Category: Education and Administration

UNIty in diVERSITY talk on “Big Data in the Humanities”

Last week I gave a talk for the UNIty in diVERSITY speaker series on “Big Data in the Humanities.” They have now put that up on Vimeo. The talk looked at the history of reading technologies and then some of the research at U of Alberta we are doing around issues of what to do with all that big data.

CRediT: Open Standard for Roles in Research

The CRediT Project now has a Proposed Taxonomy for assigning credit. They have identified a short list of roles:

  • Conceptualization
  • Methodology
  • Software
  • Validation
  • Formal Analysis
  • Investigation
  • Resources
  • Data Curation
  • Writing – Original Draft
  • Writing – Review and Edit
  • Visualization
  • Supervision
  • Project Administration
  • Funding Acquisiton

They are looking for feedback.

Trans-Atlantic Platform

The Trans-Atlantic Platform: Social Sciences and Humanities is a collaboration among social science and humanities funders in different countries. In their About Us page they describe the purpose of this collaborative platform thus:

This Trans-Atlantic Platform will enhance the ability of funders, research organizations and researchers to engage in transnational dialogue and collaboration. It will identify common challenges and promote a culture of digital scholarship in social science and humanities research. It will facilitate the formation of networks within the social sciences and humanities and help connect them with other disciplines. It will also heighten awareness of the crucial role the social sciences and humanities play in addressing 21st century challenges.

The T-AP is co-chaired by the (then) President of SSRHC and the Netherlands social sciences funding agency. It likewise seems to be co-administered by SSRHC and NWO Social Sciences. The T-AP got funding that helped launch it from the European Commission 7th Framework Programme.

What is interesting is who is in T-AP. The German DFG and Americans NEH/NSF are down as “associated partners”. Brazilian, Canadian, Finish, French, Mexican, Dutch, Portuguese, and UK funding organizations are “key partners.” (See Partners page.)

I also have questions about T-AP:

  • Does this mean we will see more programmes like Digging into Data that can fund teams across countries? Wouldn’t it be great if a project could include the right people rather than the right people in Canada?
  • Or, will we see thematic collaborations like call on Sustainable Urban Development?
  • Will they try to harmonize research data policies?

A World Digital Library Is Coming True!

Robert Darnton has a great essay in The New York Review of Books titled, A World Digital Library Is Coming True! This essay asks about publication and the public interest. He mentions how expensive some journals are getting and how that means that knowledge paid for by the public (through support for research) becomes inaccessible to the very same public which might benefit from the research.

In the US this trend has been counteracted by initiatives to legislate that publicly funded research be made available through some open access venue like PubMed Central. Needless to say lobbyists are fighting such mandates like the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR).

Darnton concludes that “In the long run, journals can be sustained only through a transformation of the economic basis of academic publishing.” He argues for “flipping” the costs and charging processing fees to those who want to publish.

By creating open-access journals, a flipped system directly benefits the public. Anyone can consult the research free of charge online, and libraries are liberated from the spiraling costs of subscriptions. Of course, the publication expenses do not evaporate miraculously, but they are greatly reduced, especially for nonprofit journals, which do not need to satisfy shareholders. The processing fees, which can run to a thousand dollars or more, depending on the complexities of the text and the process of peer review, can be covered in various ways. They are often included in research grants to scientists, and they are increasingly financed by the author’s university or a group of universities.

While I agree on the need to focus on the public good, I worry that “flipping” will limit who gets published. In STEM fields where most research is funded one can build the cost of processing fees into the funding, but in the humanities where much research is not funded, many colleagues will have to pay out of pocket to get published. Darnton mentions how at Harvard (his institution) they have a program that subsidizes processing fees … they would, and therein lies the problem. Those at wealthy institutions will now have an advantage in that they can afford to publish in an environment where publishers need processing fees while those not subsidized (whether private scholars, alternative academics, or instructors) will have to decide if they really can afford to. Creating an economy where it is not the best ideas that get published but those of an elite caste is not a recipe for the public good.

I imagine Darnton recognizes the need for solutions other than processing fees and, in fact, he goes on to talk about the Digital Public Library of America and OpenEdition Books as initiatives that are making monographs available online for free.

I suspect that what will work in the humanities is finding funding for the editorial and publishing functions of journals as a whole rather than individual articles. We have a number of journals in the digital humanities like Digital Humanities Quarterly where the costs of editing and publishing are borne by individuals like Julian Flanders who have made it a labor of love, their universities that support them, and our scholarly association that provides technical support and some funding. DHQ doesn’t charge processing fees which means that all sorts of people who don’t have access to subsidies can be heard. It would be interesting to poll the authors published and see how many have access to processing fee subsidies. It is bad enough that our conferences are expensive to attend, lets not skew the published record.

Which brings me back to the public good. Darnton ends his essay writing about how the DPLA is networking all sorts of collections together. It is not just providing information as a good, but bringing together smaller collections from public libraries and universities. This is one of the possibilities of the internet – that distributed resources can be networked into greater goods rather than having to be centralized. The DPLA doesn’t need to be THE PUBLIC LIBRARY that replaces all libraries the way Amazon is pushing out book stores. The OpenEdition project goes further and offers infrastructure for publishing knowledge to keep costs down for everyone. A combination of centrally supported infrastructure that is used by editors that get local support (and credit) will make more of a difference than processing fees, be more equitable, and do more for public participation, which is a good too.

