By: Toni Beaton (MI Student)

We are happy to share the following recent research accomplishments by SIM faculty:

From Dr. Mike Smit:

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.

From Dr. Louise Spiteri: 

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.

From Dr. Philippe Mongeon:

Journal Publications 

• Sauvé, J.-S., Mongeon, P., Larivière, V. (in press). From art to science: a bibliometric analysis of architectural scholarly production from 1980 to 2016. PLOS ONE.
• Simard, M.-A., Ghiasi, G., Mongeon, P., Larivière, V. (2022). National differences in dissemination and use of open access literature. PLOS ONE, 17(8): e0272730.

Conference Proceedings 

• Mongeon, P., Paul-Hus, A., Henkel, M., & Larivière, V. (2022). On the impact of geo-contextualized and local research in the global North and South. The 26th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators. Granada, September 7-9 2022.
• Mayhew, K., Rosati, D., Music, J., & Mongeon, P. (2022). On the citation relationship between industry funded and publicly funded Canadian Food Research publications. The 26th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators. Granada, September 7-9 2022.
• Mayhew, K., Henkel, M., Morrison, L., Svab, C., Krause, G. & Mongeon, P. (2022). A bibliometric analysis of the coverage of historical journals in Web of Science and Scopus. The 26th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators. Granada, September 7-9 2022.
• Hare, M., & Mongeon, P. (2022). The Impact of Mentorship on the Research Performance of LIS PhDs. The 26th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators. Granada, September 7-9 2022.
• Taylor, S., Conrad, C., Mongeon, P. (2022). On achieving greater research impact through interdisciplinary collaboration in Canada. Conference of the Administrative Science Association of Canada. 3-7 June 2022.
• Butler, L.-A., Matthias, L., Simard, M.-A., Mongeon, P. & Haustein, S. (2022). The Oligopoly’s Shift to Open Access Publishing. Proceedings of the 2022 conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science. 7-10 June 2022.
• Mayhew, K., Henkel, M., Morrison, L., Svab, C, Krause, G. & Mongeon, P. (2022). On the coverage of historical journals in Web of Science and Scopus. Proceedings of the 2022 conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science. 7-10 June 2022.

Datasets 

• Butler, L.-A., Matthias, L., Simard, M.-A., Mongeon, P., & Haustein, S. (2022). Annual Article Processing Charges (APCs) and number of gold and hybrid open access articles in Web of Science indexed journals published by Elsevier, Sage, Springer-Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wiley 2015-2018 (Version v1) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7086420
• Philippe Mongeon, Timothy Bowman, & Rodrigo Costas. (2022). Open dataset of scholars on Twitter (2020-08-23) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7013518

Research Grants 

• Mongeon, P. (2022-2024). The role of scholarly journals in shaping knowledge: a bibliometric investigation of journal scope and journal fit. SSHRC Insight Development Grant, 44,270$, Principal investigator.
• Westwood, A., Mongeon, P. & Falconer, M. (2022-2024). What constitutes effective knowledge exchange at the environmental science-policy interface? SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, 200,000$, Co-Principal investigator.
• Mongeon, P. (2022-2023). Measuring engagement with equality, diversity, inclusion and accessibility in academic research. SSHRC Explore Grant, 5,000$, Principal investigator.
• Taylor, S. & Mongeon, P. (2022). The Evolution of Teaching Effectiveness: a bibliometric perspective. Dalhousie University Scholarship or Teaching and Learning Grant, 3,000$, Co-Principal investigator.

From Dr. Colin Conrad:

• Three journal articles were published during this time. They are listed below with citations.
  • Conrad, C., Deng, Q., Caron, I., Shkurska, O., Skerrett, P., & Sundararajan, B. (2022). How student perceptions about online learning difficulty influenced their satisfaction during Canada’s Covid-19 response. British Journal of Educational Technology, 53(3), 534-557.
  • Conrad, C. D., Aziz, J. R., Henneberry, J. M., & Newman, A. J. (2022). Do emotions influence safe browsing? Toward an electroencephalography marker of affective responses to cybersecurity notifications. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 16.
  • Conrad, C., Moylan, R., & Diaz, G. O. (2022). University life has gone digital: influences of institutional mobile social network use during the COVID-19 emergency. Library Hi Tech, (ahead-of-print).
• Three conference papers published as well, two in the Proceedings of the 2022 NeuroIS Retreat and one in the CONF-IRM 2022 Proceedings. We also have a forthcoming conference paper at HICSS 2023 this year. These papers are either related to remote work, mind wandering, or new educational technologies.
• I had the pleasure of hosting Anika Nissen, a PhD student from the University of Duisberg-Essen in Germany this summer. Together with Aaron Newman, we worked with Anika on a cool project related to the brain processing of social robots and artificial Instagram influencers. This paper is complete and under review.
• I was named a Data Champion by the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, which provided $49 998 to support research and teaching related to computational social science and digital humanities.
• We have multiple funded ongoing projects through Mitacs, largely to look into phenomena at the intersection of human-computer interaction and data mining.
• I have many other ongoing collaborations (some funded) related to identifying factors in motivation of public sector workers, brain-computer interfaces, and mind wandering, and YouTube videos.
• I had the pleasure of being featured as an emerging researcher (“Young Academic”) in the inaugural NeuroIS Society magazine, which was an honour!

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.

Mike Smit, Faculty of Management

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:

• Informing, educating, and guiding new and emerging researchers in how to manage, share, and find ocean data from a growing array of sources;
• Review and renew research data management advocacy and support for sharing ocean data based on the results of a previous SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis grant;
• Build on existing collaborations and engagement, consult with First Nations communities on how Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural labels might be incorporated in data management systems when it is appropriate to include this type of data.

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.

Colin Conrad, Faculty of Management and Darren Abramson, Faculty of Arts and Social Science

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.

Congrats Dr. Mike Smit (Professor), and Dr. Ryan Deschamps (Assistant Professor)!

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!