University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, School of Information Studies Application Deadline: 1 September 2024 The new College of Community Engagement and Professions (CCEP) is seeking an energetic, visionary scholar to serve as the Associate Dean & Head of School of the School of Information Studies (SOIS), the iSchool at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). As the school leader, this individual will build and support an inclusive and supportive environment for teaching, learning, scholarship, and service. The Associate Dean & Head of School will work as a member of the CCEP Dean’s leadership team to bring to life the progressive vision for the new college. In collaboration with the SOIS faculty and staff, they will also be responsible for the day-to-day operations in the school. UWM’s School of Information Studies is committed to shaping the future of library science and information technology, and improving the world, through innovation and inquiry, connecting humans to the information they use every day.

University of Wisconsin-Madison, School of Computer, Data and Information Sciences (CDIS) Application Deadline: 26 May 2024 The School of Computer, Data and Information Sciences (CDIS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison seeks a dynamic professional to join the growing team as the CDIS Commons Director. The CDIS Commons will be a user- and learner-oriented set of services, spaces and people that serves several thousand students and several hundred faculty and staff from across four growing academic departments in the new CDIS Building. The Commons Director will provide direction, vision, oversight and assessment of the spaces, programs, and services that comprise the CDIS Commons. The Commons Director will oversee a range of services including Commons space management and assessment, reference and information services, outreach, student service points, support for student clubs, library instruction and a circulating collection.

Issue #74 Abortion is a hot political topic in the US at the moment. Many scholarly articles are cited on both sides. Jessica Glenza writes in the Guardian (28 April 2024): “The retraction of three peer-reviewed articles prominently cited in court cases on the so-called abortion pill – mifepristone – has put a group of papers by anti-abortion researchers in the scientific limelight. Seventeen sexual and reproductive health researchers are calling for four peer-reviewed studies by anti-abortion researchers to be retracted or amended.” The papers in question used a meta-analysis. “Of the 22 studies cited by the meta-analysis, 11 were by the lone author of the paper itself.”¹ The political influence of the controversial meta-analysis is clear: “The paper has been cited in at least 24 federal and state court cases and 14 parliamentary hearings in six countries.”¹ Glenza cites a number of reviews including “one from 2009 by the American Psychological Association” which discounted the connection between mental health problems and abortion.¹ A paper that Sage retracted was nonetheless cited as evidence “by one of the most conservative [US Supreme Court] justices, Samuel Alito.”¹ The British Journal of Psychiatry established a research integrity group in response to these concerns, the journal also established an independent panel of experts to investigate. “The panel recommended Coleman’s article be retracted, but was overruled by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the professional association that publishes the BJP.”¹ A possible reason why the association did not retract the paper was a lack of US legal coverage after the author threatened to sue twice. The association’s explanation cited the public debate as one of its reasons for rejecting the retraction request. Retractions of controversial papers remain surprisingly rare. Glenza cites Ivan Oransky as saying “although retractions had become more common, they were nowhere near common enough to correct the scientific record. About one in 500 papers are retracted today, but perhaps as many as one in 50 ought to be ….”¹ In theory scientific papers should be above politics, but increasingly that seems difficult once a paper becomes involved in a political controversy. 1: Glenza, Jessica. ‘Junk Science Is Cited in Abortion Ban Cases. Researchers Are Fighting the “Fatally Flawed” Work’. The Guardian, 28 April 2024, sec. World news. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/28/junk-science-papers-abortion-cases.

iConference 2024 - Wisdom, Well-being, Win-win - our 19th iConference in the annual series was co-organized by Jilin University, China, and University of Tsukuba, Japan. The Virtual Academic Program took place 15-18 April 2024 and the onsite Academic Program in Changchun, China took place 22-26 April 2024. This year's iConference attracted more than 500 participants worldwide, with 36% to participate in the virtual part of the conference only and 64% to participate onsite in Changchun, China as well. Out of over 570 submissions in total, 33% of all submitted Full Research Papers, 50% of all submitted Short Research Papers, 75% of all submitted Research Posters, 34% of all submitted Chinese Research Papers and 77% of all submitted Spanish/Portuguese Research Papers have been accepted, concluding in 49 virtual academic sessions and 66 onsite academic sessions. The organizers would like to congratulate the iConference 2024 Award winners, who have been announced at the iConference 2024 Keynote, 23 April 2024: Best Full Research Paper Award (1.000 USD) ID 415 What Motivates You to Use VR Exergames to Substitute for Real Sports? An Empirical Study Based on Technology Readiness and Technology Acceptance Model by H. Sun and Q. Ke Best Short Research Paper Award (500 USD) ID 434 A problematic dichotomy in the perspective of field theory: hermeneutics and quantitative analysis in distant reading by M. Chen Best Chinese Research Paper Award (1.000 USD) ID 153 Research on Early Identification of Emerging Topics Based on the Three-Dimensional Framework for Weak Signals by J. Mao, M. Ma, G. Li and S. Xiang Best Poster Award (300 USD) ID 137 Shaping the community identity of digital humanities: A global investigation on scholar composition of digital humanities centers by Z. Hu, J. Liu and L. Pei iConference 2024 was the first onsite conference in the Asia-Pacific Region since 2017. For the first time the call was issued in three languages - English, Chinese and Japanese. Track Chairs of 12 nationalities in all iSchools regions were involved on the program consisting of paper and poster presentations, workshops, student symposia, doctoral and early career colloquia. The iConference organizers and the iSchools organization would like to thank all track chairs, moderators and presenters for their invaluable contribution to the great success of iConference 2024. According to the regional rotation, next year's iConference will take place in North America. We are happy to announce that our iSchool at the Indiana University Bloomington will be our iConference 2025 host. The dates will be announced soon. (Follow #iconf25 on Social Media for updates.)

