News

Measuring up

By Ellen on 12/06/2012

It’s a funny old business, research. There cannot be another sector that so obsessively tracks its outputs, corporately creating measure upon measure to try and establish some sense of hierarchy. Like a deranged marketing team, we produce ever more complex statistics to understand how we relate to our competitors - as journals, funders and individual scholars.

Yet, when you get down to it, the tools we have at our disposal are fairly crude. Most measures rely upon the published journal article as a proxy for ‘achievement’ or ‘discovery’, and most traditional measures (and some of the newer ones) rely on citations as a way of understanding how significant that article has been. Based on his or her authoring record, then, a researcher might be invited to deliver the keynote speech at a conference, given a grant or offered a job.

Now, that is all fine in a system where you have a handful of authors on a paper, and each of them has contributed in a way that’s proportionate to their position on that paper. Hah! In general, of course, the authorship of a paper is much more complex, particularly since each discipline has its own conventions, which can be incomprehensible to an outsider, especially when the number of authors can run into the thousands. And in some cases ‘author’ may not even be the correct word to apply any more. Is someone who creates data an ‘author’? What about someone who writes code? Their contributions are vital, but perhaps underplayed within the current system.

This is why I was really interested to learn about a recent workshop, funded by the Wellcome Trust and held at Harvard last month, which looked at contributorship and scholarly attribution. (Note that deliberate rejection of ‘authorship’ in the title, by the way.)  The programme incorporated a number of perspectives, including authors, editors and funders, and looked at many of the factors that might influence the development and uptake of new ways of tracking contributorship. What kind of taxonomies and ontologies might we need, if we are to reflect new ways of doing research and the new roles that are emerging? How would new conventions be introduced and implemented, and what might be the reaction of scholars? And how would a new way of tracking contributorship intersect with other developments in the scholarly communications environment, especially that old favourite, the article of the future? It’s too soon to say what will come out of this workshop, but apparently there is interest in taking some kind of action based on the discussions so I’ll look forward to developments.

Another project, mentioned at the workshop, is more advanced, and it’s worth taking a brief look at it before winding up this post. FundRef is an initiative from the clever people at CrossRef (could you tell?). Funders and publishers are collaborating to create a standardised way to acknowledge funders within published articles: a kind of ORCID for funding bodies. This will make it much easier to track the outputs from individual research projects: for outputs published in some scholarly journals, at least. Perhaps in time we will see the FundRef ID popping up at conferences, in data centres, even on blogs, to track the wider effect of research funding.

Just think of the impact measures we could start to build then…

This post originally appeared on ellenblogsresearch.blogspot.co.uk/.

This entry is filed under News and tagged authorship, contribution, metrics.

RIN to wind up

Posted on 29/09/2015 by Michael Jubb

A decade after we first started at the British Library, and four years since we established ourselves as an independent Community Interest Company, the RIN will wind up at the end of December 2015. It’s been a great time for all of us involved in the RIN, and we like to think we’ve made some important contributions to changing policy and practice in many areas of scholarly communications. The three of us who now work at RIN - Michael Jubb, Stéphane Goldstein and Ellen Collins - are looking to pursue new opportunities in the various areas of scholarly and research communications, and information literacy, in which we have built up expertise. Please contact one of us if you would like to talk about such opportunities.

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Monitoring the transition to OA: new report

Posted on 18/09/2015 by Stephane Goldstein

A report has been published on monitoring the transition towards Open Access in the UK. Commissioned by the Universities UK (UUK) OA Coordinating Group and produced by a team of experts led by RIN, further details about the report may be found here.

Findings include: There has been strong growth in both the availability of OA options for authors, and in their take-up.

UK authors are ahead of world averages, particularly in their take-up of the OA option in hybrid journals, and in their posting of articles on websites, repositories and other online services.

Take-up of OA publishing models means that universities’ expenditure on article processing charges (APCs) has increased too, and it now represents a significant proportion of their total expenditure on journals.

It is too early to assess the extent of any impact of OA on the finances of learned societies.

It is hoped that this comprehensive piece of work will provide useful evidence and a solid basis for the further elaboration of OA policies and practices among higher education institutions and publishers.

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peer review
Posted on 07/04/2015 by Michael Jubb


The Wellcome Trust has just published a short report we’ve written on Scholarly Communication and Peer Review.

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New project on value of IL for employers

Posted on 16/02/2015 by Stephane Goldstein

InformAll, in association with the University of Manchester, has been awarded a grant to undertake a small-scale study on determining the value of information literacy for employers. The award, from the CILIP IL Group Research Bursary scheme, will fund a project which will run from March to June 2015. Its purpose is to develop a methodology that will allow for the identification of quantitative and qualitative data that demonstrate the benefits of developing information literacy in workplace settings and assess the return on investment  of such initiatives.

