Managing Scientific Information and Research Data

Svetla Baykoucheva

• Publisher: Chandos Publishing
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9780081001950
• eBook ISBN:
  9780081002377
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Information Management
• Index: Business

Innovative technologies are changing the way research is performed, preserved, and communicated. Managing Scientific Information and Research Data explores how these technologies are used and provides detailed analysis of the approaches and tools developed to manage scientific information and data. Following an introduction, the book is then divided into 15 chapters discussing the changes in scientific communication; new models of publishing and peer review; ethics in scientific communication; preservation of data; discovery tools; discipline-specific practices of researchers for gathering and using scientific information; academic social networks; bibliographic management tools; information literacy and the information needs of students and researchers; the involvement of academic libraries in eScience and the new opportunities it presents to librarians; and interviews with experts in scientific information and publishing. - Promotes innovative technologies for creating, sharing and managing scientific content - Presents new models of scientific publishing, peer review, and dissemination of information - Serves as a practical guide for researchers, students, and librarians on how to discover, filter, and manage scientific information - Advocates for the adoption of unique author identifiers such as ORCID and ResearcherID - Looks into new tools that make scientific information easy to discover and manage - Shows what eScience is and why it is becoming a priority for academic libraries - Demonstrates how Electronic Laboratory Notebooks can be used to record, store, share, and manage research data - Shows how social media and the new area of Altmetrics increase researchers' visibility and measure attention to their research - Directs to sources for datasets - Provides directions on choosing and using bibliographic management tools - Critically examines the metrics used to evaluate research impact - Aids strategic thinking and informs decision making

1

The road from chemistry—to microbiology—to information science

Abstract

Moving from the lab bench to a science information center could be a challenging career change. Looking back at her professional life as a chemist, microbiologist, biochemist, information specialist, librarian, and editor, the author of this book discusses how timing, technology, and luck have taken her across borders, continents, and cultures and have influenced her thinking, interests, and motivation.

Keywords

STEM publishing

scientific information

research data

interviews

Eugene Garfield

Current Contents

chemical information

academic libraries

eScience

social media

Chemical Information Bulletin

Science Citation Index

information science, alternative careers.

Hang on to ideas until they mature.

John Mellencamp (on The Today Show, September, 2014)

In the technologically complex environment in which we are working today, the fear of missing some important piece of information is becoming more and more palpable. Writing a book is an endless process, especially if the topics you are writing about are changing very quickly. You think you have included the latest information and then suddenly you learn of something you have never heard of before that is common knowledge to others. At some point, you have to stop gathering information, reading articles, discussing your book with people, attending conferences and taking notes, and reading e-mails sent to Listservs.

People write books for different reasons. Sometimes they even cannot explain why they are doing it. As for me, I know why I wrote this book—it is because of Eugene Garfield. Early in my research career, I became fascinated with his essays published in a little weekly journal called Current Contents (Garfield, 1979). These essays triggered my interest in information science (Garfield, 2014) and the thought that someday I would be part of this world has always stayed in the back of my mind and later made my transition from the lab bench to librarianship seamless.

Eugene Garfield created the Science Citation Index (SCI) and was the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in Philadelphia. The SCI became the basis for important information products such as Web of Science, Essential Science Indicators, and Journal Citation Reports (JCR). Several years ago, I interviewed Dr. Garfield (Baykoucheva, 2006) and later regretted about not asking him some more questions. I feel honored that he agreed to do another interview for this book, which is included in Chapter 12.

It is sometimes difficult for people with nontraditional careers to explain to others what has driven them through all their professional paths. The scientific revolution that has led to major discoveries in science and technology—the advancements in the exploration of space, the elucidation of the structure of DNA, and the discovery of new drugs—created an atmosphere of optimism about the role that science could play in making society better, and I wanted to be part of this revolution. The life and work of Marie Curie played a significant role in my choosing chemistry for my undergraduate education. I was prepared to endure the hardships of a scientific career—spending endless hours in the lab while working with toxic chemicals and infectious agents—to live out the experience of being a scientist.

My interest in understanding how microorganisms cause diseases and how these diseases can be prevented or cured made me redirect my career from chemistry to infectious microbiology. I spent a significant part of my research career at the Institute of Microbiology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. My initial research was focused on the chemical basis of bacterial pathogenicity and the mechanisms by which virulent strains of bacteria survive and overcome the defense systems of the body. It was not easy for me, being trained as a chemist, to learn how to work in sterile conditions and protect myself and my colleagues from getting infected with the dangerous bacteria we had in the lab. When I started my graduate work, my daughter was ten months old, and I still remember how every night, before going to sleep, I tried to remember all the steps and procedures that I had gone through in the lab during the day, to make sure that I had not exposed myself to the highly virulent strains of bacteria that I was handling.

Along with performing research in the lab, I began writing articles for popular science and literary journals on a broad range of topics. My interest in languages created a parallel career for me as a translator and editor of scientific and other publications. The long list of my activities as a translator includes a psychology book on transactional analysis (I'm OK, You're OK by Thomas Harris, originally published 1969), which was published by a major publisher in Bulgaria.

