Topic: Research practices
Past Event
December 14, 2021
Understanding Research Cores: An Overview of a Critical Component of Research Infrastructure
Roger Schonfeld at CNI Fall 2021 Membership Meeting
On December 14, Roger Schonfeld will present at the CNI Fall 2021 Membership Meeting on Ithaka S + R’s new report, “What is a Research Core? A Primer on a Critical Component of the Research Enterprise” that illuminates the research core landscape. Research cores, sometimes also referred to as core instrumentation facilities, are shared research enablement facilities that are used on a cross-department if not institutional basis. Notwithstanding pandemic disruptions, trends to improve research support for academic science are taking…
Blog Post
December 9, 2021
Charting a Path Forward for Academic Conferences
Announcing the Cohort for Our Project on the Future of Scholarly Meetings
Conferences and meetings are among the most venerable and vital services scholarly societies provide to members. They serve as gathering places for communities and important venues for scholarly communication. They are also essential to many societies’ financial models. The global pandemic has accelerated existing pressures on academic conferences, forcing societies to adopt virtual and hybrid formats. It has become clear that these new modalities have tangible benefits to members and the potential to reach new constituencies, but financial…
Research Report
December 6, 2021
What Is a Research Core?
A Primer on a Critical Component of the Research Enterprise
As clusters of state-of-the-art instruments and research enablement services, research cores are not only the cornerstone of research activities at university campuses but also critical assets that provide competitive differentiation for their host institutions. However, these research cores are highly expensive for academic institutions to manage. Despite the growing recognition and impact of these research cores, there are few studies that describe the business models for sustaining and funding research cores or their increasing significance to the larger academic community.
Blog Post
December 1, 2021
Supporting Big Data Research
New Report Offers Recommendations for Stakeholders
As “big data” has moved from the margins to the center of a growing number of academic disciplines, how well are universities, funders, and publishers supporting researchers? To better understand how big data research is pursued in academic contexts, Ithaka S+R partnered with librarians at more than 20 colleges and universities, interviewing over 200 faculty members, to explore how researchers work with big data and identify the challenges they face. “Big Data Infrastructure at the Crossroads:…
Research Report
December 1, 2021
Big Data Infrastructure at the Crossroads
Support Needs and Challenges for Universities
Ithaka S+R’s Research Support Services program explores current trends and support needs in academic research. Our most recent project in this program, “Supporting Big Data Research,” focused specifically on the rapidly emerging use of big data in research across disciplines and fields. As part of our study, we partnered with librarians from more than 20 colleges and universities, who then conducted over 200 interviews with faculty. These interviews provided insights into the research methodologies and support needs of researchers working…
Blog Post
October 18, 2021
The Future of Scholarly Meetings
Announcing a New Cohort Project Funded by the Sloan Foundation
The COVID-19 pandemic forced scholarly societies to reimagine one of their signal offerings: academic conferences. In response, societies experimented with virtual and hybrid meeting formats on a scale that was difficult to imagine before March 2020. Societies have emerged from these experiments with an equal measure of worry and cautious optimism about the potential of these new forums to replace or supplement the traditional annual meeting. With generous funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Ithaka…
Research Report
October 18, 2021
COVID-19 and the Future of the Annual Meeting
In February 2020, the Biogen conference in Boston, Massachusetts, became one of the first superspreader events in the United States—one now linked to perhaps 300,000 cases of COVID-19. By mid-March, in-person conferences, a staple of scholarly communication and community, came to an abrupt halt. For the many professional societies for whom a conference is a core offering, the necessity of charting a new path for their annual meeting was among the most difficult organizational challenges created by the pandemic. As…
Past Event
October 7, 2021
New Directions in Scholarly Publishing
Roger Schonfeld presents during Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) virtual panel
On October 7, Roger Schonfeld will join other panelists to discuss new funding opportunities for researchers and librarians. The panel will discuss how “how authors— especially early career authors—are required to navigate this new funding landscape, how librarians must consider new mandates and requirements from funding agencies while supporting the interests and needs of researchers within their respective institutions, and how funding as we know it is dynamically changing the landscape of academic research.” For more information, please visit this…
Past Event
September 8, 2021
Danielle Cooper at FORGE 2021
On September 8 at 14:00 Central European Time (CET), Danielle Cooper will discuss her research on research data in the humanities. For more information, please visit this website. …
Past Event
October 19, 2021
Technology, Trust, Together: Common Challenges and Opportunities for Today’s Digital Scholarly Communication Ecosystem
Roger Schonfeld at the STM Autumn Conference 2021
On Tuesday, October 19, Roger Schonfeld is taking part in a panel discussion at the STM Autumn Conference 2021. For more information and to register for this virtual conference, please visit the STM website. About the panel: Digital technology is pervasive in how research is conducted, how research teams collaborate, and how research output is disseminated. This has brought many improvements and new opportunities, for example enabling more efficient ways of (remote) working and giving researchers the ability to…
