Topic: Digital scholarship and data management
Blog Post
February 13, 2018
Gearing Up for the 2018 US Faculty Survey
Notes from ALA Midwinter
Ithaka S+R is gearing up for our seventh national US Faculty Survey on the research and teaching practices, perceptions, and needs of scholars at four year colleges and universities. Last week at ALA Midwinter, we had the opportunity to meet with library deans and directors and past local survey participants to discuss the evolution of this national survey and gather feedback on possible directions for future coverage.
Blog Post
December 5, 2017
Examining Research and Teaching Practices of New Zealand Faculty Members
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,…
Blog Post
October 16, 2017
Supporting Civil and Environmental Engineering Scholars
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…
Blog Post
August 29, 2017
The Center for Open Science, Alternative to Elsevier, Announces New Preprint Services Today
The past year has been a momentous period for preprint-driven open access. Elsevier has made two major acquisitions, of SSRN with its edited research networks and of bepress with its Digital Commons institutional repository service. Springer Nature sibling Digital Science has worked to develop its presence too, expanding figshare as not just a data repository but as a full institutional solution and more…
Blog Post
July 11, 2017
Agricultural Research, Data Management, Funder Mandates: Where Do We Go From Here?
The latest Ithaka S+R report on agriculture scholars summarizes the diverse research being undertaken in across the agricultural sciences and suggests some ways forward for the agricultural information community. One key theme in the report focuses on the work undertaken by researchers in the agricultural sciences around data management. The breadth of the field is reflected in the variety of methods and data generated by scholars, ranging from genetics to economics to field-based biology. Across these domains, a common…
Blog Post
April 10, 2017
University Futures; Library Futures
OCLC Research and Ithaka S+R Join Forces on New Research Project
OCLC Research and Ithaka S+R have studied and written extensively about the evolution of higher education and the implications of this evolution for the organizational structure and services of libraries. Today, we are announcing a new project, “University Futures; Library Futures”, in which OCLC Research and Ithaka S+R are joining forces to carry out a collaborative project on the future of academic libraries, in the context of changes in the higher…
Blog Post
April 3, 2017
Shaping the Academic Library
Today, Ithaka S+R is releasing the US Library Survey 2016, which tracks the perspectives and practices of academic libraries whose institutions offer a bachelor’s degree or higher. We achieved strong participation by library deans and directors, with a response rate of 49%. The project examines the key strategic directions these leaders and their libraries are pursuing as well as some of the constraints against which they act. Our findings fall into a number of key categories: Library directors anticipate…
Research Report
April 3, 2017
US Library Survey 2016
The Ithaka S+R Library Survey 2016 examines strategy and leadership issues from the perspective of academic library deans and directors. This project aims to provide academic librarians and higher education leaders with information about chief librarians’ visions and the opportunities and challenges they face in leading their organizations. In fall 2016, we invited library deans and directors at not-for-profit four-year academic institutions across the United States to complete the survey, and we received 722 responses for a response rate of…
Blog Post
October 4, 2016
Examining Research and Teaching Practices of Canadian Faculty Members
Since 2014, eleven of the twenty-nine Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) member institutions have participated in running the Ithaka S+R Local Faculty Survey on their campuses, providing a rich dataset of over 4,000 responses across the universities. This morning, we published findings on the research and teaching practices of these faculty members. We have been examining the attitudes and behaviors of academics in the US and the UK every three years since 2000 and 2012 respectively,…
Research Report
October 4, 2016
Canadian Association of Research Libraries Faculty Survey
Executive Summary of Findings
Since 2014, eleven member institutions from the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) have administered the Ithaka S+R Local Faculty Survey on their campuses.[1] The survey instrument covers many scholarly research and teaching-related topics, in part overlapping with the 2015 Ithaka S+R U.S. Faculty Survey and other previous iterations of the Ithaka S+R U.S. Faculty Survey.[2] Each of these Local Faculty Surveys included a core set of questions on preferences and practices related to discovery, digital…
Blog Post
July 14, 2016
International Advances in Digital Scholarship
Notes from the Jisc and CNI Conference 2016
Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Jisc/CNI conference in Oxford, England, and share findings from our recent studies of academics in the US and in the UK. The conference focused on current issues and innovations in digital scholarship and allowed for international exchange on leading practices and policies. A number of themes emerged within and across the various sessions I attended. Open data Many speakers and attendees discussed the “openness” of research data, including discussion of…
Blog Post
June 20, 2016
The Impact of Open Access Mandates
Looking at Trends in the UK Survey of Academics
What makes the 2015 Ithaka S+R Jisc RLUK survey of UK academics so interesting is its timing. The last survey was 2012, the year of the Finch report on open access. The latest survey took place in 2015, the year the Higher Education Funding Council of England (Hefce) published its policy linking open access to the next Research Excellence Framework (REF). To some extent the results tell us what we already know: three years is a long…
Blog Post
June 15, 2016
Exploring the Research Practices of Academics in the UK
UK Survey of Academics 2015 Published
Today, Ithaka S+R is releasing the UK Survey of Academics, with our partners Jisc and RLUK. Fielded in autumn 2015, this is the second cycle of this project and therefore the first opportunity to examine trends over time. It uses a large-scale sample of academics from across the UK higher education sector. In addition, nearly a dozen individual institutions partnered with us to provide targeted help to ensure that our survey reached their academics. Given that the…
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…
Blog Post
April 11, 2016
Using Lessons Learned from University Partnerships to Enhance the US Faculty Survey 2015
Since 2000, Ithaka S+R has run the US Faculty Survey, which tracks the evolution of faculty members’ research and teaching practices against the backdrop of increasing digital resources and other systemic changes in higher education on a triennial basis. Last week we published results from the 2015 cycle on topics including discovery and access, research and publishing practices, instruction, and the role of the library. Starting in 2012, Ithaka S+R has offered colleges and universities the opportunity to field…
Blog Post
April 4, 2016
Tracking Trends in Faculty Research, Publishing, and Teaching
The Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey Findings Released
This morning we published the US Faculty Survey 2015. We have been running this survey on a triennial basis since 2000 to examine the attitudes and behaviors of scholars at four-year colleges and universities across the United States. The survey provides the higher education community with a regularly updated snapshot of its faculty members at a moment in time, as well as trend analysis of changes. What does this latest snapshot show us? Some key findings include: Reversing a…
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…
Blog Post
February 25, 2016
On Seams, Seamlessness, and Methodology
Earlier this month, I encountered a thought-provoking talk by Tim Sherratt making the very strong argument that seamlessness should not be our only goal in designing digital library systems. The talk is a year old but it is well worth reading today. I thank Donna Lanclos for tweeting about it recently. I have argued strongly that we need to reduce the barriers to the use of…
Blog Post
November 2, 2015
The Consistency of Data
Data-driven decision making brings with it—for policy makers, advocates, businesses—the promise of objectivity. In some cases, this can instead be the illusion of infallibility. We don’t doubt our ability to make smart decisions with well-analyzed data, but what about the origins of that data? Over this year, Joseph Esposito, Roger Schonfeld and I have been conducting a research project studying the acquisitions of academic libraries, towards the end of better understanding various trends among vendors, publishers, disciplines and formats.
Blog Post
October 22, 2015
New Issue Brief by Neil Rambo Explores Research Data Management
Neil Rambo, director of the Health Sciences Library at NYU Langone Medical Center, graciously agreed to describe the development of data management services at his library for our issue brief series. “Research Data Management: Roles for Libraries” is his account of how NYU’s Health Sciences Library established this relatively new service and the challenges the library still faces. The library began with one central question: “how can libraries and librarians contribute to the advancement of the…