ScholCommLab

This blog post is the last of a four part series based on the keynote presentation by Stefanie Haustein at the Swiss Year of Scientometrics


 lecture


 and


 workshop


 series at ETH Zurich on June 7, 2023.

Responsible use of metrics As a last topic, I want to address a very important area that I think for a very long time has been ignored by the scientometric community—namely the use of the metrics that it

Swiss Year of Scientometrics Lecture: Opportunities and Challenges of Scientometrics–Part IV

Olivia Aguiar

The Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) hosted their fifth Scientometrics Summer School (CS

 3

) from September 18-26, 2023 in Leiden, the Netherlands. CS

 3

turns theoretical ideas into hands-on research by engaging scientometrics graduate students with data, methods, and techniques used in the field. ScholCommLab members Chantal Ripp, Maddie Hare, Leigh-Ann Butler, and Rémi Toupin attended this year’s event.

Back to class: Reflections from the 2023 CWTS Summer School

Fatou Bah, master’s student in the ScholCommLab, attended the 2023 Bromley Memorial event in Washington, D.C. alongside invited graduate students from the University of Ottawa (UOttawa).  Organized by the UOttawa Institute for Science, Society &amp; Policy (ISSP) and the George Washington University Institute for International Science &amp;

Fatou Bah on the Bromley Memorial Event

Doctors are moving out of their clinics and taking over the digital world. Many physicians are engaging in digital media, sharing their expertise and opinions on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. But little is known on how doctors are mediating health research on social media.  Noha Atef, a postdoctoral fellow at the ScholCommLab, led a series of qualitative studies on doctors who create video blogs (or vlogs) on YouTube.

Behind the scenes: New research on doctors who vlog

In the slow, unpredictable world of journal publication, preprints—unreviewed published papers—offer a mechanism for rapidly communicating health research with the scholarly community. Historically, media coverage of preprints was discouraged in journalism, due to potential concerns about reporting flawed, biased, or provisional research.

How is emerging health research communicated online?

Our lab is growing! In our Three Questions series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Our latest post features Olivia Aguiar, a lab manager at the ScholCommLab and a doctoral student at Simon Fraser University’s Injury Prevention and Mobility Lab (IPML). In this Q&amp;A, she tells us about creating science comics, interviewing “super seniors,” setting boundaries, and more.

Three questions with… Olivia!

Alice Fleerackers

Six years ago, Juan Pablo Alperin and Stefanie Haustein sat down at a bar in Amsterdam after a full day of participating in a conference. They came for a drink and an opportunity to connect over shared interests, but they left with an ambitious plan that would change both of their careers. On the backs of beer napkins, a project aimed at understanding the societal impact of research with the help of altmetrics started to take shape.

Double tenure: ScholCommLab co-directors celebrate a career milestone together

Our lab is growing! In our Three Questions series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Our latest post features Mario Malički, a former visiting scholar and ongoing collaborator at the ScholCommLab.

Three questions with… Mario!

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. In this week’s post we’re highlighting Cecilia Rozemblum, a PhD student in the ScholCommLab based at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), Argentina. With two degrees under her belt already—one in librarianship and documentation—she’s excited to be almost done her third.

Three questions with… Cecilia!

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Today’s post features Asura Enkhbayar, a PhD student and data scientist at the ScholCommLab.

Three questions with… Asura!

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. This week’s post features Lisa Matthias, a PhD candidate at the Graduate School of North American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. After joining the lab in Spring 2019 to lead a project on opioid science in the news, Lisa stayed on to become the ScholCommLab’s official “perennial” visiting scholar.

Three questions with… Lisa!

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Today, we’re highlighting Alyssa Jeffrey, a first year master’s student in the School of Information Studies at the University of Ottawa and a research assistant at the ScholCommLab.

Three questions with… Alyssa!

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing.

Three questions with… Rémi!

Sanam Ebrahimzadeh, a postdoctoral fellow at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and a research associate at the ScholCommLab. Here, she tells us more about her research—a fascinating blend of work on data sharing, scholarly metrics, accuracy reviews, and more.

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. In today’s post, we spoke with Sanam Ebrahimzadeh, a postdoctoral fellow at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and a research associate at the ScholCommLab. In this post, she tells us more about her research—a fascinating blend of work on data sharing, scholarly metrics, accuracy reviews, and more.

