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Research Report
June 16, 2016

Barriers to Discovery of and Access to the Scientific Literature in the Corporate Sector

The offices that provide scientific information resources in major research companies – sometimes still called libraries – seek to make these resources available as seamlessly as possible. Barriers exist both for discovery and access. Corporate information professionals also face barriers in administering these information resources. In this project, Ithaka S+R examined the degree to which these various barriers are seen to exist in pharmaceutical, chemical, and food companies. The project had as its objective to inform the design of solutions…
Research Report
June 15, 2016

UK Survey of Academics 2015

Ithaka S+R | Jisc | RLUK

Research is changing. New technology brings increased computational power and virtual representation of physical objects, allowing us to pose and answer previously unimaginable research questions. Big data can be mixed, linked and mined to reveal new unsuspected connections. Enhanced connectivity allows us to collaborate beyond traditional geographic and disciplinary boundaries. Funders demand greater demonstration of impact and engagement with non-academic communities and audiences. As research changes, so do researchers. Their behaviour and expectations shift, evolving to take advantage of new…
Research Report
May 2, 2016

Diversity and Inclusion in New York City’s Cultural Sector: BRIC

Efforts towards quantifying the diversity in various industries have gained a great deal of attention in the last few years. From the #OscarsSoWhite controversy,[1] to the initiatives towards transparency in Silicon Valley,[2] to the recent benchmark survey in publishing,[3] quantifying diversity has become a central component of highlighting areas in the workforce that are notably homogenous in order to approach diversity initiatives strategically. In the summer of 2015, Ithaka S+R administered a survey to…
Research Report
April 27, 2016

Diversity in the New York City Dance Community

Foreword by Leah Krauss, Senior Program Officer for Dance and Special Projects, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and Lane Harwell, Executive Director, Dance/NYC Creating an inclusive and equitable workforce in dance and culture, as in any industry, requires baseline demographic data to guide action and measure progress over time. Commissioned by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, this report by Ithaka S+R furthers the movement to create equity in dance by shedding light on the gender and racial makeup of the dance workforce, both…
Research Report
April 4, 2016

Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey 2015

Ithaka S+R’s survey of US faculty members has been fielded regularly since 2000. This project provides a periodic snapshot of practices and perceptions related to scholarly communications and information usage. The scholar-centric nature of the questionnaire ensures that potential changes in research and teaching inform our thinking, not only about academic libraries and scholarly publishing, but about changes in the educational enterprise more broadly. Our findings this cycle are a strong indication of the value of an ongoing tracking enterprise…
Research Report
March 8, 2016

A Day in the Life of a (Serious) Researcher

Envisioning the Future of the Research Library

Reflections on Cornell University Library’s “Day in the Life” Project by Nancy Fried Foster In 2014, Kornelia Tancheva and I met to discuss a question of great interest to Cornell University Library: how would you design a research library to respond to the preferences and needs of today’s researchers? That is, if you could create a mental space in which you learned from the past without being encumbered by an uncritical acceptance of the status quo, what kind…
Research Report
February 22, 2016

Higher Ed Insights: Results of the Fall 2015 Survey

In fall 2015, Ithaka S+R invited a select group of higher education administrators and experts to join a panel of advisors. One activity of the panel, which consists of 110 members with diverse backgrounds and perspectives, is to take part in semi-annual surveys on issues of national importance in higher education. Ithaka S+R will analyze and publish the results of these surveys to inform the broader higher education community about the panel’s views on current debates, initiatives, and challenges. The…
Research Report
February 5, 2016

The Costs of Publishing Monographs

Toward a Transparent Methodology

The University Press business model faces numerous challenges today, with revenues under pressure due to a host of factors, from the decline of bricks-and-mortar stores and shifting library purchase patterns to the still emerging distribution and revenue models made possible by digital books. Over the last few years, certain forces have emerged and intensified—federal mandates for Open Access, declining sales reach, and the desire of university presses to build a greater audience for scholarly works—encouraging university presses to seriously consider…
Research Report
January 28, 2016

Diversity in the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Community

New York City is one of the most diverse cities in the United States at a city level, ranking fourth in the country based on 2010 census data.[1] There are over 1,000 cultural organizations in the five boroughs, each with specific ties to communities, each with vastly different organizational structures and sizes, and each integral to the diversity of culture that defines New York City. Over the summer of 2015 many of these organizations participated in a survey…
Research Report
December 14, 2015

Can Online Learning Improve College Math Readiness?

