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!

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

From Dr. Colin Conrad:

• I was awarded a SSHRC Insight Development Grant titled “What is the role of mind wandering in work productivity when using remote workplace platforms?”. We are currently exploring this question using mixed methods (questionnaires, EEG, field studies) with a diverse team consisting of SIM students, Psychology & Neuroscience students, and colleagues in Germany.
• I had a cool paper titled “Measuring mind wandering during online lectures assessed with EEG” which was published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

From Dr. Louise Spiteri:

• Presenting a keynote paper Indigenizing Knowledge Organization Sytems and the Semantic Web at the IV Seminário do Grupo de Pesquisa MHTX – 2021. Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) | Escola de Ciência da Informação (ECI), Brazil, November 25. This paper focuses on Indigenous Knowledge Organization (IKO, which is an emerging field of study focused on the protocols and methods of describing, naming, co-locating, and providing access to objects and materials that are of importance to Indigenous ways of knowing.

From Dr. Philippe Mongeon:

• Mongeon, P., Brown, A., Dhaliwal, R., Hill, J., & Matthews, A. (2021). A bibliometric analysis of race-related research in LIS. Education for Information, 37(2), 231–246.
• Aagaard, K., Mongeon, P., Ramos-Vielba, I., & Thomas, D. A. (2021). Getting to the bottom of research funding: Acknowledging the complexity of funding dynamics. PLOS ONE, 16(5), e0251488.
• Ferreira, M. R., Mongeon, P., & Costas, R. (2021). Large-scale comparison of authorship, citations, and tweets of Web of Science authors. Journal of Altmetrics, 4(1), 1.
• Mongeon, P., Siler, K., Archambault, A., Sugimoto, C., & Larivière, V. (2021). Collection Development in the Era of Big Deals. College & Research Libraries, 82(2), 219.Papers
• Grant: Mongeon, P., & Sauvé, J.-S. (2021-2022). Breaking the research silos: improving interactions between LIS academics and practitioners. SSHRC Connection Grant.

From Dr. Mike Smit:

• Information is everywhere! I’ve been working with amazing students who take me in so many fun directions. These 6 articles are the tip of the iceberg: user experience, urban forests and citizen engagement, research data management and Indigenous Traditional Knowledge, neo-natal intensive care, how to describe research data in plain language, and using social media images as data for environmental research.

From Dr. Bertrum MacDonald:

