Issue #70 On 5 March 2024, Holly Else wrote a post for ScienceInsider called: ”Science Integrity Sleuths Welcome Legal Aid Fund for Whistleblowers”. The post discusses how “[a] Silicon Valley investor has pledged $1 million to help pay the legal costs of scientists being sued for flagging fraudulent research.”¹ The need for such a fund is clear because of the legal pushback by people accused of fraud. Lawsuits against whistleblowers are easy to start under US law. A well-publicised example is the lawsuit against the authors of Data Colada, which “... raised concerns about the integrity of the data in four papers co-authored by Harvard University business researcher Francesca Gino. Within months Gino sued for defamation Nelson, Simmons, Simonsohn, and Harvard, which had investigated her work, claiming $25 million in damages.”¹ One of the problems with such lawsuits is the punishing effect of the costs of a legal defence: “Lawyers for the bloggers have suggested their defense could cost up to $600,000.” This is why the fund matters: “Yun-Fang Juan, an engineer and data scientist by background, hopes the new Scientific Integrity Fund—the first of its kind—will make speaking up about wrongdoing less intimidating.”¹ Elisabeth Bik comments: “‘As scientists, we need to be able to ask questions and raise concerns about other researchers’ work, without the risk of being sued, or going bankrupt because we have to hire a lawyer, ...’”¹ The fund is not large: “Juan started the fund with a $250,000 donation from her family charity, the Ewcy Foundation, and has pledged a total of $1 million over the next 4 years.”¹ The fund has an advisory Board that will help to decide who should receive support, and the fund “will accept applications from whistleblowers who made evidence-based claims in good faith and are now facing a concrete legal threat. It will provide grants of up to $25,000 to help researchers get legal advice or administrative help at the initial stages of legal action.”¹ It is easy to underestimate the effect of lawsuits against critics. “‘Undergoing a frivolous lawsuit can be a scary, isolating, and potentially financially ruinous experience,’ says Chelsea Polis…”¹ The makers of a device she criticised sued her for a million dollars, but “... federal judges ultimately dismissed the case against her…”¹ She had the courage and means to fight. Many do not. 1: Else, Holly. ‘Science Integrity Sleuths Welcome Legal Aid Fund for Whistleblowers’, 5 March 2024. https://www.science.org/content/article/science-integrity-sleuths-welcome-legal-aid-fund-whistleblowers.

The Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) organizes the 2024 Research Symposium: Inclusive & Sustainable Information Management through Recordkeeping Informatics in Amsterdam, The Netherlands May 29-30, 2024. Registration is now open. The overarching objective of this working symposium is to initiate and motivate cross-disciplinary participation in recordkeeping informatics research and practice. In-person participants will have the opportunity to discuss and investigate the usability and applicability of this framework for recordkeeping practices and to formulate a research agenda relevant to scholars and practitioners. This working symposium is of interest to anyone working in information management-related fields, including records managers, information officers, archivists, ICT experts, data and computer scientists, as well as students, educators, and researchers who are intrigued by the continuously evolving, networked nature of organisations, information processes, and information objects. Although online attendance (with limited access to the program) is possible, in-person participation is strongly encouraged.  Four invited experts will contribute their specialist and unique insights into the discussion: Barbara Reed,  Laura Millar, Martin Berendse and Periklis Andritsos. Time and Place: May 29 - 30, 2024. Amsterdam, The Netherlands

University of Maryland College Park, The College of Information Studies (INFO College) Application Deadline: 1 April 2024 The College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park (INFO), invites applications for a full-time, professional track lecturer with expertise in project management, student teamwork, engaging external stakeholders, and developing and implementing experiential learning projects. This position will focus on supporting and enhancing the work of the iConsultancy, which oversees experiential learning for the College. iConsultancy partners with industry, government, and communities to develop challenging, problem-based learning experiences and to integrate them into our undergraduate and graduate curricula, primarily in the form of capstone courses (a culminating learning experience for students at the end of their degrees).

University of Southern California, Iovine and Young Academy Application Deadline: open until filled, Review starts 15 April 2024 The Iovine and Young Academy (IYA) for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation at the University of Southern California (USC) invites applications for a full-time postdoctoral position in learning and sociotechnical innovation to begin in the Fall 2024 semester. The position focuses on applied research in learning and innovation emerging at IYA and beyond, focusing on the intersection of technology, arts and design, and business of innovation. As part of a larger grant initiative, the IYA seeks a postdoc (12-month term, with an opportunity for a second-year renewal) who will advance the efforts to discover and deliver innovative learning processes and experiences, design innovative sociotechnical environments, and outcomes. A key goal is to design, analyze, and assess components related to the groundbreaking IYA learning and innovation across pedagogy and curriculum, design spaces and sociotechnical environments, learning culture/environment, and industry/community collaborations.

Organized by the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) every two years, the prestigious Digital Preservation Awards is the most prominent celebration of achievement for those people and organisations who have made significant contributions towards a sustainable future for our digital assets. Entry to the Digital Preservation Awards 2024 is free and open to organisations, projects and individuals at all stages of their digital preservation journey, all around the world. The Digital Preservation Awards is open for nominations until Monday, 22 April 2024 and will culminate in a sparkling ceremony at the iPres 2024 Conference in Ghent on Monday 16 September.

