iSchools Organisation Application Deadline: Until position is filled The iSchools organisation seeks a highly motivated, creative, and dynamic professional to support iSchools staff and activities as Business & Communication Manager. The full-time vacancy will open on 1 January 2024. Closely working with the Executive Director, the successful candidate will be responsible for overseeing a broad range of operational activities within the organization. The Business & Communication Manager will identify opportunities for organizational growth, and develop necessary tools and processes to streamline and improve internal workflows, services and communication channels. Required Qualifications A Master's degree from an internationally highly regarded university is required, a degree in finances, communications, or a related field is a plus Experience with financial payment processors such as Stripe and PayPal or similar Experience with bookkeeping software such as Quickbooks or similar Fluency in writing and speaking English academically and professionally Fluency in at least one additional European or Asian language is required Strongly Desired Experience with website building software such as WIX or similar Experience with organizing and managing events or conferences including using underlying technologies such as Zoom, ConfTool, and SCOOCS Experience with communication with a broad range of potential participants from the academic and technical world Residence in or near the Central European time zone is strongly desired to facilitate staff communication Willingness to attend face-to-face staff meetings when needed Responsibilities Contributing to the development of long term goals and objectives that support iSchools’ strategic direction Supervising and managing Schools’ finances including dues management Budget management as well as financial analysis and reporting Maintaining and advancing relationships with institutional members on a global scale Conceptualizing, developing, and testing individual membership models for the iSchools organization Organizing, planning, and supervision of the iConference in collaboration with staff and iConference hosts Evaluating the effectiveness of current iSchools assets and identifying areas for improvement Contributing to the development of the iSchools technical infrastructure to improve global communication channels for the iSchools community Willingness to work overtime on occasion especially during peak times of the iConference planning phases Traveling at least twice per year nationally and internationally. This would include the physical location of the iConference and business meetings as needed Salary The salary is expected to be between 45,000 € - 60,000 € (plus employer-paid benefits) depending on the individual's level of experience and skills. Remote work The work will be conducted mainly remotely / from home-office. Application Applications should include a cover letter and CV, and explicitly address the applicant’s experience and skills relevant to this position. Women or under-represented minorities are strongly encouraged to apply. Applications will be reviewed as soon as they arrive. The call for applications will remain open until the position is filled. Please send your application to: admin@ischools-inc.org About the iSchools Organisation The iSchools represent an international organisation of over 130 universities on all inhabited continents. A common interest in all aspects of research and teaching about information unites them. The iConference is an annual gathering of a broad spectrum of scholars and researchers from around the world who share a common concern about critical information issues in contemporary society. It pushes the boundaries of information studies, explores core concepts and ideas, and creates new technological and conceptual configurations - all situated in interdisciplinary discourses.

Florida State University, School of Information and Learning Systems Institute Application Deadline: October 31, 2023 We invite applications for a nine-month, tenure track assistant professor position at Florida State University jointly appointed in the Florida Center for Research in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics in the Learning Systems Institute, and in the School of Information in the College of Communication and Information. We seek a colleague committed to research, mentorship, teaching, and advising with equity, inclusion, and social justice as guiding principles. The successful candidate will be expected to advise doctoral students, chair doctoral student dissertation committees, teach courses, contribute to academic service, and define and sustain an innovative and externally funded program of research focused on technology education and/or educational technology. We seek a colleague whose research focus and development experience will complement those of current faculty and help build and expand K-12 technology education and/or educational technology research and development at Florida State University. While we welcome applications from candidates from a wide variety of fields, candidates with expertise in K-12 technology education programs are especially encouraged to apply. The successful candidate will be expected to generate and lead externally funded research and/or development projects. More information about the Learning Systems Institute can be found at https://lsi.fsu.edu. For more information about the School of Information, visit: https://ischool.cci.fsu.edu.