• New Publications
  • Moreland, H. R., De Santo, E. M., & MacDonald, B. H. (2021). Understanding the role of information in marine policy development: Establishing a coastal marine protected area in Nova Scotia, Canada. FACETS, 6, 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1139/facets-2020-0109
  • Black, F. A., Grek Martin, J. M., & MacDonald, B. H. (2021). Geographic information systems and book history. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia, Literature ([32] p.). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.1151
• Conference Session: Dr. Patricia Manuel, School of Planning, and I organized and presented a session at the international MARE, People and the Sea conference, entitled, “Out of the Blue”: Integrating Land and Marine Planning for Coastal Community Resilience.” The speakers included Daniel Martinez Calderon, Dalhousie Interdisciplinary PhD student, and Monica DeVidi, Dalhousie Master of Planning student, both of which are co-supervised by Dr. Manuel and me. Additional speakers were based in London, Ireland, and Norway. A report about the conference session is posted at https://coastalfutures.ca
• Conference Papers
  • Melnick, K., Moharana, T., Toupin, R., Gone, P., MacDonald, B. H., & Mongeon, P. (2021). The intersection of shark research, policy, and the public: A bibliometric and altmetric view. Canadian Association for Information Science Annual Conference, Edmonton, 7-11 May 2021. https://www.cais2021.ca/talk/27.melnick/
  • Mongeon, P., Moharana, T., Melnick, K., Toupin, R., Gone, P., & MacDonald, B. H. (2021). Advancing marine conservation through understanding the distribution of media and scholarly attention across shark research communities. Coastal Zone Canada Conference, Iqualuit, Nunavut, Canada, 13-16 June 2021. https://www.coastalzonecanada.org/czc2021/
• Conference Posters
  • Ryder-Burbidge, S., MacDonald, B. H., & Soomai, S. S. (2021). A coastal case study: Can cultural ecosystem services frameworks accurately interpret plain language survey responses. International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) Annual Science Conference, Virtual. 6-10 September 2021. https://www.ices.dk/events/asc/ASC2021/Pages/default.aspx
  • MacDonald, B. H., De Santo, E. M., Mongeon, P., Soomai, S. S., Stewart, I., & Wells, P. G. (2021). The critical need to understand barriers to the flow of information in science-policy interfaces. International Network for Government Science Advice (INGSA) Conference, Montreal, 30 August – 2 September 2021. https://www.ingsa.org/ingsa2021/
  • Cadman, R., Martin, C., Moreland, H. R., & MacDonald, B. H. (2021). Engaging stakeholders: Exploring participation in environmental governance. Coastal Zone Canada Conference, Iqualuit, Nunavut, Canada, 13-16 June 2021. https://www.coastalzonecanada.org/czc2021/
  • MacDonald, B. H., De Santo, E. M., Soomai, S. S., & Wells, P. G. (2021). Advancing coastal and marine management and conservation through understanding enablers and barriers in the use and influence of research information. Coastal Zone Canada Conference, Iqualuit, Nunavut, Canada, 13-16 June 2021. https://www.coastalzonecanada.org/czc2021/
  • Martinez Calderon, D., Manuel, P., & MacDonald, B. H. (2021). Towards meaningful engagement of stakeholders in marine spatial planning: Five key elements of effective management. Coastal Zone Canada Conference, Iqualuit, Nunavut, Canada, 13-16 June 2021. https://www.coastalzonecanada.org/czc2021/
• Current research projects: In collaboration with the California Ocean Science Trust, the Environmental Information: Use and Influence (EIUI – www.eiui.ca) research team has launched a project to investigate the information seeking activities of staff of the California Legislature (who report to Assembly Members and Senators) that deal with coastal and marine subjects. Tamanna Moharana, MI 2021, is assisting with this project. The EIUI research team is also completing a synthesis analysis of numerous case studies EIUI has conducted over the past several years to draw out common themes about information pathways in science-policy interfaces. Lisa Long, MI 2021, is assisting with this project. The results of these initiatives will highlight the importance of understanding how reliable information is used for policy and management regarding marine environmental sustainability. The Ocean Frontier Institute research group on Marine Spatial Planning, co-led by Dr. Patricia Manuel, Dalhousie School of Planning, and me, is conducting research about information activities in community decision-making processes and the role of municipal governments in marine spatial planning.

From CAUL/CBUA, re. Lindsay McNiff (SIM liaison librarian & instructor):

• Lindsay McNiff, Learning & Instruction Librarian, Killam Memorial Library Dalhousie University; and Nicole Carter, Reference & Research Librarian, Patrick Power Library, Saint Mary’s University, have been awarded $1,000 to help support their project, Investigating the experiences of academic librarians on temporary contracts in Canada before and during COVID-19. In their proposal, Lindsay and Nicole propose to investigate the demographics of those academic librarians engaged in precarious work in Canada (including age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, years since graduation), in what postsecondary environments they have been employed precariously (college, university, size of institution), the nature of these contracts (reason, duration), and some key questions about their experience in these positions, including those raised in prior literature around training, socialization, and supervision. This is the first Canada-wide survey to investigate these questions with a focus on academic librarians with temporary contracts. The study will also zero in on how COVID-19 has affected the working life of librarians holding temporary contracts in academic libraries. The CAUL-CBUA Collaborative Research Grant is intended to encourage collaborative research by librarians and staff working in academic libraries in the region through projects which involve structured, evidence-based research. We are pleased to continue offering support to researchers in the region and look forward to the results of Lindsay and Nicole’s study.