Issue #78 by Michael Seadle Joris van Rossum wrote a guest post for the Scholarly Kitchen on 23 May 2024. His topic was the STM Integrity Hub, which was launched in May 2022 by a number of major scholarly “publishers including Elsevier, Frontiers, Springer Nature, and Wiley”. He writes that the integrity problems are getting worse: “Last year saw a record number of retractions and publishers continue to receive submissions from papermills. Generative AI compounds those problems by making research misconduct easier through the fabrication of data, images and text. What is particularly concerning is that such fabricated data are largely undetectable with current tools, which are based on the detection of duplication and manipulation of existing content …”.¹ On the positive side he reports that “STM Integrity Hub [now has] more than 35 supporting organizations (including all the major submission systems) and over 100 people participating in working groups, task forces, and governance structure — making it a truly community-driven initiative.”¹ The hub began with two specific services: a “Paper Mill Checker Tool [that] was the first service that we made available to publishers” and a “Duplicate Submission Checker Tool [that] started in the form of a pilot in October of last year.”¹ Rossum praises the result of the latter: “With a throughput of 20K manuscripts per month, the detection rate of a duplicate submission is over 1% … The duplicate submission checker is now checking for duplicates on the level of metadata, but we are moving to full text this year, making use of a technology developed by one of the participating publishers.”¹ Paper mills and duplicate submissions are certainly problems, especially for the publishers. What is missing in this Scholarly Kitchen post is information about any specific discussion about detecting fake data created either by generative AI or by more conventional means. Fake data damages scientific results more than merely duplicating papers. Dealing with the paper mills could help, because their editorial control over data is typically poor. Even so, the STM Integrity Hub focuses on problems that publishers see, rather than the quality concerns of scholars. Perhaps its next iteration will go deeper into data and analysis problems. 1:  Rossum, Joris van. “Guest Post: The STM Integrity Hub - Connecting the Dots in a Dynamic Landscape.” The Scholarly Kitchen, May 23, 2024. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2024/05/23/guest-post-the-research-integrity-hub-connecting-the-dots-in-a-dynamic-landscape/.

The iSchools Doctoral Dissertation Award is a prestigious annual competition introduced in 2013 that recognizes outstanding work in the information field. Nominations are solicited from all members of the iSchools organization and judged by a committee drawn from leading international schools. The iSchools Organization is proud to announce the winner of the 2024 Doctoral Dissertation Award: Wuyang Chen (The University of Texas at Austin, United States of America) nominated by Prof. Zhangyang Wang for the Dissertation "Demystifying Deep Network Architectures: from Theory to Applications" won the Award in this year's very close competition. Runner up is Jinkyung Katie Park (Rutgers University, United States of America) nominated by Prof. Vivek Singh for the dissertation "Design Intervention to Reduce Online Incivility". Dr. Wuyang Chen is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Computing Science at Simon Fraser University. He was a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, and obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2023. Dr. Chen’s research focuses on the theoretical understanding of deep networks and applications in foundation models, AutoML, computer vision, and scientific machine learning. His work on training-free neural architecture search was highlighted as a “Featured Advance in Artificial Intelligence” in the National Science Foundation newsletter. Jinkyung Katie Park is a Postdoctoral Scholar at Vanderbilt University. She will join the School of Computing at Clemson University as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Fall 2024. She received her Ph.D. degree in Information Science from Rutgers University in 2022. Her research focuses on Human-Computer interaction (HCI) to promote the online safety of vulnerable populations. By applying two broad approaches, human-centered design and human-centered AI, she explores the digital lives of individuals and designs sociotechnical systems that promote the digital well-being of users, while respecting their human values and needs. The winner of the 2024 Doctoral Dissertation Award receives a cash prize of USD 2,500; the runner up receives USD 1,000. The iSchools Organization would like to thank the Doctoral Dissertation Award Committee Members Kimiz Dalkir (McGill University), Jia Tina Du (Charles Sturt University), Emi Ishita (Kyushu University), Michelle Kazmer (Florida State University), Håkon Larsen (OsloMet) and António Lucas Soares (University of Porto) for their outstanding work and support for the iSchools community. A special thanks goes to the external experts Jingrui He (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Jaap Kamps (University of Amsterdam) and Taro Tezuk (University of Tsukuba) for their expert reviews. The Doctoral Dissertation Award is given annually. The submission phase for 2025 will be announced soon. More information about current and past Award winners can be found at the iSchools Doctoral Dissertation Award website. .