For further information, click here.

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New resource for Gulf History

Posted on 22/10/2014 by Michael Jubb

In 2011 and 2102 we did some work to help set up the partnership between the British Library and the Qatar Foundation. It’s great to see the very impressive results in the form of wonderful resources for anyone interested in the history of the Gulf

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New resource for Gulf History

Posted on 22/10/2014 by Michael Jubb

In 2011 and 2102 we did some work to help set up the partnership between the British Library and the Qatar Foundation. It’s great to see the very impressive results in the form of wonderful resources for anyone interested in the history of the Gulf

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Monitoring Progress towards Open Access in the UK

Posted on 07/04/2014 by Michael Jubb

The Report of a working group on the configuration of indicators to monitor progress towards open access in the UK has now been published and is available here.

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Access to Research in Public Libraries

Posted on 04/02/2014 by Michael Jubb

The new scheme to provide walk-in online access to scholarly journals free of charge in public libraries was launched yesterday. Publishers of over 8,700 journals are already participating in the programme, and the number of libraries providing access in this way is growing rapidly. You can find out more about the scheme on the Access to Research website

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Government responds to Finch Group review of progress

Posted on 31/01/2014 by Michael Jubb

David Willetts has written to Dame Janet Finch responding positively to the recommendations made in the Finch Group’s review of progress in implementing the recommendations of its original report published in June 2012

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Impact of Jisc Managing Research Data programme

Posted on 27/11/2013 by Stephane Goldstein

In collaboration with Loughborough University, RIN has undertaken a high-level analysis of the initial impact of the Jisc Managing Research Data (MRD) programme. This takes the form of a mapping between the deployment of research data management (RDM) policies and practices in UK universities (as described in a recent Loughbrough study covering 38 institutions), and the incidence of institutional project funding from the Jisc MRD programme.


UK Government Abandons Mandatory Age Check to Access Pornography

Posted on 11/26/2019 by Michael Jubb

Previous plans to become the first country in the world to bring in an age-verification system for accessing pornography online have been abandoned after many years of being tossed around through parliament. The plans included a national system, which would have been operated on a contract basis by private corporations within the adult entertainment industry itself.

The implementation plan ran into many challenges along the way, including those technical in nature, as well as privacy concerns, especially with the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) act. The UK government has already begun making headway with the a new, broader online safety initiative, which aims at targeting not only providers of pornographic material, but also other services such as social media platforms. More information regarding the new online safety plan can be found in this white paper. Technical and privacy challenges aside, had the government gone through with the original plan of restricting the access of pornographic material to age-verified individuals, what impact, if any, would it have made? With the advent of VPNs, where anybody can seem to be accessing the web from a completely different location than where they're located physically, would an age check system have made any difference at all?

We at Research Information Network are on a mission to find out. Our current project in researching the effects of pornography on society as a whole will include findings on this particular subtopic. Although pornographic material in media forms such as video and picture format have been the primary target of this plan, there are many segments of the adult entertainment industry that may or may not have fallen under the strict age verification requirements. This includes areas such as video games and dating websites which encourage casual hookups that are geared towards an adult audience. Bigger dating platforms such as Tinder have already taken their own initiative in restricting access to those over the age of 18, however, there currently is no governmental requirement for dating sites to ensure that their users are at least 18 years of age.

Since the global COVID-19 pandemic and universal lock-downs came into effect, independent pornographic creators have spiked in numbers. Platforms such as OnlyFans and PornHub state they take creator age verification very seriously, however, some recent reports indicate there are some who slip through the cracks.

With many of these services relying on free pornographic websites as their primary source of advertising and aquiring new users and customers, the expectation would be that everyone is at least 18 years of age, which could lead to some inappropriate conversations. We will begin our research project in early 2020, and will report our findings on a monthly basis. To keep posted on updates, subscribe to our newsletter or bookmark this page. We anticipate updates to be published closer to the end of each month.

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The brief analysis is described in a series of posts on Loughborough University’s Research Data Management blog (see entries dated 8, 26 and 27 November). Not surprisingly, this suggests correlation between the RDM-readiness of institutions and those that have received Jisc funding from the programme over its duration, between 2009 and 2013.

This is no more than an initial assessment, and we welcome reactions about how further work might be undertaken to provide robust evidence on the benefits of the Jisc programme. For further information, please contact stephane.goldstein@researchinfonet.org .

