Topic: Research practices
Upcoming Event
October 29, 2025
Open Research, Open Science
Is Your Software Ready?
The research enterprise is increasingly reliant on open source software (OSS), propelled by the momentum of the open science movement and evolving funder mandates. However, many researchers lack the tools and frameworks to ensure long-term OSS sustainability. This August, the Apereo Foundation and Ithaka S+R, with support from the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative sustainability framework workshop, worked to help close this gap. The workshop brought OSS leaders from across higher education,…
Blog Post
September 8, 2025
Sustaining Open Source Software in the Research Enterprise
Reflections from a Recent Workshop
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,…
Upcoming Event
September 24, 2025
Looking Forward From Different Stakeholder Perspectives
At the FAIR Facilities and Instruments workshop, Ithaka S+R’s Dylan Ruediger will participate in a panel with Shawna Sadler (ORCID). The panel is scheduled for September 24 at 9:15-10:30am, and will take place at the NSF NCAR Mesa Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. See the full schedule.
Blog Post
August 21, 2025
Preserving At-Risk Public Data
An Interview with the Data Rescue Project Steering Committee
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.
Research Report
August 14, 2025
University Open Source Program Offices
Introduction Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) are dedicated units that coordinate and nurture open source software adoption across the organization. In the past two decades, as companies recognized that open source software “was not just a viable option but a critical path for technology innovation,” OSPOs became relatively common in large corporations, especially in the tech sector.[1] OSPOs are often initially focused on corporate compliance with the terms of open source software the company licensed, but…
Blog Post
July 30, 2025
Announcing the 2025 US Researcher Survey
This fall, we will launch a new national survey of academic researchers. For over 20 years, Ithaka S+R has surveyed faculty across the US about their teaching and research needs and practices, but this is the first year that we are gathering more in-depth data specific to researchers. The survey will be fielded to over 210,000 people who are engaged in academic research, scholarship, or creative activity—across disciplines and job categories—at colleges and universities in the US.
Blog Post
May 19, 2025
AI Implementation and Governance at Emerging Research Institutions
Announcing a New NSF-Funded Planning Grant
Generative and other AI tools have the potential to transform and accelerate scientific research and communication. However, realizing that potential will require institutions to invest in the administrative and technical infrastructure, staffing, and capacity required to manage the data security, compliance, technical, and ethical issues of generative AI usage at the institutional level, and provide professional development for staff in units engaged in all aspects of the research enterprise. Creating this infrastructure will be difficult for all universities, but is…
Blog Post
May 1, 2025
Generative AI Adoption and Related Challenges in Higher Education
New Report Shares Findings of Cross-Institutional Qualitative Study
Today, we are announcing the publication of a new report detailing the findings of interviews offering insight on how instructors and researchers are using generative artificial intelligence in their work, as well as the challenges they currently face related to the technology. The study also reveals which support resources instructors and researchers are relying on and which resources they feel are still lacking.
Research Report
May 1, 2025
Making AI Generative for Higher Education
Adoption and Challenges Among Instructors and Researchers
This report presents the findings of the interviews that asked faculty to reflect on their perceptions of and experiences with generative AI in both teaching and research. Our study was driven by the following questions: To what degree are faculty adopting generative AI, and how is this changing their approaches and practices in teaching and research? What challenges are they facing in the aftermath of generative AI’s emergence? What support do they still need?…
Blog Post
April 28, 2025
How Institutions Are Supporting Community-Engaged Scholarship
Takeaways from Compact25
Campus Compact, the largest higher ed association dedicated to community engagement, hosted a vibrant Compact25 conference in Atlanta from March 31-April 2, 2025. While the majority of sessions at the conference were focused on civic education and the role of community engagement in instruction, community-engaged scholarship was also well-represented.
Blog Post
April 16, 2025
Sustaining Open Source Software in the Research Enterprise
Call for Participants
Ithaka S+R and the Apereo Foundation welcome applications to participate in Sustaining Open Source Software in the Research Enterprise, a workshop made possible by generous funding from the National Science Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Higher education serves as a seedbed for highly successful Open Source Software (OSS). Apache, Linux, R, and Python are all examples of currently widely-used, impactful, and sustained open source projects with roots in higher education. Colleges and universities…
Blog Post
March 27, 2025
What Challenges Do Academic Researchers Experience and How Do Campus Data Service Providers Assist Them?