Three questions with…. Sanam!

The internet has made scientific research more available to the public and the media.(Shutterstock) Alice Fleerackers, Simon Fraser University and […]

Alice Fleerackers,

 Simon Fraser University

and Juan Pablo Alperin,

 Simon Fraser University

COVID-19 has not only upended our personal lives, it has dramatically changed scientific research. In response to the rapid spread of the virus, scientists around the world have had to find new ways to collaborate and solve problems, all at speeds previously thought unimaginable.

In the rush for coronavirus information, unreviewed scientific papers are being publicized

In this blog post, Andrea Whiteley summarizes key findings and recommendations from her research with more than 100 participating Community Scholars.

By Andrea Whiteley, with editorial support by Alice Fleerackers

What happens when you provide the community with free access to academic research?  Simon Fraser University (SFU)’s Community Scholars Program (CSP) is a unique initiative that aims to do just that.

A bridge to access research: Reflections on the Community Scholars Program developmental evaluation

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. In today’s post, we’re highlighting Germana Barata, a science communication scholar and practitioner with interests in social media, altmetrics, and science journals.

Three questions with… Germana!

*How did modern science communication begin? How has it evolved from one country to the next? What social, political, and economic forces inspired those changes? * Published this week by ANU Press,

 Communicating Science: A Global Perspective

explores all of these questions and more.

Communicating science: New book explores science communication across the globe

By Alice Fleerackers, with input from Yao-Hua Law, Mario Malički, Luisa Massarani, Chelsea Ratcliff, and François van Schalkwyk

 The annual Scholarly Communications Institute (SCI) offers opportunities for interdisciplinary and international teams to come together to pursue complex projects related to a common theme.

Studying “Pre-Truth” Science: The 2023 Scholarly Communications Institute

By Chantal Ripp, with editorial support by Olivia Aguiar The 90th annual ACFAS conference was held at the Université de […]

By Chantal Ripp, with editorial support by Olivia Aguiar

The 90

 th

annual ACFAS conference was held at the Université de Montréal, HEC Montréal, and Polytechnique Montréal from May 8 to May 12, 2023. Over the years, the ACFAS Congress has become the largest multidisciplinary gathering of Francophone scholars, attracting participants from around the world.

ScholCommLab at ACFAS 2023

By Olivia Aguiar and Alice Fleerackers

During the pandemic, more research was shared openly, more preprints were posted, and we saw an explosion in the public communication of science, particularly in mainstream media. In the long-term, these changes have the potential to foster more open, diverse, and inclusive approaches to research and bolster our capacity to face present and future societal challenges.

Introducing VOICES: Understanding equity and inclusion in open science

“Denying a professor tenure, Harvard sparks a debate over ethnic studies,” reads a

 New York Times

story published in January 2020. “After twice being denied tenure, this Naval Academy professor says she is seeking justice,” a more recent headline proclaims. “Academic tenure: In desperate need of reform or of defenders?” asks another.

Not “collegial” enough: New study examines unsaid criteria in the tenure process

Our lab is growing! In our Three Questions series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing.  This week’s post features Kathleen Gregory, a postdoctoral researcher exploring data citation practices—and the newest member of the ScholCommLab. In this interview, she shares her biggest questions about how researchers use data and offers one simple tip to help with everything from paper writing to home decorating.

Three questions with… Kathleen!

Our lab is growing! In our Three Questions series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Today’s post features Rukhsana Ahmed, an Associate Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Communication at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

Three questions with… Rukhsana!

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Today’s post features Michelle Riedlinger, a senior lecturer in the School of Communication at the Queensland University of Technology and a research associate at the ScholCommLab. In this interview, she shares her experiences collaborating on research across international borders in the midst of a pandemic.

Three questions with… Michelle!

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Today, we’re highlighting Michelle La, a master’s student studying the subculture of sneaker enthusiasts at Simon Fraser University (SFU) and a research assistant at the ScholCommLab.

Three questions with…. Michelle!

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Today, we’re highlighting Isabella Peters, a new research associate at the ScholCommLab and a professor of Web Science at the ZBW Leibniz Information Centre for Economics and CAU Kiel University.