Impacts of Technology Adoption on Various Users in a Digital Era Abstract: Information technologies have advanced more rapidly than any innovation in our history. By enhancing connectivity, financial inclusion, access to trade and public services, technology can be a great equalizer. The development of information technology has also brought changes to human behavior. It becomes important to analyze the impact of information technology on human behavior from a more objective perspective. Three young scholars from China and Indonesia are invited to this workshop. They will bring us their latest research work from different perspectives. This workshop mainly focuses on the impact of information technology on human behavior. Dr. Shaoxiong Fu will explore the use of the bright-dark duality of information systems in the context of health information. Dr. Shaobo Liang will share the research about the digital divide faced by the elderly and explore its causes. Dr. Rahmi will share the design and future trends of human information behavior courses from a teaching perspective in Indonesia. Time: May 9, 2023 12:00PM Jakarta | 1:00PM China | 2:00PM Japan Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/94490231591?pwd=QXVIUDZ1NnBGT21zSDZYWFBZOW9FUT09 Meeting ID: 944 9023 1591 Passcode: 848918

Scholarly Communication & Scholarly Data Mining Time: July 18, 2023 | 2:00PM - 4:00pm GMT+8 Join Zoom Meeting https://us06web.zoom.us/j/8125588130?pwd=aWtWRnlyc0c1Y0RGYmNWYnhhSmREUT09 Meeting ID: 812 558 8130 Passcode: 514638

Time: September 26, 2023 | 2:00PM - 3:30pm GMT+8 | 4:00PM - 5:30pm GMT+10 Join Zoom Meeting: https://monash.zoom.us/j/83019137789?pwd=VlpVdDBFanlFNEtER1BsMWlISnFaZz09 The participation in the workshop is free. Environmental & Community Informatics Speakers Juliana Sutanto - Monash University Title: Digital Interoperability during Natural Disaster Responses Abstract: Various natural disaster response agencies have been creating digital applications (i.e., digital forms) to support the flow of information. However, based on our on-ground study, natural disaster responders from different agencies have been using a variety of digital forms according to their agencies’ operations which results in incomplete, contesting, and/or delayed view of the disaster information. Although there have been attempts by several agencies' representatives to co-create a digital form, disaster responders do not always commit to utilizing the proposed digital form as it may not fit the dynamic nature of a disaster response operation. Using sensemaking as our sensitizing lens, we delve into the digital adaptability behavior of the disaster responders which inform the design of a digital interoperability solution for immediate digital collaboration during natural disaster responses. Bio: Juliana Sutanto is a Professor in Information Systems. Her research expertise is on system design, users' behavioural analysis and data management. She is a recipient of Informs ISS Design Science Award on privacy-safe design. Her research has been published in leading information systems journals. She was an Associate Editor in MIS Quarterly, and is currently a Senior Editor in Journal of the Association for Information Systems. Among her on-going researches are IT-supported decision-making during disaster response, digital resilience and community resilience, and health information systems. Basil Mahfouz - University College London Title: Mapping the Scholarly Citations of IPCC Reports: Are Policy Makers Leveraging the Best Science? Abstract: Are climate policy makers making the most of the wealth of available scientific knowledge? In this presentation, we'll discuss how we are utilizing data science methods on the bibliometric database of Elsevier’s International Centre for the Study of Research (ICSR) to analyse the utilisation of scholarly research by policy makers. Specifically, we'll delve into how natural language processing and network dynamics are helping us identify areas with policy action, strong evidence, areas with policy interest but limited evidence, and instances where potential policies and strategies aren't fully capitalizing on available knowledge or tools. Bio: Basil Mahfouz is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Public Policy at University College London (UCL). His collaboration with Elsevier’s International Centre for the Study of Research (ICSR) is focused on developing a framework to measure the societal impact of scientific research. With a multidisciplinary approach spanning international affairs and environmental science, Basil holds a Bachelor of Science from Georgetown University and a Master of Science from Imperial College London. Prior to his Ph.D. journey, Basil co-founded SynSapien, an environmental innovation crowdsourcing platform, and worked as a strategic communications consultant for research organizations in the Middle East. Yuxiang Zhao - Nanjing University Title: Conceptualizing the Sustainability of IT-Driven Cultural Heritage Crowdsourcing Projects: A Configurational Approach Abstract: Crowdsourcing is vital in facilitating the sustainable development goals of digital humanities projects. In this talk, I will start with a literature review on cultural heritage crowdsourcing. A preliminary conceptual framework will be presented to illustrate the intellectual development of this field. Later, I will report an empirical investigation to discuss the critical issues regarding the sustainability of cultural heritage crowdsourcing projects. This study adopts the Delphi and fsQCA methods to examine the configuration effects affecting the sustainability of cultural heritage crowdsourcing projects. Bio: Yuxiang Chris Zhao is a professor in the School of Information Management at Nanjing University, China. His research interests include human-computer interaction, health informatics, and digital humanities. His research has been published in leading information science journals and conferences. Dr. Zhao was awarded the Distinguished Young Scholar in the Chinese Humanities & Social Science domain 2016. He now serves on the editorial boards of ARIST, JASIST, IP&M, Library Trends, Journal of Data and Information Science, and Data and Information Management. Dr. Zhao serves as Asia-Pacific Chapter Chair-elect of the Association for Information Science and Technology.

