Discipline-specific Data Research Articles

Developing a data repository to support interdisciplinary research into childhood stunting: a UKRI GCRF Action Against Stunting Hub protocol paper

IntroductionAs a topic of inquiry in its own right, data management for interdisciplinary research projects is in its infancy. Key issues include the inability of researchers to effectively query diverse...

The interoperability of crystallographic data and databases.

Interoperability of crystallographic data with other disciplines is essential for the smooth and rapid progress of structure-based science in the computer age. Within crystallography and closely related subject areas, there is already a high level of conformance to the generally accepted FAIR principles (that data be findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) through the adoption of common information exchange protocols by databases, publishers, instrument vendors, experimental facilities and software authors. Driven by the success within these domains, the IUCr has worked closely with CODATA (the Committee on Data of the International Science Council) to help develop the latter's commitment to cross-domain integration of discipline-specific data. The IUCr has, in particular, emphasized the need for standards relating to data quality and completeness as an adjunct to the FAIR data landscape. This can ensure definitive reusable data, which in turn can aid interoperability across domains. A microsymposium at the IUCr 2023 Congress provided an up-to-date survey of data interoperability within and outside of crystallography, expounded using a broad range of examples.

The need for the development of discipline-specific approaches to address academic bullying.

SummaryBackgroundIt is now well-documented that academic bullying, mainly driven by power differences, affects all disciplines and academic people with various positions (from students to senior faculty) of all levels of experience. Our aim is to probe whether academic bullying, in its specific forms, manifests differently across disciplines.MethodsWe analyzed discipline-specific data from our global survey on academic bullying, which was collected since November 2019. The survey was a cross-sectional global study that was administered via Qualtrics. It reflects responses from 2122 individuals whose participation was solicited through various means including advertisements in Science and Nature magazines and the American Chemical Society.FindingsThe main finding is that academic bullying does not affect all scientific fields equally. Our cross-sectional global survey of targets of academic bullying indicates that bullying behavior depended strongly on the scientific discipline. Specifically, our comparison of the three major scientific categories, including Applied Sciences, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences revealed significant differences (p < 0.05) in four (out of ten) of the contextual behaviors. Further comparison of the bullying behavior among specific disciplines (e.g., Chemistry, Engineering, Life Sciences, Neuroscience, and Social Sciences) revealed significant differences (p < 0.05) in five of the contextual behaviors. We also noticed that, among the top five disciplines analyzed, respondents in Engineering experienced the highest rate of bullying behaviors.InterpretationThe variation in contextual bullying behavior across disciplines suggests the need for specific and nuanced training, monitoring, and actions by stakeholders in addressing academic bullying in a context-specific manner.FundingNone.

Activities and Challenges in Developing Discipline-Specific Data Management Plan Templates: From Vertical to Horizontal Integration of RDM Practices

Activities and Challenges in Developing Discipline-Specific Data Management Plan Templates: From Vertical to Horizontal Integration of RDM Practices

Activity Worksheets for Teaching and Learning Data Visualization.

In this work, the data visualization activity (DVA) worksheet method for teaching and learning data visualization is presented. The DVA worksheet method consists of a series of activity worksheets developed to guide novice instructors and students through the data visualization process. The activity worksheets help new faculty and visualization instructors, lacking formal training in pedagogy and data visualization, learn the data visualization process, design course work, and develop curriculum. The worksheets can be used for individual activities, or as a collection of activities to support data visualization capacity building. Each worksheet focuses on an individual step in the process, allowing the worksheets to be tailored to discipline-specific data visualization needs. We share the motivation and evolution of the worksheets from paper-based to the semi-automated process utilized in fall 2020. We conclude this work with a discussion and areas for improvement.

Holistic understanding of contemporary ecosystems requires integration of data on domesticated, captive and cultivated organisms.

Domestic and captive animals and cultivated plants should be recognised as integral components in contemporary ecosystems. They interact with wild organisms through such mechanisms as hybridization, predation, herbivory, competition and disease transmission and, in many cases, define ecosystem properties. Nevertheless, it is widespread practice for data on domestic, captive and cultivated organisms to be excluded from biodiversity repositories, such as natural history collections. Furthermore, there is a lack of integration of data collected about biodiversity in disciplines, such as agriculture, veterinary science, epidemiology and invasion science. Discipline-specific data are often intentionally excluded from integrative databases in order to maintain the “purity” of data on natural processes. Rather than being beneficial, we argue that this practise of data exclusivity greatly limits the utility of discipline-specific data for applications ranging from agricultural pest management to invasion biology, infectious disease prevention and community ecology. This problem can be resolved by data providers using standards to indicate whether the observed organism is of wild or domestic origin and by integrating their data with other biodiversity data (e.g. in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility). Doing so will enable efforts to integrate the full panorama of biodiversity knowledge across related disciplines to tackle pressing societal questions.