Randomized Trials Using Pearson’s MyFoundationsLab in Summer Bridge Programs

Far too many students in the United States start their postsecondary education without being able to demonstrate the skills and knowledge deemed necessary to succeed in college-level math. Colleges and universities have traditionally dealt with this problem by placing students in full-semester developmental courses for which they must pay full tuition but do not receive college credit. It has become clear, however, that this approach has serious drawbacks, as students who start out in remediation are far less likely to…
Research Report
November 18, 2015

Office of Scholarly Communication

Scope, Organizational Placement, and Planning in Ten Research Libraries

The phrase “scholarly communication” appears often in the description of library roles and responsibilities, but the function is still new enough that it takes different forms in different institutions. There is no common understanding of where it fits into the library’s organizational structure. This landscape review of offices of scholarly communication grows out of research originally conducted by Ithaka S+R for the Harvard Library. Dr. Sarah Thomas, Vice President for the Harvard Library, University Librarian and Roy E. Larsen Librarian…
Research Report
October 20, 2015

CIC Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction

Evaluation Report for First Course Iteration

Summary of Findings This report provides our preliminary analysis of evidence generated from the planning period and first iteration of CIC Consortium courses. It includes a summary of our findings, followed by a description and presentation of a good portion of the data for those interested in delving deeper. It is important to note that these courses finished very recently, and we (like the faculty members involved) are still processing what we have learned. We have amassed a considerable mass…
Research Report
October 8, 2015

Exploring Group Study at the University of Nevada, Reno

Libraries continually struggle with how to make the best use of their space, and collaborative study spaces have been added to support the perceived requirements for group projects. The University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) wanted to know what kind of spaces students actually need to do their work, and brought in Ithaka S+R’s senior anthropologist, Nancy Fried Foster, to help them explore this question. Using the methods of design anthropology, collecting artifacts and conducting interviews, the Ithaka S+R and UNR…
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Research Report
March 18, 2015

Personalizing Post-Secondary Education

An Overview of Adaptive Learning Solutions for Higher Education

For the past decade, the conversation about technology’s potential to transform higher education has grown louder and larger, encompassing more voices, opinions, and topics, and driving changes at a global scale. Participants in this discussion speculate about the possibilities for Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to make quality education more broadly accessible to an international set of learners, deliberate over the value of leveraging business analytics to help students through degree programs, and debate the impact of technology-enabled learning on…
Research Report
March 11, 2015

Online Learning in Postsecondary Education

A Review of the Empirical Literature (2013-2014)

Courses that incorporate online learning are increasingly a fact of life for American college and university students.[1] The share of postsecondary students in the United States who took at least one online course has increased every year for the past decade—to a high of 34% in the fall semester of 2012.[2] Even as the prevalence of online learning continues to grow, however, there remains a dearth of rigorous research done on the learning outcomes associated with…
Research Report
March 4, 2015

The Effects of Rising Student Costs in Higher Education

Evidence from Public Institutions in Virginia

In Virginia and elsewhere, higher education faces an unstable future. Demographic, economic and technological changes are driving transformation in all that we do. Higher education – access to it, knowledge created and disseminated through it, and outcomes produced by it – will be the key to innovation and prosperity. At the same time, public higher education faces an unprecedentedly challenging landscape as it seeks to fulfill its public purposes and responsibilities. Its transformative potential for our nation is at risk. The risk…
Research Report
December 11, 2014

Technology-Enhanced Education at Public Flagship Universities

Opportunities and Challenges

Public research universities are under great pressure to increase access, lower costs, and improve instruction, even as they face diminishing financial support from the states they serve. Against this backdrop, Ithaka S+R, with funding from Lumina Foundation, undertook a study of ten institutions in the Public Flagships Network (PFN). Over the course of the 2013/2014 academic year, Ithaka S+R interviewed 214 individuals, ranging from presidents and provosts to key administrative officers and staff, to department chairs and faculty. Members of…
Research Report
July 10, 2014

Interactive Online Learning on Campus

Testing MOOCs and Other Platforms in Hybrid Formats in the University System of Maryland

Online technologies show promise for educating more people in innovative ways that can lower costs for universities and colleges, but how can higher education leaders move forward, confident in their choices about how best to integrate these technologies on their campuses? With a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Ithaka S+R is working to help provide the answer. Since November 2012, Ithaka S+R has been working with the University System of Maryland (USM) to test a variety of…
Research Report
June 18, 2014

Sustainability Implementation Toolkit

Developing an Institutional Strategy for Supporting Digital Humanities Resources

What do the digital humanities look like on your campus? What types of projects are your faculty undertaking? Which will require longer-term support, and where will that support come from? What roles do your service units, centers, and digital labs play in the various life-cycle stages, and is this clear to faculty? This toolkit will help administrators create a coherent institutional strategy for supporting digital humanities activities and the valuable outputs that they generate.To get started, follow the three steps below.…
Research Report
June 18, 2014

Sustaining the Digital Humanities

Host Institution Support Beyond the Start-up Phase

As more and more scholars experiment with building digital humanities (DH) resources, how are their host institutions approaching the challenge of supporting these diverse projects over time? In this study, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ithaka S+R explored the different models colleges and universities have adopted to support DH outputs on their campuses.  This final report, Sustaining the Digital Humanities: Host-Institution Support beyond the Start-Up Phase, and the accompanying Sustainability Implementation Toolkit, are intended to guide faculty,…