SIM is excited to share that in 2021-2022 we exceeded $1 million in research funding for the first time in the period covered by records, and possibly ever! Congrats to all of our hardworking researchers.
By: Toni Beaton (MI Student)
We are happy to share the following recent research accomplishments by SIM faculty:
As previously announced, Mike Smit started a new role as Deputy Scientific Director for the Ocean Frontier Institute earlier this year. In that role, he helped lead a large, multi-institution proposal to the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, which aims to understand and transform the role of the ocean in assessing, mitigating, and adapting to climate change, and which includes a significant role for ocean data and information. Hopefully there’s good news on that proposal in our next newsletter! Mike has also participated in the Digital Twins of the Ocean Summit, a WMO initiative to better collect and share data on Greenhouse Gas emissions, the Polar Data Workshop, the joint Canada-EU ocean data partnership forum, and many other national and international conferences.
Louise Spiteri is a co-applicant, together with other members of DefaultDal (https://defaultdal.ca/) on a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant for the project Fostering plant-based defaults in Canadian universities and colleges. Louise is continuing to work on another SSHRC-funded project that examines Scaling up trauma and violence: Informed outreach with women affected by violence.
Journal Publications
Conference Proceedings
Datasets
Research Grants
Submitted by Maddie Hare (MI student and Alberta Letts Conference Travel Award recipient):
In early September I travelled to Granada, Spain with members of the Quantitative Science Studies Lab (QSS) for the 26th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators hosted at the Universidad de Granada. The conference featured three days of oral communication sessions, an event dedicated for Women in Science Policy (WISP) and a PhD student round table.
The QSS Lab presented four studies at the conference. Director of the QSS Lab, Dr. Philippe Mongeon, presented his work “On the Impact of Geo-contextualized and Local Research in the Global North and South”. MI graduate Kydra Mayhew presented a study entitled “On the Citation Relationship Between Industry Funded and Publicly Funded Canadian Food Research Publications” and a poster session for her work “On the coverage of historical journals in Web of Science and Scopus”. I presented my research-in-progress “The Impact of Mentorship on the Research Performance of LIS PhDs”.
The QSS Lab was represented by those of us from Dalhousie University’s School of Information Management, as well as its collaborators from around the world. The conference was a fantastic opportunity to meet established members of the bibliometrics and scientometrics community and meet fellow researchers new to the field. I received useful feedback on my study from conference participants, broadened my academic network, and gained valuable experiencing presenting in an international academic setting. STI 2022 was a deeply formative experience for me as an early career researcher. I will reflect on this conference as an event that crystallized my desire to continue in academia and contribute to global efforts directed towards the advancement of knowledge.
Included below are a few photos from the conference; many new friends were made, old ones reunited, and tapas eaten!
Re-posted from Dal News. Click here to read the full article:
The Digital Research Alliance of Canada has announced Mike Smit, Colin Conrad and Darren Abramson as winners of their Data Champions competiton. Dalhousie’s Data Champions will receive up to $50,000 each to develop activities at the local, regional and national levels that advance awareness, understanding, development and adoption of research management tools, best practices and resources in Canada.
Accelerating Research Data Management in Ocean Observing & Research
Understanding the ocean is essential for coastal communities, access to food, and moderating climate. Challenged but undaunted by its vast expanse and depth, researchers from across disciplines rely on observations of the ocean. This project will advance research data management from ocean observations in support of ocean research, beyond what would otherwise be possible. The Canadian Integrated Ocean Observing System (CIOOS) will accelerate research data management by:
The research team includes Dalhousie data experts like Louise Gillis (Research Data Management Librarian, Dalhousie Libraries) and Shayla Fitzsimmons (Executive Director, CIOOS Atlantic) along with expertise from some of Canada’s leading ocean data management centers, including Ocean Networks Canada, Observatoire global du Saint-Laurent, and Memorial University. During the pilot phase, the team will work with academic institutions and organizations on the Pacific coast, the Atlantic coast, and the Gulf of St Lawrence.
Beyond the Black Box: Unlocking the Potential of Digital Humanities
Digital technologies and data now play a pivotal role in our world, yet many university researchers are poorly equipped to create knowledge with them. This issue is particularly pertinent to researchers in the social sciences and humanities who are limited by funding and resources tailored to pre-digital methodologies. There is also a growing interest among digital researchers in the insights from the social sciences and humanities related to the intersection of digital technologies and society.
Drs. Conrad (pictured) and Abramson aim to address disciplinary divides through a series of events aimed at equipping humanities researchers with digital and data skills. Their immediate goal is to foster interest and cultivate expertise. Their long-term goal is to create a hub for equipping social researchers with ever-changing research tools for the digital era with a vision to position Canada as a leader in data-driven social sciences and digital humanities.
SIM Professor, Dr. Mike Smit, has been appointed Deputy Scientific Director of the Ocean Frontier Institute. OFI is a partnership led by Dalhousie University, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and University of Prince Edward Island. This will be a part-time role while Dr. Smit continues to fulfill his duties as Associate Dean, Academic (Faculty of Management).