Yi Deng, PhD, dean and Isaac L. Auerbach Professor in Drexel University’s College of Computing & Informatics (CCI), has announced the appointment of Helena Mentis, PhD as the next head of the Department of Information Science at the College. Mentis is currently a professor in the Department of Information Systems, director of the Center for Responsible and Inclusive Technology and director of the Bodies in Motion lab in the College of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). She served as an associate dean of that College from 2018 to 2021 and was named a US Fulbright Scholar in 2021. [...] Mentis brings with her a rich record of leadership and professional experiences to serve the interests of CCI’s students and faculty in both the Department of Information Science and in the College as a whole. She served as the executive vice president and president of ACM Special Interest Group on Computer–Human Interaction (SIGCHI), a leading organization for the field of human-centered computing. Prior to her tenure at UMBC, she was an ERCIM postdoctoral researcher at Mobile Life in Sweden; held a joint postdoctoral fellowship at Microsoft Research Cambridge and Corpus Christi College at the University of Cambridge; and was a research fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Cambridge Health Alliance. Mentis earned a PhD in information sciences and technology at The Pennsylvania State University. She will join the Information Science faculty on Sept. 1, 2024. News submitted by Kerry Boland, Drexel University, College of Computing & Informatics

University College London, Department of Information Studies Application Deadline: 19 May 2024 The Department of Information Studies at the University College London is seeking to appoint a Lecturer (Teaching) to start on 1 September 2024 teaching mainly on the postgraduate Library and Information Studies (LIS) programme, with the possibility of some undergraduate teaching. The Department is particularly interested in applicants who could contribute to teaching within any of the broad areas or sectors of library and information studies, including but not limited to: physical, historical and digital collections; library management; library technologies; scholarly communication; information behaviour and information literacy; cataloguing and classification; and critical approaches to library and information work.

Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities Application Deadline: 19 May 2024 The Department of Cultural Sciences at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Linnaeus University is hiring a part-time digital humanities researcher for six months, starting 1 July this year. The candidate must have a doctoral degree in digital humanities or a related subject (for example, a master’s degree in digital humanities and a doctoral degree in library and information science, or a doctoral degree in the field of digital cultural heritage), with a clear focus on the technical area. To contribute to the development of digital humanities, the department is looking for a researcher to work within the projects Huminfra and DARIAH-EU. Huminfra is a national Swedish infrastructure for digital and experimental humanities, and DARIAH-EU is a European infrastructure for the arts and humanities.

University College Dublin, School of Information and Communications Studies Application Deadline: 31 May 2024 The School of Information and Communication Studies (ICS) at University College Dublin (UCD) is inviting applications for one fully funded PhD scholarship under the supervision of Dr. Stefanie Havelka. The successful candidate will be interested in developing an in-depth study of Artificial Intelligence in library and information studies theory, libraries, knowledge, information organisations, and/or the library and information professions. The candidate will complete a project of their own design. Suggested topics of focus include: AI literacy (including data and algorithmic literacy) AI in Organisation of Information, Cataloguing & Metadata Candidates are encouraged to modify and build upon one or more of these topics or to propose their own PhD topic.

