Registry of Research Data Repositories lauched

"The goal of re3data.org is to create a global registry of research data repositories. The registry will cover research data repositories from different academic disciplines. re3data.org will present repositories for the permanent storage and access of data sets to researchers, funding bodies, publishers and scholarly institutions. In the course of this mission re3data.org aims to promote a culture of sharing, increased access and better visibility of research data."

 

UK Survey of Academics

In partnership with the US Ithaka Survey of Academics, JISC and Research Libraries UK, the UK Survey of Academics 2012 has recently been released.

Starting point for research

THE Global Gender Index

Read the Times Higher Education article on THE Global Gender Index done in conjunction with Thomson Reuters.

From THE article

Questionable or Predatory Open Access Journals

As of January 2017, J. Beall has shut down his blog.

A few recent articles around a growing number of 'predatory' open access journals.

• Beall's List: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access journals(University of Colorado Denver, librarian)
• Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too) (New York Times article, April 7, 2013)
• Investigating journals: The dark side of publishing The explosion in open-access publishing has fueled the rise of questionable operators (Nature 495, 433–435, 28 March 2013)

Google updates its Transparency Report

The latest update reveals more government removal requests than ever before.
From the official blog post:

"...for the seventh time, we’re releasing new numbers showing requests from governments to remove content from our services. From July to December 2012, we received 2,285 government requests to remove 24,179 pieces of content—an increase from the 1,811 requests to remove 18,070 pieces of content that we received during the first half of 2012."

Google Transparency Report

The National Digital Public Library is now live

Launched on April 18, 2013 the Digital Public Library of America aims to "make the holdings of America’s research libraries, archives, and museums available to all Americans—and eventually to everyone in the world—online and free of charge" .

This ambitious and long time in the making project (see this post), is discussed at length by Robert Darnton, main leader of the initiative and Professor and University Librarian at Harvard, in this NY Review of Books article.

Elsevier buys Mendeley

While acknowledging Elsevier's recurrent issues in Academia the Mendeley team gives the reason behind the deal.

Press Release from Mendeley.

Press Release from Elsevier.

Faculty Survey on Research & Teaching Practices

The Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey focused on research and teaching practices broadly, as well as the dissemination, collecting, discovery, and access, of research and teaching materials.

Download PDF Report

Major topics covered by the survey include:

• Research processes
• Teaching practices: 
• Scholarly communications:
• The library: 
• Scholarly societies

From Academia to Society: the Commercialization of Research

Science article: The Many Ways of Making Academic Research Pay Off

Research universities are under growing pressure to play a more active, entrepreneurial role in commercial innovation. They increasingly regard tech transfer as a prerequisite for luring top faculty members and students, raising research funds, and potentially cashing in on lucrative inventions. But efforts to turn universities into commercial hothouses often don't succeed: Many advise schools to focus instead on "knowledge transfer"—helping society benefit from the discoveries and skills of faculty members and students without focusing just on finances. 

Science,15 Feb. 2013,vol 339, issue 6121.

Business Schools and Big Data

Two articles from the FT discuss potential uses of big data by business schools:

1. Business schools’ big data revolution 
2. Business schools should embrace big data 

9 Facts about Top Journals in Economics

Two UC Berkeley researchers ( David Card & Stefano DellaVigna ) have released this NBER paper: 

Nine Facts about Top Journals in Economics.

"How has publishing in top economics journals changed since 1970? Using a data set that combines information on all articles published in the top-5 journals from 1970 to 2012 with their Google Scholar citations, we identify nine key trends."

170 billion tweets archived

The Library of Congress has "an archive of approximately 170 billion tweets and growing. The volume of tweets the Library receives each day has grown from 140 million beginning in February 2011 to nearly half a billion tweets each day as of October 2012."

Click to view a a white paper [PDF] that summarizes the Library’s work to date and outlines present-day progress and challenges.

Price Tag of an MBA

Article from CNN Money:

Stanford MBA price tag hits $185K: Highest in the world

Social Media Report 2012

Released by Nielsen, State of the Media: Social Media Report 2012.
Click below for the full report.

Undergrads and IT - 2012 survey

EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research has released its annual survey of undergraduates' attitude towards technology in Higher Education.

Click on the image for the full infographic.
Read the entire report.

ORCID has officially launched

ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is an initiative started in 2010 aimed at "providing a registry of persistent unique identifiers for researchers and scholars and automating linkages to research objects such as publications, grants, and patents."

Frequently Asked Questions

How today’s higher education faculty use social media

Pearson and the Babson Survey Research Group have released a survey on higher education faculty use social media. View the whole survey here (free registration required)

Highlights from the Executive Summary:

• Young faculty members use social media at rates much higher than the rates for older faculty,a pattern that holds true for personal use, professional use, and use in teaching. 
• Faculty match different sites to their different needs; the sites they visit most often for personal use (Facebook), professional use (LinkedIn), and for use for in teaching (Blogs and Wikis) are all different.
• The use of social media among faculty is fluid and evolving. The mix of sites being used is changing over time. In 2011 Facebook was the most visited site for faculty professional purposes; by 2012 this has been replaced by LinkedIn. 
• One area where adoption is almost universal is in the use of video for classes. Whether it is used in a class session or assigned for viewing outside of class, faculty are enthusiastic adopters of video. 

2012 Nobel Prize in Economics

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel

has been awarded jointly to

Alvin E. Roth & Lloyd S. Shapley 

"for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design"

Alvin E. Alvin E. Roth Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA, USA.  From nobelprize.org

Lloyd S. Shapley University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA - From nobelprize.org

 

Data visualization - awards posted!

The site Information is Beautiful has released its award winners for 2012:
View the list and runners up here

Predicting 2012 Nobel Laureates

From the press release:

Annually, Thomson Reuters citation analysts mine proprietary data from the company’s research platform, Web of Knowledge™, to identify the most influential researchers in the categories of chemistry, physics, physiology or medicine, and economics. Based on a thorough review of citations to their research, the company names these high-impact researchers as Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates and predicts them to be Nobel Prize winners, either this year or in the future.

Click on the door to view the next laureates predictions.

Methodology

Nobel Prize website.