My stay in Paris for one year as a postdoctoral fellow of the International Atomic Energy Agency opened a new chapter in my life, as it allowed me to learn new modern research techniques and broadened my interests in European culture, languages, and history. Upon my return to Bulgaria, I wrote articles about different aspects of cultural life in France, historical places that I had visited, and books that I had enjoyed. An article about a literary TV talk show, Apostrophes, which had dominated French intellectual life and had influenced the reading habits of the nation for more than a decade, was published in a popular weekly newspaper with very large circulation.

An essay about Zelda Fitzgerald’s book, Save Me the Waltz, published in a literary newspaper, reflected my interest in the life and works of American writers living in Paris in the 1920s—an interest I have preserved until today. How could I have imagined that this essay, written in a Slavic language, would be downloaded over 100 times from a US university repository 30 years later?

In 1990, after applying for a position for a visiting scientist advertised in the journal Science, I came to the United States and worked at the Department of Microbiology, Molecular Genetics, and Immunology of the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas. There, I investigated the effects of the cellular membrane lipid environment of macrophages on both the expression of cell receptors for bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPS) and the capacity of these cells to respond to LPS by producing tumor necrosis factor (TNF).

The most productive period in my career as a scientist came when I was offered a position at the Department of Medical Biochemistry of Ohio State University (OSU), where I had the opportunity to collaborate with Dr. Howard Sprecher, a distinguished scientist in the field of fatty acid metabolism. Our studies led to discovering new fundamental information about the way fatty acids are synthesized and degraded in the liver by small membranes called peroxisomes. These findings provided an important clue to how the brain and the eyes obtain specific fatty acids required for normal organ function. The nine papers that we published in some of the most prestigious biochemistry journals continue to be cited every year.

A career change is a serious thing and has to be prepared years before making the decisive step. Reading Eugene Garfield’s essays for years and publishing articles on topics outside of my area of research made this transition easy for me. While still doing research, I enrolled in Kent State University’s master’s program in library science, which had a branch on OSU campus. The beginning of my library career coincided with the exponential growth of the Internet, which provided me with many job opportunities both in academia and in special libraries. For eight years, I was manager of the Library and Information Center (LIC) of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Washington, DC, a position that entailed providing information to the editors of the ACS journals and particularly to the editors of the ACS flagship weekly magazine Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN). For an important publication with a large circulation (around 200,000), having accurate content was vital, which, combined with the short deadlines, put enormous pressure on me. For five years, I also served as a voluntary editor of the ACS organizational monthly newsletter The Phoenix. At the ACS, I was able to gain an insider’s view of the scientific publishing field, attend many professional conferences in the United States and abroad, and establish long-lasting connections with many scientists, editors of scientific journals, publishers, and librarians.

In 2005, I joined the University of Maryland (UMD) Libraries in College Park as head of the White Memorial Chemistry Library, where I am responsible for the day-to-day management of a busy branch library (with annual attendance of around 145,000), serving also as a subject liaison for chemistry and biochemistry, teaching scientific information, performing collection development, and doing research. Teaching is an activity that has given me a lot of satisfaction. In the past ten years, I have conducted over 300 library instruction sessions (over 6000 participants) in a broad range of undergraduate and graduate courses, as well as in Professional Writing Program courses and honors programs.

In 2010, together with two other librarians from UMD, I took part in the eScience Institute, a six-month educational course offered by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). As part of this program, we evaluated the readiness of the university to support eScience, interviewed administrators, gathered information about similar initiatives in peer institutions, and wrote a report, which proposed steps for implementing eScience support on campus.

As readers will see, a major theme in this book is STEM publishing. STEM stands for “Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.” It is an inclusive term used to separate these disciplines from other areas of scholarship. STEM is usually part of a compound name—STEM disciplines, STEM departments (in universities), STEM education, and STEM publishing. Governments have started paying more attention to STEM (education and publishing, in particular), and they are concerned that universities are not up to the task of preparing students for the new challenges imposed by new digital technologies and global competition. So STEM, in whatever context this term is used, is “en vogue.”

Organizing scientific information is at the core of doing science. We cannot imagine what science would have looked like today without the Periodic Table of the Elements in which Dmitrii Mendeleev not only arranged the existing chemical elements but also included reserved spaces for those not yet discovered (Gordin, 2004; Scerri, 2006). The management of scientific information starts with how scientists gather information, organize their data, and communicate th...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• 1: The road from chemistry—to microbiology—to information science
• 2: Scientific communication in the digital age
• 3: Ethics in scientific publishing
• 4: An editor’s view: interview with John Fourkas
• 5: Finding and managing scientific information
• 6: Science information literacy and the role of academic librarians
• 7: Information literacy and social media: interview with Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri
• 8: Coping with “Big Data”: eScience
• 9: Managing research data: electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs)
• 10: The complexity of chemical information: interview with Gary Wiggins
• 11: Measuring academic impact
• 12: From the Science Citation Index to the Journal Impact Factor and Web of Science: interview with Eugene Garfield
• 13: What it looked like to work at the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI): interview with Bonnie Lawlor
• 14: Measuring attention: social media and altmetrics
• 15: Unique identifiers
• 16: Epilogue: creating an information-literate generation of scientists
• Index