Month: November 2015

Share data

Open data is research data that can be freely used, reused, and redistributed by anyone. Making research data fully available and broadly accessible encourages researchers to collaborate and share resources, produce new findings, and gain deeper analytical insights into existing research.

Data Services offers support for many data-related activities including: software help, data analysis, management, archiving and sharing, as well as finding, using and acquiring data. Data Services has full-time professional faculty members who offer consultations by appointment to the Mason community as well as workshops and classroom presentations in their area(s) of expertise. For more information, contact Wendy Mann, Head of Data Services, at wmann@gmu.edu.

See below to learn more about the benefits of data sharing and the different resources you can use to support your research and manage your data.

Data Management

  • Data Management Basics (Infoguide) from George Mason University Libraries.  Provides information and tutorials on data management principles, data sharing and archiving of research data.

Data Management Plans

 

Intellectual Property Crash Course

This six episode miniseries by Crash Course producer Stan Muller explores the complex and persistent issue of intellectual property. This series of educational videos discusses the three major elements of intellectual property: copyright, patents, and trademarks. You can access the entire playlist here or watch the individual videos below:

Crash Course Intellectual Property  #1: Introduction to Intellectual Property

Crash Course Intellectual Property #2: Copyright Basics

Crash Course Intellectual Property #3: Copyright, Exceptions, and Fair Use 

Crash Course Intellectual Property #4: Patents, Novelty, and Trolls

Crash Course Intellectual Property #5: Trademarks and Avoiding Consumer Confusion

Crash Course Intellectual Property #6: International IP Law

Global survey of scholarly communication tool usage

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The availability and use of digital tools supporting the research workflow—tools for discovery, analysis, writing, publication, outreach and assessment—has exploded in recent years. Several major companies involved in publishing, distribution, and discovery have entered the “research services” space, along with numerous start-ups, large and small.

Here at George Mason University, for example, tools such as Zotero, Omeka, and PressForward have been developed by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media to help researchers organize, cite, curate, and publish research and collections.

Bianca Kramer and Jeroen Bosman, researchers at Utrecht University Library, are conducting a global survey on the use of digital tools in the research workflow. Kramer and Bosman have developed the “101 Innovations in Scholarly Communications” website, blog, database, examples of workflows, presentations, and posters supporting this project. Kramer and Bosman provide an excellent launching pad to explore the changes underway in research and scholarly communication; their database now includes more than 575 tools.

There are some advantages to participating in the survey:

  • You’ll be able to benchmark yourself against your peers—after completing the survey you can opt in to be provided with a visualization of your use of digital tools compared to your peers.
  • Institutions/universities can receive a customized URL that will allow them to see digital research tool usage within their institution/university.
  • You’ll contribute to the international effort to chart the evolving landscape of scholarly communication.

Anyone carrying out research (from Master’s students to professors), or supporting research (such as librarians, publishers and funders) can participate.

Faculty and students from George Mason University should take the survey from our custom survey ULR, which will allow Mason Publishing and the University Libraries to compare (anonymous) data from Mason peers.

The survey will run until February 2016.

It takes about 10 minutes to complete and you can opt to receive a visual characterization of your workflow compared to that of your peer group via email.

Kramer and Bosman’s report on the survey’s preliminary results indicate that through October 31, 2015, the survey has generated more than 5,373 responses, primarily from faculty and PhD students. Disciplines are fairly well distributed although Life Sciences has taken the lead with 1,903 responses. Kramer and Bosman also reported on the differences, to date, between librarians and researchers (Faculty/PhD students/Postdocs) regarding the use of tools to measure impact, such as Altmetric, Impactstory, Scopus, JCR, and others. Researchers are using traditional impact factor tools while librarians are using or recommending altmetric tools at a higher rate than their researcher counterparts.

For more information on this survey and its results so far: https://101innovations.wordpress.com

From free, open source tools like Zotero, to Thomson Reuters’ EndNote, from Hypothes.is to Google’s Ngram Viewer, the availability of new digital tools is changing the way students, faculty, and other researchers are creating, sharing, and processing information. This revolution is not being televised.