QQuake, a QGIS Plugin for Loading Seismological Data From Web Services

An increasing number of web services providing convenient access to seismological data have become available in recent years. A huge effort at multiple levels was required to achieve this goal and the seismological community was engaged in the standardization of both data formats and web services. Although access to seismological data is much easier than in the past, users encounter problems because of the large number of web services, and due to the complexity of the discipline-specific data encodings. In addition, instead of adopting cross-disciplinary standards such as those by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), most seismological web services created their own standards, primarily those by the International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks (FDSN). This article introduces “QQuake,” a plugin for QGIS—the Open Source Geographic Information System—that aims at making access to seismological data easier. The plugin is based on an Open Source code available on GitHub, and it is designed in a modular and customizable way, allowing users to easily include new web services.

The Fast and the FRDR: Improving Metadata for Data Discovery in Canada

The Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR), developed through a partnership between the Canadian Association of Research Libraries’ Portage initiative and the Compute Canada Federation, improves research data discovery in Canada by providing a single search portal for research data stored across Canadian governmental, institutional, and discipline-specific data repositories. While this national discovery layer helps to de-silo Canadian research data, challenges in data discovery remain due to a lack of standardized metadata practices across repositories. In recognition of this challenge, a Portage task group, drawn from a national network of experts, has engaged in a project to map subject keywords to the Online Computer Library Center’s (OCLC) Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) using the open source OpenRefine software. This paper will describe the task group’s project, discuss the various approaches undertaken by the group, and explore how this work improves data discovery and may be adopted by other repositories and metadata aggregators to support metadata standardization.

Data sharing as an issue.

In one of my recent discussion pieces [1] I suggested a special issue on data and here it is. I invited about 40 scientists to contribute and eventually nine teams produced the articles in this issue of the journal. Fortunately the nine contributions do cover most of the issues addressed in my ‘‘taster’’ article [1] and we hope that at least one of the authors who could not make my deadline might contribute to a future special issue on data. Two of the articles might be considered as ‘‘position papers’’. Leah McEwen and Ye Li highlight opportunities for librarians as curators across the entire research life cycle, beyond ELNs and data sharing. Jeremy Frey and Colin Bird present a viewpoint on data sharing, addressing the reluctance of researchers to share information with their peers, and examining the processes of data exchange from the perspective of a trading environment. Another contribution on data sharing, by Sean Ekins and colleagues, on bigger data and collaborative tools, is noteworthy for its extensive reference list and its discussion on mobile apps, new technologies and the future of predictive drug discovery. Other articles cover discipline-specific data repositories and databases. Helen Berman and co-authors give a history of the Protein Data Bank (PDB) and provide some insights into how this resource has evolved into one of the most widely used open access data resources in biology (and chemistry). Ian Bruno and Colin Groom of the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Center discuss the informatics tools that have been developed to allow expert human curation of the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD), and the opportunities afforded by recent technological developments and changing attitudes. Tony Williams and Valery Tkachenko describe the chemical structure centric hub ChemSpider, and discuss how changes in database technologies and the growing importance of the Semantic Web have motivated the Royal Society of Chemistry to rearchitect ChemSpider and create a more generic data repository. Tony Slater describes a newer database of accurate and well-curated experimental pKa data: a computer-readable form of the IUPAC pKa data compilations. It adds value in the form of ionization assignments and tautomer enumeration. Finally a couple of papers discuss ‘‘secondary services’’. Janna Neumann and Jan Brase report on the global consortium DataCite, which aims to establish easy access to data, to increase the acceptance of data publication, and to support data archiving. Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) assigned to datasets facilitate access to data, and citation and reuse of data. Megan Force and Nigel Robinson give an overview of Data Citation Index which aims to link published research articles to their underlying datasets and track the citation of the data as well as to encourage bibliographic citation of the data. Data Citation Index also evaluates data repositories with respect to various selection criteria. My initial article [1] discussed stakeholders, the culture of our scientific discipline, and barriers to data sharing. These issues are covered in particular by the articles in this issue by Leah McEwen and Jeremy Frey, and their coauthors. I introduced data on the Web and data repositories. Sean Ekins addresses data in ‘‘the cloud’’. The domainspecific repositories ChemSpider, PDB and CSD are well covered here. Sadly, no major publisher volunteered to write about the Supporting Information to the research articles that they W. A. Warr (&) Wendy Warr & Associates, Holmes Chapel, Crewe, Cheshire, UK e-mail: wendy@warr.com