"Eric T. Meyer has been appointed dean of the UC Berkeley School of Information and will begin his new job on Aug. 1. He comes to Berkeley from the University of Texas at Austin, where he has been dean of the School of Information since 2018. Throughout his career, Dean Meyer has championed interdisciplinary scholarship, effectively bridging gaps between diverse academic fields and uniting researchers from various disciplinary backgrounds. Meyer’s ability to foster interdisciplinary collaboration will be a cornerstone of his leadership as dean of the I School. [...] An anthropologist at heart, Meyer holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Ohio University and a master’s degree in cultural anthropology from UC Santa Barbara, in addition to a Ph.D. in information science from Indiana University. He plans to spend his first few months at Berkeley being a participant observer to learn what the campus community is about, what values it holds, what kinds of research is important here, and what kind of educational opportunities it offers. [...] During his tenure at UT Austin, expanding justice and opportunity was a major priority for Meyer. He emphasizes community engagement and strives to develop innovative, locally relevant solutions. Over the past six years, Meyer and his team of faculty and staff members at the UT Austin iSchool have developed and enhanced academic programs, leading the school to become the first in UT history to transition from offering graduate-only education to providing a full range of undergraduate and graduate degrees." Eric T. Meyer is also well known to the iSchools community. Meyer served as treasurer of the iSchools organization until 2023. News provided by Eric T. Meyer and the Berkeley iSchool Communications-Team, University of California Berkeley, School of Information

Issue #77 by Michael Seadle Fake data is the most serious type of research integrity problem, because science builds on past results and when those results are false, the foundation becomes shaky. The problem is not new, but the amount of faked data and the sources of the fakes seem to keep growing. In the Retraction Watch blog on 23 May 2024, Dawn Attride wrote a post about “‘Lab Shenanigans’: TikTok Influencer Faked Data, Feds Say.” Darrion Nguyen has already confessed publicly: “‘I was in a lab environment where I was mentally struggling, and I took several shortcuts to produce more data. This stemmed from the fear of my [principal investigator], the pressure to meet expectations to keep my job as a technician, and my personal struggles to keep up with the demands of that lab,’ Nguyen told Retraction Watch. He said his situation underscores the dangers of the “publish or perish” culture prominent in academia.”¹ The fake data involved “... the number of mice used, their interactions, as well as enhanced mice brain measurements and symptom severity, according to the agency.”¹ His punishment was “... to have his research supervised for three years, and must submit supervision plans and certification of evidence … .”¹ A Science article by Jeffrey Brainard  discusses “Hundreds of Cancer Papers Mention Cell Lines That Don’t Seem to Exist.”² He writes: “... a recent study investigating eight cell lines that are consistently misspelled across 420 papers published from 2004 to 2023, including in highly ranked journals in cancer research. Some of the misspellings may have been inadvertent errors, but a subset of 235 papers provided details about seven of the eight lines that indicate the reported experiments weren’t actually conducted …”² Concern about this is widely international: “Chao Shen, a cell biologist at Wuhan University and deputy director of the China Center for Type Culture Collection, a repository of human cell lines, hopes the findings gain attention.”² Jennifer Byrne from the University of Sydney “speculates that paper mill writers may have copied the misspelled names from otherwise legitimate papers … Byrne’s team identified a total of 23 misspelled lines but limited its analysis to eight mentioned in 420 papers to keep the workload manageable.”² The good news is the serious international cooperation to uncover the problem. A similar effort is needed to address the pressure that causes the problem. 1:  Attride, Dawn. “‘Lab Shenanigans’: TikTok Influencer Faked Data, Feds Say.” Retraction Watch (blog), May 23, 2024. https://retractionwatch.com/2024/05/23/lab-shenanigans-tiktok-influencer-faked-data-feds-say/. 2:  Brainard, Jeffrey. “Hundreds of Cancer Papers Mention Cell Lines That Don’t Seem to Exist.” Accessed May 26, 2024. https://www.science.org/content/article/hundreds-cancer-papers-mention-cell-lines-don-t-seem-exist.