Three questions with… Isabella!

In this keynote presented at the FSCI 2019, Juan Pablo Alperin discusses the role of incentives in opening access to scholarly research.

Juan Pablo Alperin

Keynote presented by Juan Pablo Alperin at FSCI on August 9, 2019.

Overview Introduction The case for open access Barriers to open access The role of incentives What do we know about incentives? The Review, Promotion, and Tenure project Digging further into open access What do the RPT documents ask for? What are we to make of all this?

Would including open scholarship in tenure guidelines move the needle?

“We want to support the evidence-based development of metrics that are appropriate and well thought-out instead of repeating mistakes of the past by creating more flawed indicators.”

Stefanie Haustein wins Alfred P. Sloan Foundation research grant of $200K US

Have you ever wondered what motivates researchers to reuse open data and what makes them cite (or not cite) datasets in their work? Or how sharing, reusing and citing open data differs between research areas or changes during a researcher’s career?

ScholCommLab co-director receives funding to analyze patterns of how research data is cited and reused

Do academics use emojis on Twitter? Stefanie Haustein analyzed more than 40 million tweets mentioning scientific journal articles, preprints, conference proceedings, and other documents to find out.

“Should there be an emoji for everything?” asked journalist Sophie Haigney in a recent

 New Yorker

article. “What, exactly, do we want from our emojis?” The future of the emoji may be uncertain, but one thing is abundantly clear. Emojis are booming. From classic smiley faces to dancing “party parrots,” there are now almost 3,000 options to choose from. They fill our text messages, our Slack chats, our emails—even some of our books.

Emojis in Scholarly Communication: 🔥 or 💩?

By Juan Pablo Alperin, Esteban Morales and Erin McKiernan.  First published on the LSE Impact Blog on July 17, 2019.

By Juan Pablo Alperin, Esteban Morales and Erin McKiernan.  First published on the LSE Impact Blog on July 17, 2019.
 

The language of Open Access (OA) is littered with so many colours, metals, and precious stones, that you would be forgiven for losing track.

Academic review promotion and tenure documents promote a view of open access that is at odds with the wider academic community

A new study finds a surprising number of Open Access journals “reverse flip” back to closed access. Co-author Lisa Matthias tells us all about it.

It all started with a tweet. Scholarly communications analyst Najko Jahn was exploring the library catalogues of Springer Nature when he stumbled across something he hadn’t noticed before.

Meet the reverse flip journal: Q&amp;A with Lisa Matthias

Three students share their thoughts on the President’s Dream Colloquium on Making Knowledge Public.

First published on February 28, 2019 on the Radical Access Blog.
 

Changing the academic system to be more accessible “You shouldn’t have to pay a large sum of tuition to have access to basic information,” Melissa Roach says when I ask her what she’d like to change about our academic system.

Making Knowledge Public: Student reflections on the 2018 President’s Dream Colloquium

How can scholars communicate their work in more accessible, engaging ways? Where should they publish and promote their findings? What does “research communication” actually mean? On Tuesday, January 15, ScholCommLab researcher Michelle La will explore these questions and more in a short talk at SFU’s Graduate and Postdoctoral Student Photo Reception.

Why Research Communication Matters – Q&amp;A with Michelle La

How do we measure the impact of research? And how can we learn to do it better? From September 12 to 14, the ScholCommLab’s Asura Enkhbayar will attend STI 2018, an international bibliometrics and scientiometrics conference dedicated to answering these questions.

Q&amp;A with Asura Enkhbayar: Looking Ahead to STI 2018

Starting this week, ScholCommLab co-director Stefanie Haustein is publishing a series of guest posts on the Altmetric Blog about the role of Twitter in scholarly communication. Read on for a small taste of what to expect, and find the whole series at at altmetric.com/blog/.
 

It’s almost been a decade since altmetrics and social media-based metrics were introduced.

Stefanie Haustein on the Altmetric Blog

Earlier this year, the ImpactStory team of Heather Piwowar and Jason Priem launched Unpaywall, a new browser extension that helps users find free, easy-to-access research. Since officially launching in April, Unpaywall has been installed by over 85,000 users who have collectively made over 75 million requests.