Issue #72 On 7 March, Tsuyoshi Hondou and Ismael Rafols posted a blog entry on Leidenmadtrics called “Concurrent Evidence: A Framework for Using Evidence from Multiple Disciplines”. The issue is one about the right interpretation for the right data. The authors explain: “In this blog post, we present two prominent examples of how the use of narrow disciplinary advice led to questionable policy choices.”¹ Both cases come from the natural sciences, and serve to illustrate the risk of looking too narrowly at one firm of evidence in complex situations. The first case involved the likelihood of a tsunami near Fukushima: “Using as evidence about 100 years of seismograph measurements (i.e. ground movements), geophysicists showed that there was no evidence that a tsunami could hit the locations proposed for the nuclear plants.”¹ Geologists, looking at historical data thousands of years old made a different assessment, which they reported to the government, but “... the Japanese government listened to the advice given by seismology (physics) rather than by geology, despite a longer observation record from the latter – with the well-known disastrous consequences.”¹ The second case involved the transmission of COVID-19 infections: “It was initially thought that COVID-19 infection was due to physical contact and droplets, and therefore appropriate prevention measures were thought to be disinfection and shielding. This advice was based on the common perception of medical doctors, who extrapolated from the dogma that airborne infection is restricted to tuberculosis, measles, and chickenpox. However, it was later shown by researchers with expertise in physics that masks and ventilation - the key to prevention against airborne infection - are much more effective than conventional prevention measures against infections.”¹ While the cases both involve government mistakes, the second case in particular applies broadly to all countries suffering from the pandemic. The common thread is that decision-makers looked too narrowly by making decisions based on established assumptions without looking more broadly at evidence from sources that did not fit their preconceptions. It is hard for decision-makers to look at broader evidence that takes unfamiliar contextual information into account, which may include evidence that the policy makers do not understand. This is why the authors recommend involving a wide variety of experts in a common discussion about complex issues where a single source may not suffice. 1: Hondou, Tsuyoshi, and Ismael Rafols. ‘Concurrent Evidence: A Framework for Using Evidence from Multiple Disciplines’, 7 March 2024. https://www.leidenmadtrics.nl/articles/concurrent-evidence-a-framework-for-using-evidence-from-multiple-disciplines.

Issue #73 David W. Onstad and Karen R. Sime wrote an article about “The ethical and social effects of the obsession over Journal Impact Factor” in the “Annals of the Entomological Society of America”.¹ While their examples are specific to their own specialized field, the general comments are broadly relevant. The authors cite a previous editorial that said: “The JIF was not created to be used in the scientific reward system, … It does not represent a quantitative measure of the relative value of an author or a paper to society or science.“² This is unusually plain language, and they follow up their comments with the following explanation: “... scientific publishing has also become a significant commercial activity, and JIF has become a competitive tool influencing business success.”¹ As always, money matters. One of their important claims is that “Publishers and editors who want journals to be considered superior based on a high JIF may be incentivized to treat submissions by other than scientific criteria. For example, they may reject papers that are unlikely to be cited …”¹ The authors cite several studies that “... papers by women are cited less than those published by men. Thus, editors may find themselves discriminating against female authors, consciously or not, in order to increase JIF.”¹ A related problem is that review papers get particularly high citation rates, which “... leads to misuse of citations through a careless reliance on reviews rather than original source materials”.³ “In fact, it has been shown that impact factor and female publication rate are inversely related for some journals possibly because women submit even fewer manuscripts to high-impact journals, or because women are less likely to be invited to write reviews than men (Conley and Stadmark 2012).”¹&⁴ The authors remind readers that Journal Impact Factors can be gamed and that the criteria for calculating the impact factors are not transparent. No one who has read about Journal Impact Factors over recent decades should find any of this surprising. What makes this article interesting is how bluntly they describe the problems. What the authors fail to say is that the reliance on JIF often stems from policies outside of the discipline or department, because administrators who make financial and hiring decisions far outside of their fields of expertise rely on JIF for lack of better tools. As Clifford Geertz wrote about the cannons of proof: “numbers normally carry the day”.⁵ They certainly do with JIF. 1: David W. Onstad, Karen R. Sime, The ethical and social effects of the obsession over Journal Impact Factor, Annals of the Entomological Society of America, 2024;, saae013, https://doi.org/10.1093/aesa/saae013 2: Onstad DW. Journal impact factor is NOT a measure of scientific or social worth of an article. Ann Entomol Soc Am. 2024:117(2):77–78. https://doi. org/10.1093/aesa/saad041 3: Cohnstaedt LW, Poland J. Review articles: the Black-market of scientific currency. Ann Entomol Soc. 2017:110(1):90. https://doi.org/10.1093/aesa/saw061 4: Conley D, Stadmark J. Gender matters: A call to commission more women writers. Nature. 2012:488: 590. 5:Geertz, Clifford, After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist. Harvard, 1996, p. 18.

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin School of Library and Information Science Application Deadline: 2 May 2024 The Berlin School of Library and Information Science of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Deutsches Zentrum für Hochschul- und Wissenschaftsforschung GmbH invite applications for the joint appointment of a Department of Social and Political Sciences of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences for a Full Professorship for "Science Studies" (W3) in conjunction with a position as Head of Research Area "Research System and Science Dynamics" at the DZHW from as soon as possible.

University of Oklahoma Application Deadline: open The Data Scholarship Program at the University of Oklahoma is looking for adjunct instructors for its Online Master's program in Applied Statistics. Currently, the Data Scholarship Program needs adjuncts to teach LIS-5683 Database and LIS-5623 Advanced Data Analytics for the Fall 2024 semester. Continued need of instructors for future semesters is expected. The courses are online and have been developed. Candidates should reside in the United States and have legal work permissions.