Featured Member
- iSchools News
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
Issue #10
Chun-Kai (Karl) Huang
Asia-Pacific Region
Australia
Curtin University
School of Media, Creative Arts & Social Inquiry
iSchools member since 2020
Hello Karl! Please tell us a bit about you!
I am currently the Director of the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI) and Director of the Centre for Culture and Technology (CCAT), at Curtin University. I have been a researcher in COKI since 2018. Prior to joining Curtin, I was lecturer at University of Cape Town, and at University of KwaZulu-Natal before that. I was born in Taiwan but grew up in South Africa after having immigrated there with my parents. I relocated to Perth in 2018 with my partner and three kids. I have a diverse set of research interests with publication records ranging from bibliometrics, open knowledge, open access, statistics, probability and finance.
You completed your PhD in Mathematical Statistics and Probability in 2018, so your current research in the field of scientometrics appears completely logical. What motivated you to enter this field and continue your research at an iSchool?
I have always had great interests in mathematics, numbers, and data! Since joining COKI, I have become closely engaged with open knowledge and open access. This grew my interest in exploring how innovative statistical methods can help us better understand and map the open knowledge landscape. The advancement of open and big data means we are not only dealing with unprecedented volumes of data (which is exciting in its own right), but we are also able to ask more complex and meaningful questions about the processes of knowledge creation and dissemination. I believe that this is a field with huge potential and it is really important for shaping how we evaluate and do research.
Please tell us a bit about your iSchool!
The Information Science Discipline at Curtin is part of the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry (MCASI) under the Faculty of Humanities at Curtin University. The Information Science Discipline, through our Libraries, Archives, Records and Information Science (LARIS) course, we offer one of the three postgraduate programs in library, archives, records, and information studies in Australia. We teach fully online and have students across Australia and abroad. I teach a unit in the program called “Telling Stories with Data” that focuses on equipping students with the data knowledge and tools to tell impactful and meaningful stories. The Information Science Discipline also hosts COKI.
MCASI is a diverse school that also hosts various other discipline areas that are relevant to iSchools, such as Communications, and Journalism and Digital Social Media. It also hosts several other research centres and groups, including the Centre for Culture and Technology, the Centre for Human Rights Education, the TikTok Cultures Research Network, and plays a vital role in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. The school consistently collaborate with both international and local partners, including the Western Australia government, UNESCO, CWTS, the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL), and many government and tertiary education bodies across Africa, Asia, and the Pacific region.
In 2017 the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI) was founded at your iSchool by project leads Professor Cameron Neylon and Professor Lucy Montgomery. Since January of this year you have been its new Director. Can you tell us a bit more about COKI, please?
COKI is a research initiative that is aimed at changing stories that universities tell about themselves, placing open knowledge at the heart of that narrative. It grew out of the frustration that traditional university rankings (and similar evaluations) only reveal very limited aspects of universities and, even more concerning, are driving changes that are not necessary for the better. Universities may be able to regain their social license by operating as open knowledge institutions, with openness and diversity sitting at the core.
To support that narrative, COKI collaborates with the Curtin Institute of Data Science (CIDS) in building and maintaining the Academic Observatory – a cloud-based data infrastructure that integrates diverse open data sources about research and universities. This provides a highly flexible and diverse source of information on which we can perform various analysis at unprecedented scale and detail. This includes large-scale data analysis of open access levels for institutions worldwide (e.g., COKI Open Access Dashboard) and adding new perspectives on how traditional metrics can be used (e.g., citation diversity).
COKI has worked with a diverse cohort of partners to tackle many different real-world challenges. These include working with CWTS on producing the open edition of the Leiden Ranking, building the Book Analytics Dashboards with OAPEN and various partners, providing data analysis for the UNESCO Open Science Outlook, building the data workflow for the State of Open Infrastructures report with Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI), and many more.
Looking at your list of publications, one finds many exciting and socially relevant topics related to academic publishing. What challenges does research in this field entail, and what makes it particularly appealing to you?
We are in a field that is rapidly changing, both technically (e.g., the advancements of big data and AI) and environmentally (e.g., changing policies and evaluation frameworks). This is what makes it both challenging and appealing. We need to stay up to date and always be prepared to learn about new tools and information. At the same time, there will always be exciting new questions to ask and interesting potential solutions to explore!
If you could give just one advice to future information scientists, what would it be?
I remember the advice an old professor once gave me: "Find what drives your passion and devote yourself to it." In today's fast-changing world, where we are drowning in an ocean of information and misinformation, it is increasingly difficult to keep pace. Yet, with passion and devotion, we can still find the light at the end of the tunnel. For me, that passion lies in working with data and solving mathematical/statistical problems. I am devoted to leveraging these skills and the tools at my disposal to make positive contributions and drive meaningful changes.
Thank you very much, Karl!
Featured Members is an iSchools Feature series spotlighting members of iSchools who are part of the development and organization of thought provoking projects or conferences. Please contact admin@ischools-inc.org in case you would like to be featured as well.