Issue #76 by Michael Seadle According to a Retraction Watch post by Ivan Oransky on 14 May 2024, “[a] group of researchers is taking Nature to task for publishing a paper earlier this month about Google DeepMind’s protein folding prediction program without requiring the authors publish the code behind the work.”¹ The issue is whether the new Artificial Intelligence tool “AlphaFold3” can reliably predict the behaviour of complex molecules such as DNA and RNA. The authors of the complaint write: ““the model’s limited availability on a hosted web server, capped at ten predictions per day, restricts the scientific community’s capacity to verify the broad claims of the findings or apply the predictions on a large scale. Specifically, the inability to make predictions on novel organic molecules akin to chemical probes and drugs, one of the central claims of the paper, makes it impossible to test or use this method.””¹ Nature editor in chief Magdalena Skipper told Retraction Watch: ““While seeking to enhance transparency at every opportunity, Nature accepts that there may be circumstances under which research data or code are not openly available. When making a decision on data and code availability, we reflect on many different factors, including the potential implications for biosecurity and the ethical challenges this presents.””¹ What remains unclear is what exactly is at stake other than Google’s proprietary interest in restricting access to its code. Nature’s policy raises a larger question for the research community: under what circumstances is it legitimate to keep the basis for claims in a scholarly article from the people reviewing the article for its validity. It is easy to imagine less open companies than Google hampering reviewers access to the necessary information to judge reliability by refusing essential information. It also raises questions about whether artificial intelligence tools in general should be allowed to be exempt from the normal rules of peer review, since a peer reviewer cannot reasonably make a judgement about a black box system. 1:  Oransky, Ivan, Nature earns ire over lack of code availability for Google DeepMind protein folding paper. Retraction Watch, 14 May 2024 https://retractionwatch.com/2024/05/14/nature-earns-ire-over-lack-of-code-availability-for-google-deepmind-protein-folding-paper/

University of Amsterdam, Media Studies - Archival & Information Studies Application Deadline: 14 June 2024 In the context of the sector plan for the Humanities titled ‘Tradition in transition’, the faculty currently has a vacant Assistant Professor position as part of the research theme Cultural Heritage and Identity. Within this research theme the focus is on material and immaterial heritage, including Digital Humanities, and on cultural heritage and societal changes. For this position, the Department of Media Studies is specifically looking for a researcher who has the ambition to develop a critical humanities research agenda in archival studies.

University of Strathclyde, Computer and Information Sciences Application Deadline: 16 June 2024 The Department of Computer and Information Sciences (CIS) seeks to appoint an energetic, highly motivated Research Associate in Human-AI Interaction to make a leading contribution to the project “Participatory Harm Auditing Workbenches and Methodologies (PHAWM)”. As part of this, the candidate is expected to organise focus groups of people who use cultural heritage material, design prototype interfaces for Explainable Gen-AI, and evaluate them for auditing misrepresentations, such as hallucinations, historical bias arising from the data, or lack of consideration of the context in which historical events have occurred.

For its educational programming and advocacy work in support of the right to read, the Missouri Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee (IFC) has been named the 2023 recipient of the Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award. The award is given annually by the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and is cosponsored by Sage, a global academic publisher of books, journals, and library resources. Around five years ago, the IFC created an Introduction to Intellectual Freedom Workshop. The free workshop covers the basics and history of intellectual freedom and the rights of patrons and the values of library workers. It can be modified from one to three hours and offers scenarios from events that have occurred in Missouri libraries. These workshops have been presented to libraries and at board meetings and conferences across Missouri and in several states. Members of the IFC spend significant time—often vacation time—traveling to locations that have requested training. News submitted by Cindy Brya, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, School of Information Sciences

2023/2024 has been a highly productive year in scholarship for the LIS faculty of the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Rutgers LIS faculty received Best Paper Awards and Prices from leading conferences and journals and gained funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the US Department of Transportation and the KONE Foundation Award. News submitted by Brenda Sheridan, School of Communication and Information at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