Blog Post
August 5, 2021
Deadline Extended: Call for Proposals on Leveraging Data Communities to Advance Open Science
Ithaka S+R is currently accepting applications from researchers interested in participating in Leveraging Data Communities to Advance Open Science, an NSF-funded workshop developed in partnership with the Data Curation Network. Participants will receive funding to attend a two-day incubation workshop in 2022, as well as expert guidance from information professionals about how to create sustainable infrastructures to support voluntary data sharing across disciplinary and institutional boundaries. Applications are due October 1, 2021. Please see the following CFP for full…
Blog Post
August 4, 2021
New Questionnaire for the Ithaka S+R Faculty Survey 2021 Now Available
We’re excited to announce that we have now finalized updates for the 2021 edition of the Ithaka S+R Faculty Survey, which we will be fielding nationally and with a number of college and university partners this fall. As with previous cycles of the survey, the instrument will explore the research, teaching, and publishing practices and perspectives of scholars at four-year colleges and universities. We have also expanded several areas of coverage within the questionnaire to cover instructional support services,…
Blog Post
July 14, 2021
Why Survey Testing is Essential
Preparing to Field the US Faculty Survey 2021
Ithaka S+R is gearing up for our eighth launch of the US Faculty Survey this fall. This national survey has yielded longitudinal data on scholarly research and teaching behaviors across a variety of institutional and disciplinary contexts on a triennial basis since 2000. To maximize the value of this initiative for higher education leaders, scholarly societies, academic libraries, and publishers who have come to rely on these data, especially in light of the…
Past Event
September 17, 2021
Roger Schonfeld at ALPSP 2021
On September 17, Roger Schonfeld will present on “Scholarly Communications, Evolution or Revolution,” during ALPSP’s virtual conference. Roger will be joined by panelists to discuss how scholarly publishing is changing and what is the outlook for books and journals. For more information, please follow this link. About the session The pandemic has accelerated the use of preprint servers and advanced the open science movement. At the same time, we are seeking continuous growth in research output globally and burden…
Blog Post
June 22, 2021
New Report: What’s the Big Deal?
How Researchers Are Navigating Changes to Journal Access
Since 1996, the “Big Deal” has enabled academic libraries of all sizes to license bundled access to a publisher’s journal at a significant discount off the list prices. Over the years, as Big Deal spending has come to occupy a greater and greater share of materials budgets, libraries have come to question the value of their Big Deal subscriptions, with some opting to cancel or significantly alter their existing arrangements. Today we are thrilled to announce a…
Blog Post
June 22, 2021
Cancelling the Big Deal Project Spotlight
An Interview with Freie Universität Berlin with contributions from Dominik Hagel, Franziska Harnisch, Mario Kowalak, and Cosima Wagner
As university budgets face considerable strain and new models for providing open access to scholarly communication proliferate, academic libraries are increasingly pursuing alternatives to the “Big Deal” journal subscription model, including cancellation. But how are these strategies affecting researchers and what do they make of them? Over the past year Ithaka S+R has been studying the impact of Big Deal cancellations on its users in partnership with 11 academic libraries. Previous research has focused primarily on…
Research Report
June 22, 2021
What’s the Big Deal?
How Researchers Are Navigating Changes to Journal Access
The dominant mode by which research libraries have provided maximum journal access as cheaply as possible—subscription bundles or “Big Deals”—is giving way to new approaches. This transition is taking place through a combination of negotiations, activism, business modeling, user needs research, and decision support, among other factors. To support these processes, Ithaka S+R partnered with 11 academic libraries to understand researcher perceptions to help inform their ongoing strategic decision making about Big Deal journal subscriptions.
Blog Post
May 13, 2021
Announcing the Ithaka S+R Faculty Survey 2021
This fall, we are looking forward to fielding our triennial US Faculty Survey. This will be the eighth cycle of this long-standing research initiative through which we examine faculty research and teaching perspectives and practices across a variety of institutional and disciplinary contexts. Through this ongoing work, we have now mapped for over two decades the evolving attitudes and behaviors of scholars on a range of topics, including the discovery and access of scholarship, research dissemination and preservation, instructional methods…
Blog Post
April 20, 2021
Emergent Data Community Spotlight
An Interview About Energy Modeling with the Open Energy Modelling Initiative
Fostering data and code sharing among scholars is an important component to fostering a culture of open research—but how can this work be done most effectively? At Ithaka S+R we are exploring the crucial contextual elements that optimize research data sharing. We’ve found that data communities—formal or informal groups of scholars who share a certain type of data with each other regardless of disciplinary boundaries—provide important clues to understanding how research data sharing works. Identifying and supporting scholarly communities…
Issue Brief
March 31, 2021
The Disproportionate Impact of the Pandemic on Women and Caregivers in Academia
Evidence is mounting that women in academia have disproportionately been affected by the pandemic. Recent research points to new gender gaps in productivity and publishing, with fewer women publishing articles and manuscripts. And in addition to these professional challenges, women in academia are also facing unique personal challenges during the pandemic, including balancing childcare and home responsibilities while working towards achieving tenure in an academic pipeline where it is already challenging for women to succeed.