The number and proportion of freely available articles is growing; reaching 45% of the literature published in 2015

Our lab is growing! In our Three Questions series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Today’s post features Natascha Chtena, a postdoctoral fellow and research coordinator for the Value of Openness, Inclusion, Communication, and Engagement for Science in a Post-Pandemic World (VOICES) project at the ScholCommLab.

Three questions with… Natascha!

Our lab is growing! In our Three Questions series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Today we’re highlighting Heather Woods, a part-time professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa, researcher and podcaster in Social Emotional Learning, and member of the ScholCommLab.

Three questions with… Heather!

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing—starting with DeDe Dawson. An Associate Librarian at the University of Saskatchewan, DeDe is a visiting scholar with the lab who is passionate about scholarly communication, open access, and advocating for a transition to more equitable and sustainable journal publishing models.

Three questions with…. DeDe!

Designed to support “innovators developing prototypes or community projects to improve open science and research communication,” the eLife Innovation Program offers a mix of expert advice, presentations by guest speakers, collaborative workshopping, homework assignments, mentorship, and more.

Stefanie Haustein was scrolling through her feed when she stumbled on it. A tweet from eLife Innovation promoting a program called “Open Innovation Leaders.” It promised design thinking, open communications, and sustainability—all with only a two hour per week time commitment. Intrigued, she clicked through. Three months later, Stefanie is five weeks deep into what is fast becoming a favourite part of her work week.

ScholCommLab Co-director Goes Back to School: Open Innovation Leaders 2020

In the last of our four-part series documenting the methodological challenges we faced during our project investigating preprint growth and uptake, we turn to the metadata of arXiv’s Quantitative Biology section.

By Mario Malički, Maria Janina Sarol, and Juan Pablo Alperin


 This blog post is the last of a four part series documenting the methodological challenges we faced during our


 project

*investigating preprint growth and uptake.

Analyzing preprints: The challenges of working with metadata from arXiv’s Quantitative Biology section

Keynote presented by Juan Pablo Alperin at the first


 
 United Nations Open Science Conference
 


 on November 19, 2019, organized by the UN


 Dag Hammarskjöld Library


 and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (


 SPARC


 ).

Good morning.

Policies and Incentives for Open Scholarly Communication

Working with preprint metadata? As we highlight in this post, OSF’s preprint servers might not be the best place to start.

By Mario Malički, Maria Janina Sarol, and Juan Pablo Alperin


 This blog post is the second in a four part series documenting the methodological challenges we faced during our


 project


 investigating preprint growth and uptake.

Analyzing preprints: The challenges of working with OSF metadata

How much research shared on Facebook is hidden from public view? In this blog post, we highlight key findings from a new study investigating this question and what they mean for scholarly communications and altmetrics research.

“I hope that the kind of altmetrics research that has been going on lately is dying out,” says Asura Enkhbayar, in a conversation about the ScholCommLab’s latest preprint.

Altmetrics researchers: Time to take another look at Facebook, you’ve been missing something

This July, ScholCommLab’s Stefanie Haustein attended the sixth ever Brazilian Meeting on Bibliometrics and Scientometrics in Rio de Janeiro. In this short Q&amp;A, she shares highlights from the event, including a keynote presentation about her work on Twitter and scholarly communication, connections with researchers from around the world, and a healthy dose of delicious Brazilian cocktails.

Highlights from the Brazilian Meeting on Bibliometrics and Scientometrics

Why do we make bad political decisions, and how do we make better ones? On Thursday, June 21, ScholCommLabber David Moscrop will unpack these questions and more on the TEDxYYC stage. Drawing from his own and others’ research, as well as from his personal experiences as a media commentator, he’ll examine the way our current democratic system functions—or, rather,

 dysfunctions—

and how it could be improved in the future.

Preview: David Moscrop at TEDxYYC

College Libraries and Chemical Education

This blog post is the third in a four part series based on the keynote presentation by Stefanie Haustein at the Swiss Year of Scientometrics


 lecture


 and


 workshop


 series at ETH Zurich on June 7, 2023.

Swiss Year of Scientometrics Lecture: Opportunities and Challenges of Scientometrics–Part III

In our digital era, scientists are certainly sharing and reusing open data. Yet it remains unclear how widespread data reuse and citation practices are within academic disciplines, and why scientists cite—or do not cite—data in their research work.