From Dr. Smit: “I work with the leadership team to develop and implement strategy (pertaining to research themes); represent OFI within Dalhousie, regionally and nationally; work with colleagues to synthesize and share ocean research across Dalhousie. In the short term, I have been working with colleagues on a large research proposal involving Dalhousie, UQAR, Laval, and Memorial called Transforming Climate Action: Addressing the Missing Ocean. We were recently approved as as candidate for funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund. To understand why someone from SIM is in this role, it’s helpful to know that I’ve been an OFI researcher, leading one of the large research projects focused on how we manage the vast amounts of data from ocean observing. This is building on the ocean data work I started with MEOPAR, and then continued with my role advancing the Canadian Integrated Ocean Observing System. Data and information are critical to understanding the changing ocean, and I’ve had the pleasure of working with incredible ocean researchers who helped me become comfortable in this area.”
Congrats Dr. Smit!
Dr. Philippe Mongeon was awarded a connection grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). The project is a partnership with Dr. Jean-Sébastien Sauvé (Co-PI) from the University of Montreal, the Canadian Association for Research Libraries (CARL) and the Maritime Institute for Science, Technology, and Society (MISTS). It aims to foster greater collaboration between practitioners and academic researchers in Canada by creating an exhaustive database of these groups’ scholarship, by developing a visual interface to explore that literature and identify new research and collaboration opportunities, and hosting an online conference on collaboration between practitioners and academics in Library and Information Science.
Please join us for (virtual) SIM Research Day to hear about the exciting research projects our graduate students and colleagues are working on. Featuring virtual lightning talks from graduate students, alumni, and professionals. All presentations will be 3 minutes + 2 minutes for questions. This event is free and open to all. No need to RSVP. Simply click the link below to join.
Feel free to share. This event will be recorded and posted to our YouTube channel.
Via Microsoft Teams (<–click link at above date/time to join. If you already have Teams, it will open. If you do not have Teams, you can watch in your browser – move the Teams download request window and click the option to open in browser. Note: Safari is NOT recommended due to issues with video and audio. Instructions for downloading Teams are attached if needed).
Click here for the full event schedule
Click here to learn more about research in the School of Information Management.
Dr. Mike Smit (SIM Professor) and Lachlan MacLeod (Dalhousie Libraries, MI student) were awarded an Open Educational Resource Grant for their project “Research Data Management in the Canadian Context: A Guide for Practitioners and Learners“.
They are part of a national collaborative project to leverage the expertise of Canadian librarians, data managers, and other experts to provide a comprehensive, bilingual, peer-reviewed textbook introducing readers to managing research data. This book will, among other things, serve as a replacement textbook for the MI course INFO 6290: Managing Research Data.
This grant is offered in partnership between the Dalhousie Centre for Learning and Teaching, and Dalhousie Libraries through the support of Dalhousie’s Strategic Initiatives Funding.
Congrats Mike and Lachlan!
SIM Professor, Dr. Bertrum MacDonald, has received the Faculty of Management Research Impact Award. The Impact Award is given to a FoM researcher in recognition of their overall lifetime achievement to date. This decision is guided by traditional research metrics, such as impact factors and citations and additional considerations of the nature of the impact.
Dr. MacDonald was nominated by Acting SIM Director, Dr. Vivian Howard. From the nomination:
As a senior faculty member in the School of Information Management, Bertrum has had a distinguished career as a researcher and has been recognized with the Marie Tremaine Medal (the highest honour awarded by the Canadian Bibliographical Society) and a Dibner Resident Scholar Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institute, in addition to SSHRC and CFREF research grants totalling nearly $1 million. Throughout his career with SIM, he has been instrumental in creating and sustaining an enriching, supportive, and productive research culture.
Bertrum has been involved in many distinguished research initiatives during his career with SIM, but his leadership of EIUI, the Environmental Information: Use and Influence research group over the past decade is one of the most significant and far-reaching. This research group focuses on the complex interface of scientific information and policy decisions, using marine environmental and fisheries information as case studies. The output of this research group is truly impressive: EIUI has produced 45 journal articles, 11 book chapters, one book, 76 national and international conference presentations, and 16 Masters and Doctoral theses. Bertrum has successfully created a dynamic, collaborative, and interdisciplinary environment within his research group, and he and his team members are tackling some of the key environmental questions of our time, including strategies to mobilize scientific research in the public sphere, understanding information flows in coastal and marine decision making and in the recovery process for endangered marine species. The impact of EIUI’s output continues to grow as does the importance and overall significance of their findings.
One of Bertrum’s most outstanding (and less visible) contributions is his encouragement of students as emerging scholars. He helps students see they have the potential for scholarship, then ensures they have the assistance, tools, support, and guidance to succeed. Bertrum is known for his rigor and his attention to detail, but also for his incredible curiosity and joy in the research process. He genuinely treats each student and their project as unique and important, and ensures they have the support to think critically and to exceed their own expectations in their development as independent researchers. The positive impact of his mentorship of scores of students in a diversity of programs over the years really is incalculable.
Congrats Bertrum!