University of Texas at Austin, School of Information Information & Culture August 2023 issue includes articles and book reviews relevant to information scholars. Check out their current and previous issues to learn more. Research Articles Taxonomizing Information Practices in a Large Conspiracy Movement: Using Early QAnon as a Case Study | James A. Hodges Algorithmic Divination: From Prediction to Preemption of the Future | Christophe Lazaro The Information Theory of Translation | Qiang Pi Big Nihilism: Generation Z, Surveillance Capitalism, and the Emerging Digital Technocracy | Garry Robson Book Reviews Media and the Affective Life of Slavery by Allison Page | Nicole A. Cooke Rise of the Far Right: Technologies of Recruitment and Mobilization edited by Melody Devries, Judith Bessant, and Rob Watts | Tomás Dodds Circulation and Control: Artistic Culture and Intellectual Property in the Nineteenth Century edited by Marie-Stéphanie Delamaire and Will Slauter | Priti Joshi Reading, Wanting, and Broken Economics: A Twenty-First-Century Study of Readers and Bookshops in Southampton around 1900 by Simon R. Frost | Anna Lanfranchi Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control by Yuriko Furuhata | Weixian Pan Digital Black Feminism by Catherine Knight Steele | Rachel Pierce When the Medium Was the Mission: The Atlantic Telegraph and the Religious Origins of Network Culture by Jenna Supp-Montgomerie | David Reagles About the journal: Information & Culture is an academic journal publishing scholarly work related to the social and cultural context of information in our world. While the journal has undergone name changes and grown in scope in recent years, it has a published continuously for more than 50 years. Established in 1966 as The Journal of Library History, the original incarnation of this academic journal was edited and published at Florida State University until 1976. At that time, the journal's editorship moved to The University of Texas at Austin. In 1988, the title was changed to Libraries & Culture, and changed again to Libraries & the Cultural Record in 2006. In 2012 the journal assumed its present title, Information & Culture.

University College London (UCL), Department of Information Studies Application Deadline: November 12, 2023 We are seeking an innovative researcher and educator to appoint to a full-time post beginning in April 2024 with a teaching focus in archives, records management and information governance. We are interested in applicants with expertise in any aspect of the discipline, but particularly those who could contribute to ongoing or new teaching and research in one or more of the following areas: access and use of records and archives; digital curation of records and archives; computational and technological advances and recordkeeping; archives and creative practice; anti-oppressive approaches to recordkeeping.

University of Toronto Mississauga, Institute of Communication, Culture, Information & Technology Application Deadline: December 4, 2023 We are seeking a scholar who has demonstrated a program of research focusing on critical approaches to marketing and advertising that centers feminist analysis in the historical development of these industries in North America. Candidates’ areas of study and approaches should include critical archival research, digital humanities tools and methods, and the application of feminist, social, and cultural analysis to the history of twentieth-century market segmentation strategies. We especially welcome applications from candidates with a demonstrated record of research/knowledge mobilization in the form of public-facing writing.