Interoperability Building Information Modeling and acoustical analysis software—A demonstration of a performance hall design process

By sharing and managing the database for a building model, Building Information Modeling (BIM) facilitates the design process at less cost. Some of BIM software has capabilities for acoustical analysis, but it is limited to noise level demonstration of MEP system in a building. Sophisticated acoustical analysis programs, such as EASE and CATT, provide the useful parameters to determine the sound quality of a space with graphs, A/V systems, material database, and auralization. This research explores how BIM with discipline-specific data reinforced with acoustical information will be beneficial to both architects and acousticians, by allowing them to communicate efficiently. The design process for a performance hall is used to demonstrate how to interoperate between BIM system and acoustical analysis programs. Revit Architecture and EASE program are used as design and analysis tools for for the project. A model is developed to improve the process of embedding acoustic information in BIM and sharing knowledge in an integrated delivery process.

Current Trends and Future Directions in Data Curation Research and Education

Digital research data have introduced a new set of collection, preservation, and service demands into the tradition of digital librarianship. Consequently, the role of an information professional has evolved to include the activities of data curation. This new field more specifically addresses the needs of stewarding and preserving digital research data. In this article, the authors offer an overview of data curation research and education in the field of library and information science, focusing specifically on the current state of professional practice, trends in education and workforce development, and future directions for both basic and applied research. Drawing on the proceedings from two data curation summits held in late 2010, the authors highlight and build on the major insights and recommendations that emerged from discussions among more than 50 leading experts from government agencies, data centers, the field of library and information science, and the publishing industry. Specifically, they note the importance of developing interoperable standards for describing datasets, the need for curators to participate in data privacy and ownership policy development, the demand for a workforce to support discipline-specific data practices, and the varied approaches for professional education that will be required by a data-driven research agenda in both the sciences and humanities. The authors conclude with an overview of future directions for research and workforce development in data curation.

Elsevier's Article of the Future enhancing the user experience and integrating data through applications

In a world where our levels of knowledge advance rapidly, so should the communication of research. In partnership with the world's research community, Elsevier investigates the future of research communication with the ‘Article of the Future’. An intuitive online article format, this proposes the next generation in research publishing, with a simple-to-read online layout and enriched content, allowing true immersion in the subject matter. In addition, through the use of SciVerse® Applications, the Article of the Future connects the formal scientific record with associated external data sets and other contextual information that is available elsewhere on the web. In this article, we present the outcomes of the second phase of the Article of the Future project, with an emphasis on its final designs, user feedback collected, and how the Article of the Future handles the rising need of connecting the formal scientific record with associated discipline-specific data sets.

Focus on the Myths: An Approach To Improving Healthcare Worker Influenza Immunization Rates

ISSUE: Every year approximately 200,000 Americans are hospitalized and more than 36,000 die from influenza and influenza-related complications, and influenza is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States; despite longstanding recommendations for healthcare worker immunization from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, immunization rates for health care workers average only about 36%. For this pediatric care organization which includes inpatient and outpatient rehabilitative and habilitative services, the employee immunization rate was 41% for the 2003-2004 influenza season. PROJECT: In the summer of 2004, the infection control and employee health coordinators conducted a survey to determine employees' knowledge and beliefs regarding influenza vaccine, and to identify barriers to immunization. A 32% response rate was received. Only 78% of respondents who were immunized and 63% of respondents who were not immunized believed that influenza immunization was a patient safety issue. Of the 140 respondents who were not immunized, 46% stated they had a fear of side effects, 33% feared getting influenza from the vaccine and 18% did not believe they were at risk of contracting influenza. Due to the vaccine shortage for the 2004 season, the project was put on hold. With the support of administration, increasing the employee influenza immunization rate to 50% became an organizational goal in 2005. An educational program and publicity campaign were designed to address the issues identified in the 2004 survey, employee incentives were offered, and a system was developed to track education and immunization rates. RESULTS: For the 2005- 2006 influenza season, 74% of employees had documentation of education regarding influenza and influenza immunization, and 57% of total staff received influenza vaccine. Review of discipline specific data indicated that staff in some clinical areas, therapeutic services and support services did not reach the 50% goal. LESSONS LEARNED: The survey process proved beneficial in identifying employee misconceptions and targeting these issues through education. Tracking also identified areas where different strategies may be needed to increase immunization rates. The organizational goal for 2006 includes increasing the total percentage of employees immunized to 60%, with focus on the clinical areas.