 

University Press Week:

This post is part of the #UPWeek blog tour.

Visit the other University Press blog posts on today’s topic, The Future of Scholarly Publishing:

Indiana University Press

Oxford University Press

University Press of Colorado

University Press of Kansas

University of North Carolina Press

University Press Week and the #UPWeek Blog Tour

University Press Week kicks off today with several University Presses participating in the #UPWeek blog tour. (Mason Publishing/George Mason University Press will participate in the blog tour tomorrow.)

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First, essential reading is University Press of California’s Alison Mudditt’s guest post on the Scholarly Kitchen blog, discussing the important contributions made by University Presses. Alison interviews luminaries such as Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Associate Executive Director and Director of Scholarly Communication, Modern Language Association; Niko Pfund, President and Academic Publisher, Oxford University Press; Jon Cawthorne, Dean of Libraries, West Virginia University; and Leila Salisbury, Director, University Press of Mississippi, to gather insights on the contributions that university presses make to scholarship and scholarly communication. As Alison mentions, its not hard to find articles about the decline or perceived obsolescence of University Presses, but regarding UPs, there is more than meets the eye: more University Presses have opened than closed in recent years, for examples, but it’s the closures (or near closures), that get the attention).

(If you missed Alison’s first post on Scholarly Kitchen, discussing open access and monographs, you can find it here.)

The University Press of Florida takes readers on a brief food tour of Florida and some of the marvelous cookbooks they have published over the years. University Presses are known, and should be known, for their fine publications of academic monographs, but often overlooked are other fine publications by UPs, such as novels, poetry, childrens books, and cookbooks. Here we’ve got such delectable treats as Mango and the Versailles Restaurant Cookbook. This certainly whets our appetite for more University Press books!

The University Press of New England talks about the amazing success of author Marc Solomon and his book, Winning Marriage: The Inside Story of How Same-Sex Couples Took on the Politicians and Pundits—and Won. Here’s an author with a great book, great timing, and the willingness and ability to tirelessly publicize the book. Yes, we love authors like this!

Speaking of meeting the press, the University of Mississippi Press writes about the surprising results of their collaboration with an independent bookstore and a daily newspaper.

Take a POP QUIZ about University Presses and their books, courtesy of the University Press of Kentucky‘s blog. Their quiz reveals surprising facts about members of the Association of American University Presses . I’m not sure if I did good or bad, I guess it all depends, but I answered 7 out of 10 correctly.

University of Nebraska Press, one of those UPs with a great track record of publishing literature, publishes some facts about their staff. Yes, indeed, real people work at University Presses!

University of California Press mentions some of the surprising facts about University Presses, such as their open access books and journals. What, Open Access?! That is surprising!

University of Wisconsin Press talks about some of their mystery fiction. talks about some of their mystery fiction. If you think it’s a mystery why University Presses are publishing murder fiction, you haven’t been paying attention.

The Open Media (R)Evolution

The theme for this year’s International Open Access Week was “Open for Collaboration,” highlighting the ways in which Open Access enables new avenues for collaboration and creativity among and between scholars, researchers, and innovators in all disciplines. Broadening the Open Access movement’s traditional focus on scientific disciplines, Mason’s nationally ranked Forensics Team explored how these themes of collaboration and “openness” have revolutionized the entertainment industry and fundamentally altered the ways in which we create, share, and experience media.

This roundtable discussion, entitled “The Open Media (R)Evolution,” was hosted by the University Libraries on October 22, 2015, as part of George Mason’s seventh annual observance of International Open Access Week.  The students covered topics such as entertainment revenue models in a collaborative world, Open Access and contemporary theater, the curation of online media, and issues of ownership in musical mashups. Forensics Team members leading this discussion were Nathan Leys, government and international politics major; Samuel Abney, communications major; Natalia Castro, integrative studies major; and AK Komanduri, government and international politics major.