New preprint explores tracing data reuse and citations

Our lab is growing! In our Three Questions series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. This week’s post highlights Marc-André Simard, a doctoral student in Information Science at the University of Montreal and member of the ScholCommLab. In this post, he shares his thoughts on work in the lab, the global use of open access literature, and stepping out of his comfort zones.

Three questions with… Marc-André!

Scholarly metrics are widely applied to assess research quality and impact despite their known limitations. One of the most popular scholarly metrics is the h-index—which is defined as the “

 h

number of papers with at least

 h

number of citations.” This means that if a researcher has an h-index of 12, they have published 12 papers with at least 12 citations each.

Becoming Metrics Literate: New Study Examines Videos on the H-index

From data sharing mandates to clinical trial registration, Open Science (OS) policies for biomedical research are in no short supply. But ensuring those policies become real-world practices can be a challenge—particularly when there’s no simple way to measure success.

Turning policy into practice: The Biomedical Research Open Science Dashboard project

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. In this week’s post, PhD student and writer Alice Fleerackers shares her thoughts on managing the ScholCommLab blog, learning through collaboration, and letting commitments go.  Q#1 What are you working on at the lab?  The TLDR version? I communicate research and I research communication.

Three questions with… Alice!

Three questions with… Isabelle!

Press release originally published by Simon Fraser University on January 6, 2021

A new SFU-led study finds that almost half of media stories in early 2020 featuring COVID-19 ‘preprint’ research—research that has not yet been peer-reviewed—accurately framed the studies as being preprints or unverified research.

Almost half of media stories fail to label ‘preprint’ COVID-19 research

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Today, we’re highlighting Lina Marie Harper: a master’s student in Information Science at the University of Ottawa, a researcher at the ScholCommLab, and the proud owner of a “chiweenie” (part Dachshund, part Chihuahua). In this post, she tells us about the joys of open data, graduate school, true crime, and more.

Three questions with…Lina!

Three questions with…Esteban!

This post is a collaboration between ScholCommLab member Alice Fleerackers and SFU Knowledge Mobilization Officer Lupin Battersby. It was first published on November 18, 2020 at SFU Library’s Radical Access blog and has been reposted here with permission.
 

Curious about research blogging, but not sure where to start? In this post, we answer common questions about why, when, and where to blog about research.

Blogging your research: Tips for getting started

Data management is a core aspect of the research process, helping scholars organize their work, share it with others, and collaborate effectively.

Managing research data: A beginner’s guide

“I am convinced that openness and transparency make research outputs and outcomes better,” says Stefanie Haustein when asked what motivates her to practice open scholarship. “Knowledge produced by the scholarly community should be open to all, not hidden behind paywalls.”

Stefanie Haustein wins uOttawa Library Open Scholarship Award

Once all but unknown to anyone but economics or high energy physics researchers, preprints are becoming more popular across the disciplinary spectrum. These unreviewed reports allow scholars to share their work with the wider research community as soon as it is finished, without having to navigate what can sometimes become a lengthy peer review process.

Preprint comments: A place for praise, critique, and everything in between

As governments across the world grapple with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, several other urgent crises have taken a back seat.  Among them is the opioid epidemic. Here in Vancouver, BC, where almost half of our team is based, the effects of this second, fatal crisis are visible every day. Just this May, our province reported a record-breaking number of overdose-related deaths: 170 in a single month, or about 5.5 a day.

New study: Tracking opioid science in the news

By Mario Malički and Juan Pablo Alperin This blog post is inspired by our four part series documenting the methodological […]

By Mario Malički and Juan Pablo Alperin


 This blog post is inspired by our


 four part series


 documenting the methodological challenges we faced during our


 project

*investigating preprint growth and uptake. * Interested in creating or improving a preprint server?

Four recommendations for improving preprint metadata

This month, lab members took part in three conferences: the Canadian Science Policy Conference in Ottawa, the United Nations Open Science Conference, and the PKP 2019 International Scholarly Publishing Conference in Barcelona.

It’s been a busy November for the ScholCommLab! This month, lab members took part in three conferences: the Canadian Science Policy Conference in Ottawa, the United Nations Open Science Conference, and the PKP 2019 International Scholarly Publishing Conference in Barcelona. For those who couldn’t make it, we’re sharing highlights from each event, right here on the blog.

