Topic: Research practices

Ithaka S+R is tracking federal policies in the United States that affect US–Sino academic collaboration as part of our Supporting International Values in the Research Enterprise project, funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. The tracker documents the developing rules, restrictions, and guidance that govern how scientific collaboration across borders can take place. Our aim for this tracker is to provide a resource from which university administrators, researchers, and advocates, can draw out broader patterns and develop coherent strategies…

Across the past several years, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has supported the foundation and growth of academic Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) at 12 universities in the United States. OSPOs are units that support and coordinate open source software development and adoption. Ithaka S+R’s previous work has examined the successes and challenges of these Sloan-funded OSPOs in their early years. While these were each respectively based at a single academic institution, both the University of California (UC) and…

Research administration has grown increasingly complex over the past two decades, and the introduction of AI has only exacerbated this. Expanding regulatory requirements, shifting funding landscapes, rising numbers of proposals, and constrained staffing resources have made research administration more demanding. For emerging research institutions, these pressures compound existing structural challenges in building research operations capable of securing and sustaining funding. As generative AI tools have rapidly entered the market, accompanied by promises of increased efficiency, research offices at emerging research…

For decades, the Open Science movement—driven by both funder mandates and scholarly norms—has sought to make academic research in all disciplines accessible to everyone, both in and outside the academy. Yet while the academic research enterprise has made significant strides in building infrastructure to support open access publication, the sharing of research data, and other core aspects of Open Science, there is an additional area that has received less attention within academia: open source research software (OSRS). To begin to…

Research administrators play an essential role in the research enterprise. Their work managing expenditures and monitoring compliance with rules related to the ethical conduct of research ensure that public money is spent and that research data is collected in ways that protect privacy, minimize risks to participants, and meet the complex legal and contractual obligations required by funders. At large research universities, these and other tasks associated with research administration are undertaken by trained specialists: at emerging research institutions (ERIs)…

Many of the world’s best researchers work at universities in the United States. While they contribute to the US research enterprise, these researchers also often embody hybrid identities: their training, professional activities, and individual and collaborative work cross national, institutional, and disciplinary borders. However, the past several presidential administrations have enacted federal policies driven by concerns over national security and economic competitiveness that have restricted the flow of researchers and research outputs across national borders. Since 2018, heightened scrutiny, tightened…

In March 2024, Ithaka S+R released a tracker of generative AI products for higher education, along with an issue brief detailing our observations on the generative AI product landscape for postsecondary research, teaching, and learning activities. Since then, the list of products on the tracker has more than doubled in length and become more cumbersome for its many users. Today, we are launching a new version of our tracker that we believe will ensure its future value.

Today, we are sharing a new resource tracking the costs of the administration’s actions on the people who make the research enterprise possible. As universities adjust their budgets to reflect these new realities, we are seeing what is likely the first wave of layoffs and program cuts. These cuts have immediate consequences for both university staff, faculty, and students and on local economies. The loss of the human expertise required to conduct and administer research, and reduced opportunities for new…

We recently convened the first workshop for the NSF-funded Advancing AI Implementation at Emerging Research Institutions, a project collaboratively led by Ithaka S+R, Montclair State University, and Chapman University. The workshop brought together 31 participants from 13 academic and medical institutions, as well as from an electronic research administration system provider to ask: how can research administrators at ERIs leverage AI to build more sustainable and equitable research capacity?…

Earlier today, we launched the 2025 US Researcher Survey. Adapted from the US Faculty Survey, this new survey is designed to provide actionable insights about how academic libraries, research offices, academic publishers, and other stakeholders can best support researchers and ensure the health and vitality of the research enterprise.

On August 8, 2025, we convened 40 people representing a wide range of perspectives to discuss strategies for sustaining open source software (OSS) that is used for research. Sustainability is a major challenge for even the most successful open source software, which requires ongoing community engagement to improve and maintain code. Sustainability also includes identifying a viable financial model, establishing project governance, building the technology infrastructure, and navigating legal and licensing issues. OSS for research often faces further challenges,…

Federal data are an essential public good, enabling cutting-edge research and underpinning decision making by governments, businesses, and individuals. However, continued public access to these data is no longer assured. Librarians, archivists, and other information professionals dedicated to the preservation and accessibility of knowledge have responded by building an independent infrastructure to preserve at-risk federal data for continued public use.