatures faces both challenges and opportunities. Although humanities research and the liberal arts education model have come under public scrutiny, new methodologies and ways of disseminating information, including “public humanities” and “digital humanities,” hold out promise for reinvigoration of the discipline. On Friday, January 9, I had the pleasure of joining six participants from Ithaka S+R’s Supporting Research in Languages and Literature project, sponsored by the…
Blog Post
January 8, 2020
Quiet Spaces, Kids On Campus, and Academic Libraries
College students often crave quiet space for completing their coursework. Many have complex lives with various professional, personal, and academic demands — long commutes, multiple jobs, roommates, children, etc. The campus library is a place — and sometimes the only place — they can go for quiet, distraction-free space. It can be their respite from an otherwise noisy set of activities. Over the weekend,…
Past Event
January 10, 2020
Rebecca Springer at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention
On Friday, January 10, Rebecca Springer is taking part in a panel discussion on “What Is Humanities Research Now?” at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Seattle. She’ll be joined on the panel by Amanda L. Watson (New York U), John Tofanelli (Columbia U), Matthew Roberts (U of Illinois, Urbana), Ashley Champagne (Brown U), Darby Fanning (U of Utah), and Julie Frick Wade (MLA). The Modern Language Association’s Mary Onorato is moderating. For more information, please see the…
Blog Post
December 10, 2019
Perspectives on the 2018 US Faculty Survey in Against the Grain
Every three years when we release findings from our national faculty surveys, we receive a plethora of reactions and responses to the results. There was no exception when we released the 2018 results in conjunction with the ACRL conference in April 2019. While these high-level quantitative results offer strong evidence toward understanding faculty practices and perspectives, particularly for tracking change over time, many who work in academic libraries, learned societies, and…
Past Event
December 9, 2019
Data Sharing from the Ground Up
Danielle Cooper and Rebecca Springer at CNI
On Monday, December 9, 2019, at 2:30 pm, Danielle Cooper and Rebecca Springer will present on “Data Sharing from the Ground Up: Building Data Communities” at the CNI Fall Meeting in Washington DC. For more information and to register for the conference, please see the CNI website. Abstract There is a growing consensus that research can progress more quickly, more innovatively, and more rigorously when scholars share data with each other. Policies and supports for data sharing…
Blog Post
October 10, 2019
Update on Ithaka S+R Student Surveys: 2020 Edition
The process for updating Ithaka S+R’s local student surveys is underway. In August, we brought together a fantastic group of advisors and gathered their feedback on current student practices, perspectives, and needs. We then set out to incorporate their feedback into the instruments this past September by adding new thematic areas of focus, expanding on areas of particular importance, and phasing out questions that have become less relevant…
Blog Post
September 23, 2019
Concerned About Bots Taking Over Your Survey?
Reflections on Maintaining Data Integrity
Last week, a researcher from the University of Minnesota, Melissa Simone, shared an honest and frightening account of having bots infiltrate data gathered via an online research study. Within 12 hours of launching a survey, Simone found over 350 responses within the resulting dataset from bots. The process of identifying, screening for, and cleaning these data took hundreds of hours, she reported via Twitter. https://twitter.com/m_simonephd/status/1174010078632009728?s=20 Simone goes on to share a number of recommendations to prevent…
Blog Post
September 19, 2019
Emergent Data Community Spotlight III
An Interview with Kitty Emery and Rob Guralnick on ZooArchNet
Successful data sharing crosses disciplinary silos. As Danielle Cooper and I argued in a recent issue brief, “data communities” — formal or informal groups of scholars who share a certain type of data with each other — emerge both within and across disciplinary boundaries. In order to understand how these data communities emerge — and to understand how they can best be supported — I’ve been seeking out leaders who are at the…
Blog Post
September 16, 2019
Building Data Skills across the Globe
A Virtual Roundtable with Library Carpentry
As scholars across disciplines increasingly turn to data-intensive research methods, academic libraries are considering how to adapt to meet the growing demand for research data instructional and advisory services. In a recent blog post, I observed that among R1 institutions in the United States overall staffing levels for research-data-dedicated library roles remain low, with over half of R1s sporting zero or one data librarian in their university libraries. But hiring dedicated data librarians…
Blog Post
September 10, 2019
Emergent Data Community Spotlight II
An Interview with Felicity Tayler and Marjorie Mitchell on the SpokenWeb Project
For all today’s technological affordances, research data sharing remains a fundamentally social activity, dependent on building “data communities” from the ground up. Danielle Cooper and I argued as much in a recent issue brief, and since then, I’ve been seeking out pioneers who are at the forefront of efforts to grow emergent data communities in a variety of research areas. What does it take to get a successful data sharing movement off the…
