Monthly Archives: July 2016

On the ownership, portability and accreditation of research |

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“One of the aspects of the Stern review that has attracted the most attention from my Twitter stream is the non-portability of research outputs. What this means is that institutions cannot poach staff from elsewhere and use their outputs to return to REF.

Now, there’s a problem with Stern at the moment in that he doesn’t say what will happen with ECR/Ph.D. student outputs when they move to their first post with a research element. I’m sure that HEFCE will fix this, though, in implementation. Taking that into account, I think this is a very positive step. Why? …”

Review of Julie Thomson Klein, Interdisciplining Digital Humanities: Boundary Work in an Emerging Field

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“The best way to test scholarship is to remove paywalls and put up one’s academic work online. Plagiarists and snobs will scoff at these suggestions. Hence Julie Thompson Klein had to write A Culture of Recognition (144–51). The histrionics regarding the value of web scholarship she documents at the Modern Language Association and the Council of the American Historical Association are worth noting. Thompson Klein’s book is the single most important book on the subject of web scholarship available now and should complement the MLA Handbook….”

Stern review: submit all researchers to next REF | Times Higher Education (THE)

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“The report adds that the weighting for outputs in the REF should stay at 65 per cent, and impact should continue to account for “not…less than 20 per cent”. 

It also recommends that assessment continue to be done primarily on the basis of peer review, but “metrics should be provided to support panel members in their assessment, and panels should be transparent about their use”.”

Private health funds accused of misusing patient data for commercial gain | afr.com

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“The inquiry, for which submissions close on July 29, is examining the benefits and costs of data being shared more widely between public sector agencies, private sector organisations, the research sector, academics and the community…. 

In a submission by Australian Dental Association (ADA) president Dr Rick Olive, the peak body said the way some private health insurers were already behaving should be a warning on the perils of data sharing….

Fintech player Tyro Payments meanwhile called for the right to see, use and share data to be mandated in a clearer way, saying existing rights under the Privacy Act of 1988 were effectively neutered in practice.

Tyro said data sharing would see consumers of financial services “benefit from vastly broader product choice and competitive terms”.

Meanwhile, banks that open access to data and create external application programming interfaces could “benefit because it would enable them to become more of a ‘platform’ for other services”. …”

 

 

 

Faculty Survey Open Educational Resources | Babson College

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“?????Awareness of open educational resources (OER) among U.S. higher education teaching faculty has improved, but still remains less than a majority, according to a new report from the Babson Survey Research Group (BSRG).”

New documentary offers personal stories about the importance of access to medical data | Opensource.com

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“In The Open Patient: Healing through sharing, a powerful new documentary from Red Hat Videos, Steven and Liz share their personal stories about advocating for open medical data that’s available in an easy-to-digest format patients can access to make proper decisions.”

Why Social Science Risks Irrelevance – The Chronicle of Higher Education

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“I believe in the professorial mandate, the deep commitment we must have to giving back knowledge because we get the privilege of being able to spend our days thinking. But that isn’t just a matter of toiling in our worlds and then throwing knowledge out of the ivory tower. It’s not just about making material open and hoping people will come. It’s about actively engaging the very people that we seek to understand, contributing to the communities we spend time analyzing. To treat them respectfully and to understand our moral and ethical responsibility to them….”

What Is SocArXiv? | The Scholarly Kitchen

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“In the wake of these pseudo-controversies [about SSRN], we have SocArXiv. While it has been stated that SocArXiv was in the works prior to the announcement of the SSRN sale to Elsevier, their timing could not be better. They are hoping to capitalize on the growing discontent with SSRN….”

[Note that in the comment section, SocArXiv corrects many inaccuracies in the blog post.]