Published descriptions of data sets and analysis procedures are helpful ways to ensure scientific results are reproducible. Unfortunately the collection and provision of this information is often provided by researchers in retrospect and can be fraught with uncertainty. The only solution to this problem is to computationally collect and archive data files, code files, result files, and other details while the data analysis […]
Category: Featured
Book Review: Popular Representations of Development: Insights from novels, films, television and social media.
This collection sees development as something that can be understood through studying literature, films, and other non-conventional forms of representation. Chapters focus on development issues on blogs and social media, Band Aid and populist humanitarianism, and teaching international studies with novels. Eleftheria Lekakis finds this a great read for scholars of development studies, media and communications, sociology, anthropology and geography at all levels. This […]
Miseducation of Scholarly Communication: Beyond binaries and toward a transparent, information-rich publishing system
The Society for Scholarly Publishing recently hosted a session on open access publishing and authors’ rights titled “Open Access Mandates and Open Access ‘Mandates’: How Much Control Should Authors Have over Their Work?” This post is the edited text from Micah Vandegrift‘s talk along with his accompanying slides. Scholarly communication is mired in a binary, black and white system that pits […]
The Philosophy of Data Science (series) – Evelyn Ruppert: “Social consequences of Big Data are not being attended to”
For the second interview in our Philosophy of Data Science series, Mark Carrigan interviews Evelyn Ruppert on creating an interdisciplinary forum to discuss the major changes in our relations to data, as subjects, citizens and researchers. The journal Big Data and Society will investigate how data is generated as a part of everyday digital practice and how it is curated, categorised, cleaned, accessed, […]
Participatory workshops with non-academics foster positive social impact and work as a research validation mechanism.
Non-academic research users are often powerless in the decision-making processes for how research is communicated. Jacqueline Priego-Hernandez shares lessons from a knowledge exchange toolkit which aims to address this imbalance through participatory workshops. Drawing on a Freirean approach to learning, interactions between participants and researchers are seen as a key objective in itself. She argues that plans for impact need to be devised for the benefits to […]
Maximising the value of research data: developing incentives and changing cultures
The value of sharing research data is widely recognised by the research community and funders are setting in place stronger policy requirements for researchers to share data. But the costs to researchers in sharing their data can be considerable and the incentives are sometimes few and far between. A recent report from the cross-disciplinary Expert Advisory Group on Data Access […]
Across all fields, Open Access articles in Swedish repository have a higher citation rate than non-OA articles.
Due to differences in citation practices amongst scientific disciplines, existing research on a possible open access citation advantage remains limited. A new study seeks to overcome these limitations by investigating whether there is a possible OA citation advantage across all fields. Lars Kullman presents his findings on cross-field citation comparisons between OA and non-OA articles from the Chalmers University of Technology self-archive repository. The […]
Book Review: What is a Social Movement? by Hank Johnston
Focusing on movement organizations and networks, what they do, and how they articulate their ideas of justice and collective interests, What is a Social Movement? aims to lay the essential groundwork for understanding this significant and exciting field of research, where it came from, and where it is headed. What makes this book so useful is how thoroughly it maps the topography of […]
UK think tanks look to achieve influence first and foremost with academic partners.
The UK has an established and influential think tank sector, with research organisations across the political spectrum providing a constant stream of political and policy ideas, setting the agenda, and influencing the media’s reporting of events. Here, Hartwig Pautz looks at exactly who these organisations communicate with most frequently, and shows that the sector is surprisingly reticent in communicating with elected politicians, […]
The Philosophy of Data Science (series) – Rob Kitchin: “Big data should complement small data, not replace them.”
Over the coming weeks we will be featuring a series of interviews conducted by Mark Carrigan on the nature of ‘big data’ and the opportunities and challenges presented for scholarship with its growing influence. In this first interview, Rob Kitchin elaborates on the specific characteristics of big data, the hype and hubris surrounding its advent, and the distinction between data-driven science and empiricism. What […]