Blog Post
August 15, 2019
US Faculty Survey 2018 Reveals Uncertainty about Fraudulent Research Practices
A report published earlier this year from The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine disclosed findings from their recent assessment of reproducibility and replicability across different fields of research. Congress requested this collaborative study because of prolific media exposure on data misconduct and the inability of scientists to replicate important research. Additionally, there has been extensive media coverage of researchers who fabricate…
Blog Post
July 29, 2019
Announcing Two New S+R Projects on Supporting Data Work
Evolving data practices are re-shaping the academic landscape. Here at Ithaka S+R we’ve been tracking how scholars’ data support needs are evolving more widely through our triennial U.S. faculty survey and through deep dives into specific disciplinary practices, such as our recent report on Civil and Environmental Engineering. We’ve also uncovered how scholars’ work in data communities challenges the traditional disciplinary and institutional siloing…
Blog Post
July 9, 2019
To Seek Knowledge Together
How Libraries in Hawaiʻi Can Better Support Indigenous Studies Scholars
In 2017, the University of Hawaiʻi (UH) was invited to participate in an international qualitative study organized by Ithaka S+R that sought to examine the research needs of Indigenous scholars. Our research team—Kawena Komeiji, Keahiahi Long, Shavonn Matsuda, Annemarie Paikai, and Kapena Shim—focused on how libraries can better support the research and teaching activities of Hawaiian Studies scholars whose scholarship contributes to the advancement and well-being of the Indigneous people of Hawaiʻi. There were several reasons…
Blog Post
June 12, 2019
(PR)EBLIP
Gearing up for EBLIP10
I’m looking forward to learning and sharing research next week at the Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP) Conference being held in Glasgow, Scotland. This is an international, biennial conference that aims to promote the use of best available evidence to improve library and information practices within all types of libraries, and this year’s theme is “using evidence in times of uncertainty.” The conference is held over two and a half days with…
Blog Post
June 4, 2019
Reflections on the Society for Scholarly Publishing 2019 Conference
I had the opportunity last week to attend the Society for Scholarly Publishing 2019 conference, which seeks to not only bring together academic publishers, but also others in higher education, such as scholars and librarians, to discuss the latest developments and trends in the scholarly communication landscape. This goal is reflective of SSP’s ongoing mission to bring together diverse voices, as reflected in the code of conduct, invited keynotes…
Blog Post
June 3, 2019
Three questions for Carrie Corneilus, Sara Morris, Rebecca Orozco, and Michael Peper
Participants Reflect on the Indigenous Studies Research Support Services Project
For our quarterly newsletter, we interviewed Carrie Corneilus, a librarian at Haskell Indian Nations University, and Sara Morris, Rebecca Orozco, and Michael Peper, librarians at the University of Kansas (KU), about their participation in the Research Support Services project on Indigenous Studies. The two universities collaborated in a unique partnership to interview Indigenous Studies scholars. 1. Why did you want to participate in this study? Carrie Corneilus: I am a tribal librarian of students and faculty…
Blog Post
May 22, 2019
It was just an experiment—we didn’t mean to change the way we do our work
In Fall 2017, Georgetown University fielded the Ithaka S+R local undergraduate student, graduate student, and faculty surveys. Emily Guhde, Director of Library Assessment, describes in today’s blog post how the library has analyzed – and continues to return to – the data from these surveys. – Christine Wolff-Eisenberg Using Google Data Studio to analyze our Ithaka S+R Survey results was a risk that paid off. Now we’re using it for project…
Blog Post
May 13, 2019
Looking at Data Communities
New Issue Brief on STEM Research Data Sharing
There is a growing perception that science can progress more quickly, more innovatively, and more rigorously when researchers share data with one another. Amid a growing array of organizations, initiatives, and policies working toward this vision, there is a pressing need to decide strategically on the best ways to move forward. Central to this decision is the issue of scale. Is data sharing best assessed and supported on an international or national scale? By discipline? On a university-by-university basis? Or…
Issue Brief
May 13, 2019
Data Communities
A New Model for Supporting STEM Data Sharing
As organizations and initiatives designed to promote STEM data sharing multiply – within, across, and outside academic institutions – there is a pressing need to decide strategically on the best ways to move forward. Central to this decision is the issue of scale. Is data sharing best assessed and supported on an international or national scale? By broad academic sector (engineering, biomedical)? By discipline? On a university-by-university basis? Or using another unit of analysis altogether? To the extent that there…