New Report Shares Findings from a Qualitative Study of Researchers at 29 Higher Ed Institutions
In recent years, as funders have increased their expectations for data sharing and machine learning use cases have multiplied, the need to develop an efficient infrastructure of research support services has become a strategic priority for many colleges and universities. To inform university decision making, Ithaka S+R has collaborated over the past two years with 29 US and Canadian institutions to develop strategies for improving the coordination of research data support services offered across different campus offices.
Research Report
March 27, 2025
Researcher Challenges and Experiences with Data Services
While there is general consensus that institutions should provide a coordinated research data services support infrastructure to their researchers, determining the most effective way to do this has proven more difficult, especially in light of the fast-paced technological changes that have precipitated new forms of research collaborations, methodologies, and discoveries. In this report, we share findings from interviews with researchers that provide information about their data management needs and their current level of engagement with campus data services.
Research Report
March 19, 2025
Meeting the Climate Emergency
University Information Infrastructure for Researching Wicked Problems
Contemporary societies face a range of urgent threats to the well-being of individuals, nations, and the natural world. These high stakes “wicked problems,” as Don Waters calls them in this report, present challenges that are simultaneously scientific, technological, social, and creative. They require expertise from across the disciplines to understand, and equally complex public and political engagement, to overcome. Waters makes the case that America’s research universities are exceptionally well-equipped to address these wicked problems.
Blog Post
March 11, 2025
Centralizing Data Services from the Bottom Up
Challenges in navigating the research enterprise Coordinating any type of service or offering across offices and departments is a persistent and pervasive problem at large universities, and research data support services are no exception. As Ruby MacDougall noted in the announcement of Ithaka S+R’s Building Campus Strategies for Data Support Services project, “data support services tend to exist in silos, which can create economic inefficiencies, duplication of services, and programming gaps.” These challenges motivated a multi-unit team from The…
Blog Post
March 10, 2025
University Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) in Action
Announcing an Ithaka S+R Webinar
For over two decades, Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) have played an important role in the private sector, serving as centralized hubs for managing open source engagement and strategy. Facilitating the development, contribution, and governance of widely used tools and critical digital infrastructure, the value of OSPOs is well established in corporate contexts. In higher education, however, OSPOs have only recently begun to gain traction. Universities and their employees rely extensively on open source software for…
Past Event
March 13, 2025
Understanding Researcher Needs and Challenges
Findings from a Qualitative Study on Research Data Services
In the past few decades, partnerships between libraries and other campus units have become important contributors to sustaining the growth of the research enterprise at higher-education institutions across the globe. Providing cross-campus research support services, these partnerships are essential for helping researchers navigate the increasingly complex world of research data management and for developing connective infrastructure to effectively support researchers. To better understand effective strategies for research data services delivery at North American research universities, Ithaka S+R, in collaboration with…
Past Event
February 20, 2025
Generative AI in Higher Education
Emerging Impacts on Research & Teaching
On Thursday, February 20, Ithaka S+R’s Dylan Ruediger will participate in a virtual panel discussion hosted by the University of Delaware that will be focused on generative AI in higher education and emerging impacts on research and teaching.
Blog Post
February 6, 2025
Convening Stakeholders in the Open-Source Ecosystem Workshop
Announcing a New NSF-Funded Project
Open Source Software (OSS) has great potential to benefit higher education and is increasingly recognized as a core component of open science. The community that supports OSS for teaching and administrative purposes, such as Moodle and MIT Mathlets, has made great progress in seeding, scaling, and sustaining their projects within the academy and has built a robust and sustainable infrastructure. However, academic silos have made it difficult for this community to share knowledge with those developing OSS for research purposes.
Blog Post
January 15, 2025
Reflections on Creating a Cross-Campus Collaboration for Reproducibility
Challenges in reproducible research The ability to reproduce results is a cornerstone of scientific integrity in academic research. Reproducibility in research ensures that results can be independently verified, thereby enhancing the credibility and reliability of findings. However, achieving reproducibility is not without its challenges. Researchers often grapple with organizing their analyses, learning new computational tools, and diligently documenting their data and methodologies. These were some of the challenges raised during interviews with faculty at the University of Victoria (UVic) conducted…