University of Missouri, School of Information Science & Learning Technologies Application Deadline: October 15, 2023 The School of Information Science and Learning Technologies (SISLT) – the iSchool at the University of Missouri – seeks to recruit an energetic, highly motivated scholar who will contribute to the research, teaching, and service of the school in the MLIS, PhD, and certificate programs, as well as growing undergraduate options. We seek a candidate whose work complements and builds from current faculty research strengths in Library and Information Sciences. The ideal candidate will bring a high potential for grant funding and publication in digital humanities and/or the study of information and document management, with additional skills in information visualization and in leveraging legal sources and data to solve real-world problems.

University of Strathclyde, The Department of Computer and Information Sciences Application Deadline: October 22, 2023 The Department of Computer and Information Sciences (CIS) at the University of Strathclyde seeks to appoint 2 Lecturers to support our growing research and teaching ambitions. CIS is an internationally recognised research department specialising in information science, artificial intelligence, computer security, health informatics, interactive systems and theoretical computer science. It is home to over 1000 undergraduates, taught postgraduate and PhD students with an increasing emphasis on in person and online delivery of high-quality educational programmes. This application is open to all computer science disciplines, but we have a particular interest in software engineering, machine learning and artificial intelligence for these roles. Applicants with experience in Information Retrieval and Data Science are particularly welcomed.

May 2, 2023, #38 Ellie Kincaid wrote an article called Frankly Abusive: More Questions about the Journal That Stole an Author’s Identity¹ in the Retraction Watch blog on 26 April 2023. Previously she told “the story of a professor who found her name on an article she didn’t write, which also seemed to have been plagiarized.”¹ The journal was the African Journal of Political Science. Recently she learned that “Jephias Mapuva, a professor at the Bindura University of Science Education in Zimbabwe, who is listed as the editor in chief of the journal... is not associated with the journal in any way.”¹ He has “asked for his name to be removed from the website.”¹ In effect, his identity was stolen as well. The publisher, International Scholars Journals, was on Jeffrey Beall's list of putatively predatory journals.¹ Another apparently legitimate journal by the same name is edited by “Siphamandla Zondi, a professor of politics and international relations at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa”¹. This journal is not affiliated with the publisher of the other journal, International Scholars Journals.¹ It “is an open-access journal that does not charge article processing fees, and is an outlet of the African Association of Political Science… The journal seems to have restarted publishing last year, after halting in 2004”¹ In contrast “the International Scholars Journals publication has put out issues continuously since 2007.”¹ In other words, the journals are clearly different. Further stories about the African Journal of Political Science have emerged. Chung-Chuan Lo described the experience of another scholar who responded to the journal’s request for a comment, after which the journal began to harass her to pay 1000€ for the comment, and threatened to charge her a “withdrawal” fee.¹ It is often hard even for experienced scholars to know whether a journal is legitimate, especially when the name is stolen from a publication that was once legitimate. Beal’s list was a source until a lawsuit forced Jeffrey Beall to take it down. At present scholars facing pressure to publish must rely on their own resources to discover whether a journal is legitimate, and often they have too little time and too few resources for a thorough investigation. 1: Kincaid, Ellie, ‘“Frankly Abusive”: More Questions about the Journal That Stole an Author’s Identity’, Retraction Watch (blog), 26 April 2023, https://retractionwatch.com/2023/04/26/frankly-abusive-more-questions-about-the-journal-that-stole-an-authors-identity/.