ScholCommLab November Conference Blitz

Keynote presented by Juan Pablo Alperin for Open Education 2019: Transforming Teaching &amp; Learning at SFU on May 27, 2019.

Keynote presented by Juan Pablo Alperin for


 Open Education 2019: Transforming Teaching &amp; Learning at SFU

*on May 27, 2019. * Overview Introduction Public purpose of higher education Why do I practice Open Pedagogy? Student feedback on Open Pedagogy   Introduction I want to begin by acknowledging that I am not an expert on Open Pedagogy, nor, as I will show you, am I the greatest educator.

Keynote Talk: Open Education 2019

This blog post is the third in a four part series documenting the methodological challenges we faced during our project investigating preprint growth and uptake.

By Mario Malički, Maria Janina Sarol, and Juan Pablo Alperin


 This blog post is the third in a four part series documenting the methodological challenges we faced during our


 project


 investigating preprint growth and uptake.

Analyzing Preprints: The challenges of working with metadata from bioRxiv

How do social annotation tools help students learn? We conducted research in three unique university classrooms to find out.

By Alice Fleerackers, Juan Pablo Alperin, Esteban Morales, and Remi Kalir
 

Picture the last time you sat down to read an article for class. If your university experience was anything like most students’, chances are, you were alone. While solitary reading has benefits and is a common aspect of learning in higher education, it may not be the most effective way to read.

Comment, reply, repeat: Engaging students with social annotation

Looking Ahead to SCW18’s “How I Scicomm” Panel What does it mean to be a science communicator in 2018?

Looking Ahead to SCW18’s “How I Scicomm” Panel
 

What does it mean to be a science communicator in 2018? With new apps and social platforms emerging each year, Canada’s media landscape is rapidly transforming—as is the way we share and consume research. But how are these changes affecting today’s science communicators? What challenges and opportunities do they present?

Unpacking the Social Side of Science Communication

Which researchers preprint more than others in their network? In which research fields is preprinting growing in popularity, and in which fields is adoption disproportionately low?

“Academic life” by uonottingham is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0  “For researchers, there is immense pressure to publish in journals that are highly competitive,” says Naomi Penfold, associate director of the scientist-driven nonprofit ASAPbio.

To preprint or not to preprint? Research for a more transparent publishing system

Published April 8, 2019 by Kate Shuttleworth on the Radical Access Blog

The University of California recently took a bold step in support of open access publishing by terminating subscriptions with Elsevier, the world’s largest scientific publisher. We asked SFU Faculty for their thoughts on the cancellation and what this means for open access. What happened?

SFU Faculty perspectives on open access and the University of California’s Elsevier cancellation

“What might be possible for us if we were to retain the social commitment that motivates our critical work, while stepping off the field of competition?” Kathleen Fitzpatrick asked a rapt audience at SFU’s Harbour Centre last Wednesday, “We would have to open ourselves to the possibility that our ideas might be wrong.”  Fitzpatrick is Director of Digital Humanities at Michigan State University, the former Director of Scholarly Communication at

Kathleen Fitzpatrick on the Power of Generous Thinking

What does making research knowledge public mean to you? We asked Juan Pablo Alperin and Hannah McGregor—winners of a new award for public scholarship—to share their thoughts.

“Sometimes people need to be told that your work is for them, or invited in some way,” says Hannah McGregor, an assistant professor in Simon Fraser University’s Publishing Department and the host and producer of the podcast

 Secret Feminist Agenda

. “There are lots of ways to invite people into your work, but I think one of the best is to think about the kind of language and media that you use.” The podcast, which she describes as “a

Making Research Knowledge Public Award | Interview with recipients Hannah McGregor and Juan Pablo Alperin

From May 16 to 18, the ScholCommLab’s Research Associate Dr. Katherine Reilly and Carol Muñoz Nieves attended RightsCon Toronto, an international event that brought together policy makers, human rights advocates, business leaders, scholars, and others to tackle leading human rights issues in the digital age.

Key Takeaways from RightsCon Toronto 2018

Over the last few months, ScholCommLab members took part in over six conferences, including the: International Conference on Science, Technology, and Innovation Indicators (STI 2023), International Communication Association Conference (ICA 2023), and Bibliometrics and Research Impact Community Conference (BRIC 2023).  In this blog post, we’re sharing highlights from each event.

From Ottawa to Leiden: ScholCommLab’s Conference Highlights

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Today, we’re highlighting Lauren Maggio, a professor of medicine and associate director of scholarly communication at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

Three questions with… Lauren!

This September, the 26th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (STI 2022) was held in Granada, Spain and the ScholCommLab left its mark at the first in-person edition of the conference since the COVID-19 pandemic.

(Re)connecting in Granada: Attending the 2022 International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators

The review, promotion, and tenure (RPT) process is central to academic life and workplace advancement. It influences where faculty direct their attention, research, and publications. By unveiling the RPT process, we can inform actions that lead towards a greater opening of research.

Rethinking Research Assessment for the Greater Good: Findings from the RPT Project

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Today, we’re highlighting Noha Atef, a postdoctoral media researcher at the ScholCommLab working at the intersection of social media, citizen media, journalism, and health communication.

Three questions with… Noha!

Why It Takes a Village to Manage and Share Data

This blog post is the second in a four part series based on the keynote presentation by Stefanie Haustein at the Swiss Year of Scientometrics


 lecture


 and


 workshop


 series at ETH Zurich on June 7, 2023.

Swiss Year of Scientometrics Lecture: Opportunities and Challenges of Scientometrics–Part II

Keynote presented by Juan Pablo Alperin at the 13th annual EBSI-SIS Information Science Symposium on April 28, 2021.

Thank you very much for this invitation. Before I begin, let me begin by acknowledging that I am speaking to you from the traditional unceded territories of the Coast Salish people, including the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ təməxʷ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Keynote talk: The most innovative methods are sometimes the simplest

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Today, we’re highlighting Leigh-Ann Butler, a master’s student at the University of Ottawa’s School of Information Studies, a Policy Analyst at the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and a research assistant at the ScholCommLab.

Three questions with…Leigh-Ann!

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Today, we’re highlighting Erica Morissette, a master’s student in Information Studies at the University of Ottawa, a researcher at the ScholCommLab, and a self declared “nature nerd.”

Three questions with …. Erica!

Our lab is growing! In our Three Questions series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Today’s post features Maddie Hare, a doctoral student in the Digital Transformation and Innovation (DTI) Program at the University of Ottawa—and the newest member of the ScholCommLab.

Three questions with… Maddie!

By Alice Fleerackers (Simon Fraser University) and Lauren A Maggio (Uniformed Services University of the Health Science)

A story on gender inequity in scientific research industries. A deep dive into the daily rhythms of the immune system. A look at vaccine effectiveness for COVID-19 variants.

Journalists reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic relied on research that had yet to be peer&nbsp;reviewed

Our lab is growing! In our

 Three Questions

series, we’re profiling each of our members and the amazing work they’re doing. Today, we’re highlighting Anton Ninkov, a recent graduate of Western University’s PhD in Library and Information Science program and the ScholCommLab’s newest postdoctoral fellow. In this post, he tells us more about what he’s up to inside and outside of the lab.

Three questions with… Anton!

To mark 10 years of Open Access Week, ScholCommLab co-director Stefanie Haustein explores recent trends in open access and scholarly communication.

This week marks the 10 year anniversary of Open Access Week—a global event that strives “to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.” In celebration of this momentous occasion, the University of Ottawa Library asked ScholCommLab co-director Stefanie Haustein about recent trends in open access and scholarly communication.

OAEvolution: Trends in Open Access and Scholarly Communications

Key takeaways from this year’s FORCE11 Scholarly Communication Institute—a jam-packed week of learning, discussion, and celebration of all aspects of scholarly communication.

Each year in August, researchers, librarians, educators, students, and open access advocates gather together for the FORCE11 Scholarly Communication Institute (“FSCI”)—a jam-packed week of learning, discussion, and celebration of all aspects of scholarly communication. This year, I was lucky enough to be one of them—thanks to a generous travel scholarship. The experience was one I’ll never forget.

Scholarly Communications Lab | ScholCommLab

Three questions with…. Michelle!