Research Data Management Week

This week the University of Alberta is running a Research Data Management Week. They have sessions throughout the week. I will be presenting on “Weaving Data Management into Your Research.” The need for discussions around research data management is described on the web page:

New norms and practices are developing around the management of research data. Canada’s research councils are discussing the introduction of data management plans within their application processes. The University of Alberta’s Research Policy now addresses the stewardship of research records, with an emphasis on the long-term preservation of data. An increasing number of scholarly journals are requiring authors to provide access to the data behind their submissions for publication. Data repositories are being established in domains and institutions to support the sharing and preservation of data. The series of talks and workshops that have been organized will help you better prepare for this emerging global research data ecosystem.

The University now has language in the Research Policy that the University will:

Ensure that principles of stewardship are applied to research records, protecting the integrity of the assets.

The Research Records Stewardship Guidance Procedure then identifies concrete responsibilities of researchers.

These policies and the larger issue of information stewardship have become important to infrastructure. See my blog entry about the TC3+ document on Capitalizing on Big Data.

Research Collaborations: Where to start?

Today, I have to say a few words about collaboration at a lunch-time Arts Research Group gathering. I thought I would gather them here:

  • First, collaboration needs to be explicitly discussed to go well. Don’t assume that everyone knows who is doing what or that they share your sense of the goals. Err on the side of saying too much too often.
  • In some cases a formal charter is a good idea. The iterative design of a project charter for interdisciplinary research.
  • One thing you need to work out explicitly is how credit will be apportioned. Discuss it and then follow what you agree to. Always be generous with those with less power than you in the collaboration.
  • Collaborations are not necessarily friendships between like-minded folk. Collaborations often cross disciplines and research practices. Collaborations are often between people with different levels of support, power, and engagement. Try to share support with collaborators (if, for example, you get a grant.) Be ethical in your collaborations with those with less power. Be careful not to ask too much of those not engaged in the whole project.
  • If you want to collaborate with someone ask them. Invite them out for a coffee and explain what you want to do. Try to figure out how this would be useful for them and build that into the collaboration.
  • There are lots of tools you can use for managing communication and collaboration, but none of them are a substitute for regular attention. I frankly find a weekly meeting is the best way to keep things on track.
  • There is lots of advice our there on collaboration and even grants to facilitate developing collaboration. Developing a collaboration takes time, so avail yourself of support to do it.

 

In the Name of Love

From the Jacobin, an article critical of the “Do What You Love” (DWYL) mantra, In the Name of Love. As the MLA wraps up, there have been a lot of articles about adjunct labour in the academy. Graduate students and recent PhDs take on part-time piece work (sessional positions) just to keep alive the dream of a tenure track job. DWYL advice hides the large scale changes that call for political action, not rugged individualism. Who benefits if we all think we are doing what we love? Who is not doing what they love so some of us can?

Finding Life After Academia — and Not Feeling Bad About It

The New York Times has a good story on Finding Life After Academia — and Not Feeling Bad About It. The beginning of the article goes over the usual depressing factoids like

According to a 2011 National Science Foundation survey, 35 percent of doctorate recipients — and 43 percent of those in the humanities — had no commitment for employment at the time of completion. Fewer than half of Ph.D.’s are expected to land tenure-track jobs.

The articles then shifts to moves to try to define careers beyond the tenure track job for Ph.D.’s. For example they mention Katina Rogers Humanities Unbound: Supporting Careers and Scholarship Beyond the Tenure Track (PDF). This report from the Scholarly Communication Institute concludes with,

Equipping graduate students with the skills and literacies needed for 21st century scholarly work—from technical fluency to an understanding of organizational structures—is critical to ensuring continued rigorous and creative research and other work products. Remaining wedded to outmoded systems, including a model of apprenticeship in higher education that reinforces the false assumption that professorship is the only meaningful career for humanities doctoral recipients, does a tremendous disservice to all individuals and organizations that benefit from humanistic perspectives. (p. 21)

The article also mentions a white paper from Stanford on the The Future of the Humanities Ph.D.at Stanford that argues for reduced time to completion and “Redesigning graduate curricula to prepare PhD’s for a diverse array of meaningful, socially productive and personally rewarding careers within and outside the academy.” (p. 1) Finally they mention the Praxis Network which is focused on rethinking graduate training.

Supporting Digital Scholarship

The Tri-Council Agencies (Research councils of Canada) and selected other institutions (going under the rubric TC3+) have released an important Consultation Document titled Capitalizing on Big Data: Toward a Policy Framework for Advancing Digital Scholarship in Canada. You can see a summary blog entry from the CommerceLab, How big data is reshaping the future of digital scholarship in Canada. The document suggest that we have many of the components of a “well-functioning digital infrastructure ecosystem for research and innovation”, but that these are not coordinated and Canada is not keeping up. They propose three initiatives:

  • Establishing a Culture of Stewardship
  • Coordination of Stakeholder Engagement
  • Developing Capacity and Future Funding Parameters

The first initiative is about research data management and something we have been working on the digital humanities for some time. It is great to see a call from our funding agencies.