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For the past several years, I have been writing about the turn to research workflow tools. These tools reach deeply into the laboratory and are increasingly important to scientists and other scholars, and they impact the university research office and scholarly communications programs. Scholars need seamless end-to-end research solutions. Major publishers are making substantial investments in this area as they seek to pivot their businesses beyond content licensing. The strategic choices that universities make today…

After the House of Representatives and Senate passed two versions of a GOP bill to overhaul the tax code, a conference committee released a near-final version last Friday that was passed by the House on Tuesday. The Senate then passed a bill with slight tweaks on Wednesday, necessitating a House re-vote. The House is expected to pass the bill midday Wednesday and the President is expected to sign within the coming days. While some of the controversial measures…

Today Ithaka S+R is publishing the report Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Public Health Scholars, which provides actionable findings for organizations, institutions, and professionals who support the research activities in this dynamic field.  Our research was undertaken collaboratively with research teams at seven academic libraries in the U.S., six of which have also made their local findings publically available as companion publications. This work is part of an ongoing effort at Ithaka S+R through our Research Support…

Over the past two years, I have been urging that academic information professionals, including librarians and publishers, give greater attention to how they might support a growing share of the researcher workflow. But what is researcher workflow? The researcher workflow can be defined in a number of ways. For laboratory scientists, it includes research design and funding, moves through data collection and analysis, and takes them to assessment and showcasing. This very rough schematic offers…

Over the next year, Ithaka S+R will partner with the academic libraries in all eight New Zealand universities to explore and deepen understanding of scholars’ research and teaching practices and needs. Ithaka S+R has been examining the attitudes and behaviors of academics nationally in the US and the UK every three years since 2000 and 2012 respectively, and have now partnered with more than 80 colleges and universities to study these topics in the US, Canada, Australia,…

Our work at Ithaka S+R, such as through surveys of faculty and graduate students and targeted qualitative studies of scholars by discipline, has consistently uncovered scholars’ ambivalence to recent shifts in the scholarly communications landscape. While disciplinary publishing cultures vary, many of the ambivalences scholars report are held in common. For example, scholars in many fields struggle with choices around publishing in open access journals and making information available in institutional repositories, they often can’t secure funding for…

I would like to begin by acknowledging the Lenape, the traditional caretakers of the land on which Ithaka S+R is located. Today, Manhattan (from the Lenape word Manahatta) is still the home to many Indigenous peoples from across Turtle Island and beyond. I am grateful for the opportunity to work for Ithaka S+R on this land.[1] Here at Ithaka S+R, we have developed a certain kind of expertise in scholars’ information activities, both through our triennial U.S.

Free tuition at all public institutions in a state sounds great. Such a message could encourage students to attend college who would otherwise think it unaffordable, and/or could help students to stay in college.  However, given the particular policies associated with New York’s Excelsior Scholarship, what the future holds for Excelsior Scholarship recipients may not be all positive. Due to these potential negative consequences, New York State’s funds for this program could be better spent expanding existing services…

I’m all about college opportunity and success and love the idea of swinging the doors wide open. At first I was taken aback, to put it mildly, by the notion of “free college,” but my thoughts are evolving. The idea may be worthwhile for what it’s doing to galvanize public attention to higher education finance. Whether it is viable public policy, from a practical political standpoint or a social equity perspective, however, depends on our willingness to look at the…

In early October, the American Talent Initiative hosted main points of contact from member institutions in Washington, DC, for a Strategic Support Meeting, sharing research and connecting members around promising strategies for enhancing access and success for lower-income students. Later in the month, the American Talent Initiative held another convening, also in Washington DC, for the institutional research contacts of ATI member institutions. The meeting, run by Ithaka S+R and The Aspen Institute, had three primary…

Editor’s note: We asked Sara Goldrick-Rab, a panelist for our Higher Ed Insights Survey, to contribute this blog post based on her open-ended comments on the 2017 survey. It’s been nearly a decade since my team first started studying food and housing insecurity among college students.  To be honest, it wasn’t part of the plan.  We were in the midst of a study on the impacts of a private financial aid program in Wisconsin. We expected to learn…

Editor’s note: We asked Rachel Dykstra Boon, a panelist for our Higher Ed Insights Survey, to contribute this blog post based on her open-ended comments on the 2017 survey. Ask any teacher (pre-school through graduate school) for an example of a student with food, housing or financial struggles affecting the learning experience and heart-breaking stories will follow. Quantitative and qualitative research over the past several years has pointed to the growth in this demographic of college students as the country…

Mention the phrase “for-profit college” and I can’t help but immediately picture a single parent working two jobs while attending college at night, after the kids are asleep, saddled with debt and no prospects for improving their employment conditions or earnings despite their best efforts. Vivid in my mind are the painful stories of young low-income mothers I interviewed during my graduate studies, whose economic, family, and personal decisions (and opportunities) were often dictated by their (relatively exorbitant) loan repayments…

Across several survey items, the respondents to Ithaka S+R’s Higher Ed Insights Spring 2017 Survey rated Obama administration policies and enforcement actions against for-profit institutions as having a high and positive impact. In my view, policies such as the gainful employment rule and actions such as revoking the accreditation authority of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) for revoking Title IV eligibility for students attending ITT Tech were understandable, on the whole, but had serious shortcomings.

In May and June of 2017, we surveyed the Ithaka S+R Higher Ed Insights panel—164 senior leaders and experts at colleges and universities, associations, research groups, and philanthropies—about the state of higher education and the likely impact of recent events and trends. (You can learn more about our Higher Ed Insights Project here.) Today, in “Higher Ed Insights: Results of the Spring 2017 Survey,” Rayane Alamuddin, Daniel Rossman, and I report the findings of that survey. While respondents…

Like many academic libraries, Auburn University participated in the 2016 Library Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion survey conducted by Ithaka S+R with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  Due to particular circumstances, I ended up being the lead person to gather and compile the data for my library, rather than our Library HR manager.  It consumed a few hours of a dean’s time, but provided me a front seat to interact with colleagues working at all levels of my library who…

In 2015-16, the federal government disbursed more than $28 billion under the Pell Grant program to 7.6 million students, representing almost 40 percent of undergraduates in the United States. Because eligibility for the grant depends largely on financial need, many researchers use it as a proxy for income, although there are limitations. Despite the size and scope of the program and its importance in socioeconomic and higher education research, outcomes of Pell recipients have not been readily available.

Earlier this month, more than 100 representatives from American Talent Initiative (ATI) member institutions and partner organizations convened in Washington, D.C. The meeting, run by The Aspen Institute and Ithaka S+R, was designed to give participants the opportunity to learn more about the progress of the initiative and to work collaboratively to advance practice in the key ATI focus areas (outreach, enrollment, financial aid, and retention/graduation). The initiative’s collective goal, adding an additional 50,000 low- and moderate-income students…

Last week, ASERL’s John Burger facilitated a webinar about licensing scholarly content. I provided an overview of the “Red Light, Green Light” model for internal library alignment that I proposed earlier this year. John Ulmschneider of Virginia Commonwealth University reflected on some the challenges that research libraries face and endorsed proceeding with a model of increasing alignment. Participants discussed the strengths of the Red Light, Green Light model and some of the ways…

This Fall Ithaka S+R is launching a new project to explore the research support needs of Civil and Environmental Engineering scholars. Civil and Environmental Engineering focuses on the built and natural environment, including the design and maintenance of infrastructure and buildings and stewardship of natural resources. Our project seeks to develop a holistic understanding of these scholars’ information needs by attending to the full life cycle of their information activities, including information discovery, management and dissemination. Of particular interest are…