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Implementing the recommendations of the Finch report
FEATURED

Posted on 15/11/2013 by Stephane Goldstein

Accessibility, Sustainability, Excellence: A Review of Progress in Implementing the Recommendations of the Finch Report

The Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings - the Finch Group - has today published a review of progress in implementing the recommendations of its original Report which was published in June 2012. That original Report  - Accessibility, Sustainability, Excellence: how to expand access to research publications  - recommended a series of measures to accelerate and manage a transition to open access (OA) over an extended period that would be characterised by a mixed economy that would provide OA via a variety of routes, along with extensions to current licensing arrangements.

The review is based on a rigorous analysis of evidence from a wide range of sources. It finds that research funders, universities, libraries, learned societies and publishers have all made substantial moves to facilitate and promote the transition to the kind of mixed economy we advocated. The policy positions adopted by the Government, Research Councils UK, and the UK Funding Bodies - and the responses to those policies from universities, publishers and learned societies - mean that there is now real momentum behind the moves to OA across all parts of the scholarly communications system.

Much still remains to be done, of course; and in some areas, as we anticipated, the progress in implementing our recommendations has been mixed, and has given rise to issues and problems that have not as yet been fully resolved. It is important that all the key stakeholders should continue to work together to resolve those issues and to ensure that the UK continues to benefit from world-leading research communications services. Our key recommendation is that a formal co-ordinating structure should be established to avoid duplication of effort and divergent work-streams; to deal with problems as they arise; to develop an interoperable system of repositories and an infrastructure that supports both Gold and Green OA; to monitor the impact of OA policies on  learned societies; to co-ordinate communications with the research community;  and to oversee the collection and analysis of data from different parties in order to create the evidence base that is essential to the further development of effective policies.

Dame Janet Finch said, “I am delighted that our review demonstrates the rapid progress that has been made over the past year, and the co-operation that is evident across all the major players involved in research publications. It is pleasing that all parties agree on the need to continue and cement that co-operation in a formal framework  that I am sure will bring further progress towards the kind of open access environment that we all wish to see.”

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UK Government Reevaluates Mandatory Age Check for Accessing Pornography Amidst Growing Concerns from TikTok
 

Posted on 09/09/2023 by Michael Jubb

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, the UK Government's approach to regulating access to pornography has faced significant challenges. The mandatory age verification system, once seen as a cornerstone of online child protection, has come under scrutiny and reevaluation. One major factor influencing this reevaluation is the presence of a substantial amount of pornographic content on social media platforms like TikTok. This article provides an update on the UK Government's stance on mandatory age checks for accessing pornography and the impact of TikTok on this decision.
 

The Rise of Mandatory Age Verification:

In April 2019, the UK Government passed the Digital Economy Act, which included provisions for mandatory age verification to restrict access to online pornography. The primary goal was to prevent minors from easily accessing explicit content and to ensure the safety of vulnerable individuals. The legislation mandated that commercial pornography websites implement age verification mechanisms, such as requiring users to confirm their age using a valid credit card or an age-verified account.

TikTok's Impact on the Debate:

Since the introduction of the Digital Economy Act, TikTok has become one of the most popular social media platforms among young people in the UK and around the world. However, alongside its popularity, TikTok has faced growing scrutiny due to the significant presence of explicit and pornographic content on the platform.

TikTok's algorithm-driven content recommendation system has been criticized for inadvertently exposing users, including minors, to sexually explicit material. Concerns have been raised regarding the effectiveness of the age verification system and content moderation practices on the platform, as users can easily circumvent age restrictions. The ease with which explicit content spreads on TikTok has sparked a broader debate about the role of social media platforms in regulating access to adult content.

Government Reevaluation:

In light of these concerns and the changing landscape of online content consumption, the UK Government has initiated a review of the mandatory age verification system's effectiveness. There is growing acknowledgment that a one-size-fits-all approach may not be suitable for the diverse range of online platforms and content types.

While the government remains committed to protecting children and vulnerable individuals from exposure to explicit material, there is a recognition that technological solutions must evolve to address the challenges posed by platforms like TikTok. Regulators are exploring alternative approaches, such as enhancing parental controls, improving content moderation algorithms, and collaborating with social media platforms to develop more robust safeguards.

The debate surrounding mandatory age verification for accessing pornography in the UK is evolving, driven in part by the challenges posed by social media platforms like TikTok. While the government's initial intentions were to protect minors, the digital landscape has proven to be complex and ever-changing. As regulators reconsider their approach, it is crucial to strike a balance between protecting vulnerable individuals and respecting the dynamic nature of online content consumption. The outcome of this reevaluation will likely have far-reaching implications for online safety and regulation in the UK.