In the burgeoning era of artificial intelligence (AI), partnership among academia, government, and the tech industry is emerging as a template for responsible innovation and implementation. How can such an alliance best harness AI’s potential? [...] Universities have long been the bedrock of theoretical exploration and discovery. They are the birthplace of AI, where algorithms leapt from chalk-dusted blackboards into the digital realm. [...] Government can serve as a regulator, a facilitator, and at times a catalyst for innovation. By establishing clear guidelines, governments can foster an environment where AI is deployed safely and ethically. They hold the key to ensuring that AI serves the common good, protects privacy, and promotes equity. [...] A recent capstone project conducted by graduate students at Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy showcases the possibility of progress when innovative students partner with a not-for-profit organization like the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). Designed to improve on the Congress.gov website, the students built a tool that utilizes ChatGPT’s large language model (LLM) technology to do more effective search and analysis. Their goal was to improve the search function to help (for example) a legislative analyst to research relevant congressional documents. [...] The students built on the work of a previous capstone project from the spring of 2023; the initial team of students conducted user research interviews, identified use cases, and developed a desktop application that would summarize a bill. In the fall of 2023, the most recent team - Li-li Chen (MISM ’23), Kathy Chiang (MISM ’23), Zhichen Li (MISM-BIDA ’23), Vandeleuv, and Sylvia (Yiping) Zhang (MISM ’23) - picked up where the first group left off. Led by faculty expert Andrew Garin, assistant professor of economics at Heinz College, they partnered with Tom Romanoff, director of the technology program at BPC, to create an AI tool that can search and analyze thousands of pages of congressional bills to help policy analysts conduct research. The tool can filter, analyze, and summarize content using the past ten years of bills currently in the Library of Congress’s Congress.gov database. It’s currently being piloted by a few users within BPC, Romanoff said, and news of its capability has started to create a buzz among his colleagues both inside and outside of BPC.[...] As AI continues to reshape our world, the imperative for strong partnerships among universities, government, and industry has never been greater. Together, they can steer AI towards a future that reflects our shared values and aspirations. It is through this collaborative spirit that AI will not only reach its full potential but do so in a way that enhances the human experience, ensuring that technology serves us all, not just a privileged few. News submitted by Jennifer Monahan, Carnegie Mellon University, Heinz College

Issue #75 by Michael Seadle The problem grows out of how scholars cite papers. As Robert Thibault writes in the LSE Blog: “... we continue to refer to academic outputs as “last-name-of-first-author’s paper…”.¹ This perpetuates old hierarchical traditions where one person gets more recognition than everyone else who contributed to the research and writing. An alternative is a different citation approach: “Several progressive journals now require that their publications describe which author did each of fourteen specific roles. That is to say, they include a Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) statement.”¹ (LINK) This list includes standard author roles like writing the original draft, as well as topics like funding acquisition and project administration that ordinarily get no authorial credit. The argument for a roles-list is that it resembles a team roster, but the approach fits some subject areas better than others. In large scale natural science projects, for example, tasks like who acquired the funding and who administers the project deserve credit, since without them the research and the writing would not be possible. The team roster fits the humanities and some social sciences less well. In humanities articles, a genuine single author remains the norm, because it is often that one person who gathers the data, does the analysis and writes up the results. Some social sciences sometimes have larger teams, such as psychology, sociology, and economics, but the larger team may just mean more people writing particular segments. An important factor in more humanistic fields is that writing quality makes a significant difference in the likelihood of acceptance, and favours native speakers. The quality of expression matters because the lucidity of an argument matters more in qualitative writing. As Thibault also points out, publishers have trouble with the concept of group names as authors. He reports that in some cases the group name was dropped or ignored. A degree of cultural shift will be needed before every author and every contributor gets the level of recognition they deserve, but just being aware of the issue is a start. 1: Thibault, Robert. ‘Is Group Authorship a Better Way of Recognising Team-Based Research?’ Impact of Social Sciences (blog), 8 May 2024. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/05/08/is-group-authorship-a-better-way-of-recognising-team-based-research/.

University of California Berkeley, School of Information Application Deadline: 15 June 2024 The School of Information at UC Berkeley and its Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity welcomes applications for a 2 year, full‐time, Research Director at the Associate or Full Research Scientist level, with an expected start date of Summer or Fall 2024 in the area of Cybersecurity. This Research Director will oversee the research agenda for, help further build, and be an ambassador for the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC), and will conduct research on issues connected to the policy, business, economics, governance or usability of cybersecurity.