The third annual International Symposium on Digital Transformation, hosted by Linnaeus University in Växjö, Sweden is calling for submissions. Organized by LNU’s Digital Transformations Knowledge Environment, the event welcomes participants from around the world to present and engage with different possibilities, current efforts and rising trends in the emerging field of Digital Transformation. The Symposium welcomes abstracts clearly related to any the research areas highlighted on the website (https://lnu.se/en/isdt2024), in addition to abstracts that might not specifically fall within these areas (a general track). Submission Deadline will be 7 June 2024. All abstracts will undergo a double-anonymous peer review. We encourage submissions from postgraduate students, early career researchers, senior researchers and practitioners from both industry and the public sector. The symposium will take place on 11–13 September in Växjö, Sweden. Participants may attend in person or online, there will be no registration fees regardless of the mode of attendance. More information can be found here: https://lnu.se/en/isdt2024 Time and Place: September 11 - 13, 2024. Linnaeus University in Växjö, Sweden

Rochester Institute of Technology, The Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences, The School of Information Application Deadline: open until filled The School of Information at RIT invites applications for a Visiting Lecturer position, beginning August 14, 2024. The successful candidate will be able to teach a broad range of courses in Human-computer interaction and data management. The iSchool is seeking an individual who has the ability and interest in contributing to a community committed to Student Centeredness; Professional Development and Scholarship; Integrity and Ethics; Respect, Diversity and Pluralism; Innovation and Flexibility; and Teamwork and Collaboration.

Charles Sturt University, School of Information and Communication Studies (SICS) Application Deadline: March 29, 2024 The School of Information and Communication Studies (SICS) at Charles Sturt University in Australia is advertising for one senior academic/continuing full-time position: Associate Professor/Professor in Communication - Reference No. 497190. This is a high-profile academic leadership role with the opportunity to lead the discipline of communication at an exciting time of renewal and innovation! The successful candidate will provide strong academic and research leadership within the School of Information and Communication Studies and will foster industry partnerships. The Communication discipline at Charles Sturt is in a phase of renewal and a senior academic is being sought to provide leadership and foster excellence in research, teaching, and industry engagement.

The International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries (ICADL) is a major digital library conference held annually as one of the three top venues for connecting digital library, computer science, and library and information science communities. This year, ICADL 2024 will be held from December 4th to 6th, 2024 at the Monash University, Malaysia as an onsite face-to-face conference; however, for those who cannot attend, ICADL 2024 will allow them to present their papers online and join sessions. ICADL 2024 will be co-located with the annual meeting of Asia-Pacific chapter of iSchools (AP-iSchools). More information can be found here: https://icadl.net/icadl2024/ Time and Place: December 4 - 6, 2024. Sunway City, Malaysia

University College London, Department of Information Studies Application Deadline: April 7, 2024 UCL’s Department of Information Studies is seeking an innovative researcher to appoint to a permanent full-time assistant professor role (lecturer in UK terminology), who can teach and research in the broad field of library and information studies. The iSchool is particularly interested in applicants who could contribute to ongoing or new research in one or more of the following areas within the field of library and information studies: physical 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. The initial teaching focus will be on Master’s level teaching, within the MA in Library and Information Studies, with the opportunity to teach on the BSc Information in Society. The successful candidate will also be expected to supervise research students and Masters and undergraduate dissertations, and undertake academic related administrative duties.

AP-iSchools and AP iNext Generation Committee are organizing an online workshop series this year. The series will include four workshops, one for each season. The first workshop will be held on March 11th, 12:00-14:00 GMT+7 on the topic of cultural heritage. The organizers welcome everyone who is interested to participate in the event. The participation is free of charge. Participants may join the workshop via Zoom. Time: Monday, March 11, 2024 | 12:00PM - 14:00PM GMT+7 Join Zoom Meeting: https://chula.zoom.us/j/92556419456?pwd=UmNGUFlXRlhnSUwxRDZ4bExNQ1lOUT09 Meeting No.: 925 5641 9456 Passcode: 283756

Issue #69 On 21 February 2024 Gary Smith wrote a Retraction Watch blog post about “How (not) to deal with missing data: An economist’s take on a controversial study”.¹ Smith offered a brief history of the origin of 5% as the cutoff p-value for valid statistical results based on a story about the British statistician Ronald Fisher doing a tea-tasting experiment with Muriel Bristol a century ago: “When she got all eight [answers] correct, Fisher calculated the probability that a random guesser would do so as well – which works out to 1.4%. …He soon recognized that the results of agricultural experiments could be gauged in the same way – by the probability that random variation would generate the observed outcomes. If this probability (the P-value) is sufficiently low, the results might be deemed statistically significant. How low? Fisher recommended we use a 5% cutoff and “ignore entirely all results which fail to reach this level.”¹ What makes this story interesting is that it demystifies the origin of the 5% p-value in showing that it was in some sense an arbitrary number, as professional statisticians know. Nonetheless many publishers have made it a necessary goal, which tempts authors to do anything to reach it. There are many ways to improve a p-value, one of which is to include more values that fit the desired range. This happened in a recent paper by Almas Heshmati and Mike Tsionas,”...on green innovations in 27 countries during the years 1990 through 2018.”¹ When questioned about what appeared to be gaps and inconsistencies in the data, the primary author “... revealed in an email that these gaps had been filled by using Excel’s autofill function…” The author justified his use of “imputed” data: “In an email exchange with Retraction Watch, Heshmati said, ‘If we do not use imputation, such data is [sic] almost useless.’”¹ As Smith notes, there are cases where “Imputation sometimes seems reasonable.” He describes a case with population statistics in a stable setting with little change, where imputing missing values could make sense, but mechanically filling in numbers to achieve the magic 5% cutoff for publication is hard to justify, even though the 5% p-value was originally an arbitrary number. 1: Smith, Gary N. ‘How (Not) to Deal with Missing Data: An Economist’s Take on a Controversial Study’. Retraction Watch (blog), 21 February 2024.https://retractionwatch.com/2024/02/21/how-not-to-deal-with-missing-data-an-economists-take-on-a-controversial-study/.