Carnegie Mellon University, Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy Behind all the histrionics of generative artificial intelligence—behind all the poetry and coding, the jailbreaks and hallucinations—lies a math problem. Generative AI, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, relies on statistical probability. Today’s computers are powerful enough to train large language models on billions of pages of text. The models can detect the patterns of language well enough to respond with startling lucidity, but they do not truly understand the subject matter. Given a word or letter, the models reference their training data and determine the word or set of words most likely to come next. It’s a math problem. But left unchecked, it could be a real problem. “I don't think we all need to run around in complete panic, but it's very good if some people think about this more,” said Vincent Conitzer, a member of the Block Center for Technology and Society’s Advisory Council and the director of CMU’s Foundations of Cooperative AI (FOCAL) Lab. “And I think it's more of a broader problem that we don't really understand.” Because we cannot predict the extent of AI’s proliferation, we cannot guess the full extent of its potential pitfalls. At this stage in its development, three categories of risk have made themselves apparent. The system is working … right? The first category involves circumstances in which the AI functions properly, but still creates negative outcomes. “Functions properly” is a loaded phrase, because the algorithm can synthesize a query, produce a relevant response and still cause harm. The creators of large language models attempt to mitigate harmful responses with a method called Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback. “There are two components to these systems,” said Rayid Ghani, a Distinguished Career Professor at the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy and in CMU’s Machine Learning Department. “Component one is, it takes all the data that's on the Internet and predicts the next word. And we kind of understand what that is. Component two is, it's been trained from human feedback for the last few years, and nobody outside OpenAI knows how that is done and what its impact is.” Fair and Equitable - Professor Rayid Ghani uses machine learning, AI and data science to solve high-impact social good and public policy problems in a fair and equitable way. Ghani, the former Chief Scientist of President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, studies these issues closely. He teaches a Machine Learning for Public Policy Lab, helping Heinz College’s Master of Science in Public Policy and Management: Data Analytics and Master of Information Systems Management students marry the technical know-how with the policy needed to govern it. He also started the Data Science for Social Good Fellowship, which trains computer scientists, statisticians and social scientists from around the world to work on data science problems with social impact. Because humans wrote the words used to train these large language models, and because humans, unfortunately, are biased in many harmful ways, the chatbot could produce responses that also contain those biases. And even if people use large language models to help them in ethical, legal ways, how much of future models’ training data will consist of text a former model wrote? AI can help people at work by reducing errors, automating monotonous tasks, and allowing humans to focus on the more creative or interpersonal aspects of their jobs. But in the short term, it will probably put some people out of work, or squeeze portions of the job market. Improved search, summarization and writing ability could reduce billable hours for lawyers, for example, or decrease the need for paralegals. Ghani compared this result to what happened to typists and secretaries as technology improved. “When technology came, it created more jobs, but not for them,” he said. “Because the people displaced were not the people who were upskilled. It created a job for somebody else. And that’s what's going to happen here. The person who's displaced isn't going to become an AI programmer.” It’s a People Problem No matter how noble the mission of generative AI, human nature ensures that people will misuse it, and here we find the second area of concern: situations when the model behaves properly, but those who use it do not. ChatGPT has already been conned into creating polymorphic malware, which shape-shifts to avoid detection inside a target network. Humans produce and distribute plenty of misinformation already in an effort to sway public opinion, but generative AI can do it faster and at scale. What it can also do, which is even more dangerous, is create images, videos and audio, known as deepfakes, that make it look and sound like someone is saying or doing something they aren’t. So far it’s been the Pope in a big jacket and Jerry Seinfeld in Pulp Fiction. What happens when it’s Joe Biden declaring war on Russia or someone making a withdrawal from your bank account with your voice? AI as a FOCAL Point - Vincent Conitzer directs Carnegie Mellon's Foundations of Cooperative AI (FOCAL) Lab. “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” ~ Mark Twain Then we come to the third category, which will exacerbate everything in the first two. These are issues created when the AI makes mistakes. Sometimes, large language models will “hallucinate,” the fancy term for making stuff up. It’ll sound credible, written with perfect grammar, and may contain kernels of truth, but it’ll be pure fiction. And just like the issues with bias, it'll have a sheen of accuracy and impartiality; it came from a computer, after all. “Everything it generates is plausible,” Ghani said. “And that's exactly what it's designed to do, is generate plausible things, rather than factually correct things, because it doesn't know the difference between factually correct and plausible.” The threats posed by generative AI have the attention of the White House, which in October 2022 published a blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights. The proposal identifies data privacy, protection from discrimination, safe and effective systems, proper explanation, and human alternatives as the pillars of responsibly deployed AI. The Department of Commerce convened a National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee, on which Heinz College Dean Ramayya Krishnan sits. And in late May, more than 350 A.I. executives and researchers, including Conitzer and the CEOs of OpenAI and Google's DeepMind, signed their name to a statement that read, “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” Smart people are asking the right questions. The question now is whether they can find a consensus quickly enough to keep pace with the ever-evolving technology, and more important still, if that consensus can become binding and enforceable. If only that were as simple as a math problem. By Bill Brink, Carnegie Mellon University - Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy