Researchers’ Series Special Topics 2022

The research workflow right now is in a state of evolution. Regardless of whether we are talking about the discovery to analysis to writing phases or from publication to outreach to assessment phases, we are seeing increasingly use of innovative processes and tools to increase efficiency and effectiveness. Part of this is due to the increased use and rapid improvement of machine and deep learning techniques such as use of transformers and pretrained large-scale language models. However, algorithms alone are worth little without data to work on. This is why the recent explosion in innovative discovery tools such as scite, researchrabbit, Elicit.org and more cannot be explained without also understanding the emergence of the open scholarly data that is now made available. In this talk, Aaron will provide an overview of the state of open Scholarly metadata, how it’s been used by some of the emerging popular tools (focusing primarily on discovery tools) and how gaps in coverage may create bias in use of such tools.

About the Speaker

Aaron Tay is currently Data services Lead, Singapore Management University Libraries. His current areas of interests includes Bibliometrics, Discovery, Open Access, and Scholarly communications. Aaron blogs his ideas at https://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com and tweets at @aarontay. He has been honoured with past awards from the Library Association of Singapore, CONSAL, PRRLA, and LJ(Library Journal) for the sharing of ideas on his blog. A founding member of I4OA – Initiative for Open Abstracts https://i4oa.org, he believes in the importance of open data (full text & metadata) and believes that the world will be better off once Scholarly data is freely available for all and is particularly looking forward to see what deep learning algorithms paired with open data can do.

In recent years major progress has been made in achieving full openness of all citations in the scholarly literature. While this is a hugely impressive milestone, it is not enough. We need all publication metadata to be open, not just the citations. I will discuss the importance of open metadata and will provide an overview of ongoing developments in this area. I will also reflect on ways in which openness of publication metadata can be improved and will discuss how each of us, working as a student, a researcher, a librarian, or an administrator, can contribute to this.

About the Speaker

Ludo Waltman is professor of Quantitative Science Studies and deputy director at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University. He is also associate director of the Research on Research Institute. His work focuses on developing new infrastructures, algorithms, and tools to support research assessment, science policy, and scholarly communication. Together with his colleague Nees Jan van Eck, Ludo has developed the well-known VOSviewer software tool for bibliometric visualization. Ludo is coordinator of the CWTS Leiden Ranking, a bibliometric ranking of major universities worldwide. He also coordinates the Initiative for Open Abstracts (I4OA). In addition, Ludo serves as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Quantitative Science Studies.

When early career researchers get advice on their career, they seek it from people with experience. One of the challenges with this is that researchers with experience of getting jobs often got them quite some time ago. Today’s world of research evaluation and tracking is changing ever faster. Success comes from correctly predicting what the requirements will be when you next aim for a job. In this talk I will describe some of the big trends occurring in global research evaluation, with a focus on open data and open access. The talk will aim to provide the audience with a guide to some of the tools and resources that you can use to try and predict how job applications, grant proposals and success will be judged when it matters to them.

About the Speaker

Cameron Neylon is Professor of Research Communication at the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University and well known agitator for opening up the process of research. Over the past decade Neylon has built an international reputation as one of the leading thinkers, technologists, and strategists on open approaches in scholarly communication and research more broadly. He is a highly respected Open Access activist: combining a rigorous background in empirical science with an interest in mechanisms for change across global systems for knowledge creation. Neylon is a sought-after writer, speaker and advisor to companies, funders, research institutions, and governments on the challenges of research management.