Scholarly Communication

Research Support Newsletter – Fall 2025

This blog was originally sent as a newsletter for Research Support Staff at Northeastern University on September 3, 2025. If you would like to subscribe to receive future newsletters, please click here.

Did you know the library can help with…your grant proposal?

Join us for our Accelerate Your Proposal Development event! This program is a countdown of proposal-related questions the library can help with, including personalized support for crafting data management and sharing plans, improving your data visualizations and graphics, strategies for efficient literature reviews, and citation management. We’ll share information about the tools and people who can help you develop key proposal components and supplementary materials. Whether you’re in the early stages of developing your proposal or fine-tuning it before submission, we’re happy to work with you.

This virtual event takes place Wednesday, October 29, from noon – 1 p.m. Eastern time. Register here.

Did you know we have access to…tools and services to complete evidence syntheses?

This month, we are highlighting two ways the library can support your evidence synthesis project. Evidence synthesis projects, which often do not require funding, can reveal important research gaps, thus strengthening future grant applications. If you are working on (or considering working on) a systematic review, scoping review, rapid review, or meta-analysis, read on!

Evidence Synthesis Service: Northeastern University Library provides a tiered set of support services for evidence synthesis projects such as systematic reviews, ranging from expert librarian guidance to full research partnerships. See our website and service tiers for more information.

Covidence: Covidence is a web-based evidence synthesis support tool that assists in screening references, data extraction, and keeping track of your work. Covidence requires registration with a Northeastern email address. If you already have an account, please sign in.

Start Smart — Foundations of Evidence Syntheses: Starting September 15, the library will be running a virtual workshop series for faculty and research staff on planning for and embarking on an evidence synthesis project.

Have any questions about completing evidence syntheses? Reach out to our expert, Philip Espinola Coombs.

We want to hear from you!

Research Data Storage Finder: We’re developing an interactive online tool to help researchers quickly narrow down the best platform for their data storage and archiving needs, and we’d love to hear what you think of what we’ve built so far. If you’d like to get a sneak peek and share your feedback, please let us know via this form.

That’s it!

Questions about the library? Email Alissa Link Cilfone, Head of STEM, or Jen Ferguson, Head of Research Data Services — we’d love to hear from you!

What is the DRS and who is it for?

What is the DRS?

The Digital Repository Service (DRS) is an institutional repository that was designed by the Northeastern University Library to help members of the Northeastern community organize, store, and share the digital materials that are important to their role or responsibilities at the university. This can include scholarly works created by faculty and students; supporting materials used in research; photographs and documents that represent the history of the community; or materials that support the day-to-day operations of the university.

While the DRS itself is a technical system that stores digital files and associated information to help users find what they need, we also consider the DRS to be a service for the university community: library staff are here to help you organize, store, share, and manage the digital materials that have long-lasting value for the university community and beyond.

Result listing in the DRS for a report titled "Exploring the Effectiveness of Bite-Sized Learning for Statistics via TikTok" and includes metadata and an image of the report
Published research from the Northeastern community available in the DRS.

Northeastern is not alone in this endeavor. Repository services are now standard practice for most academic institutions, including Harvard University Library (who also use the name “Digital Repository Service”), Stanford University Library (a leader in technical development for repository systems), Tufts Libraries, and other institutions around the world.

Who uses the DRS?

The DRS has been used by faculty, staff, students, and researchers from all corners of the university community for 10 years. There are too many use cases to mention in one brief blog post, but here are some trends we’ve seen in what users choose to deposit the last few years.

Data visualization from a research publication, containing multiple styles of data depiction
Fang, D., et.al. Bottom-up estimates of floor area and embodied carbon patterns in the US building stock. Presentation.
  • Open access copies of research publications, as well as working papers and technical reports
  • Publications and data that supports published research
  • Event recordings, photographs, newspapers, and almost any kind of material you can think of to support the day-to-day operations and activity at the university
  • Student research projects and classwork, like oral histories and research projects. Students are also required to contribute their final version of their thesis or dissertation.
  • Digitized and born-digital records from the Archives and Special Collections, including photographs, documents, and audio and video recordings

These files, and all the other audio, video, document, and photograph files in the DRS, have been viewed or downloaded 11.2 million times since the DRS first launched in 2015. Nearly half of the files in the DRS are made available to the public and are therefore available for the wider world to discover. Materials in the DRS have been cited in reporting by CNN, Pitchfork, WBUR, and Atlas Obscura, among others, and are regularly shared on social media or in Reddit threads. As a result, Northeastern continues to contribute the work produced here to the larger scholarly and cultural record, and to the larger world.

Who supports the DRS?

The day-to-day work managing, maintaining, and supporting users of the service comes from staff in Digital Production Services:

  • Kim Kennedy supervises the digitization of physical materials and processing of born-digital and digitized materials.
  • Drew Facklam and Emily Allen create and maintain the descriptive metadata that helps you find what you need.
  • And all of us in the department, including part-time staff, are responsible for general management of the system, including batch ingesting materials, holding consultations and training sessions, answering questions, and leading conversations about how to improve the system and the service.
Two people stand in front of a presentation with a screenshot of the DRS behind them
Sarah Sweeney and David Cliff, DRS staff, posing in 2015 with the homepage of the recently launched DRS. 

The DRS is also supported by a number of library staff members across the library:

  • David Cliff, Senior Digital Library Developer in Digital Infrastructures, is the DRS’ lead developer and system administrator.
  • Ernesto Valencia and Rob Chavez from the Library Technology Services and Infrastructure departments also provide development support and system administration.
  • Many librarians in the Research and Instruction department do outreach about the service and support faculty as they figure out how to use it in their work.
  • Jen Ferguson from Research Data Services also connects faculty and researchers to the DRS, while also providing data management support for those wishing to use the DRS to store their data.
  • Members of the library administration, including Dan Cohen, Evan Simpson, Tracey Harik, and the recently retired Patrick Yott have contributed their unwavering support and advocacy for developing and maintaining system an service.

We are all here to help you figure out how the DRS may be used to make your work and academic life easier. To dive deeper into what the DRS is and how to use it, visit the DRS subject guide or contact me or my team.

The library is celebrating 10 years of the DRS! Check out A Decade of the Digital Repository Service to read more about the history of the DRS.

Molly Dupere, BLC Group Win ALA STARS Award

Headshop of Molly Dupere, a smiling woman with curly blond hair and a black blouse standing in front of a shelf of books
Molly Dupere

As Northeastern University’s community continues to expand, the library strives to provide equitable access to our resources, maintaining an e-preferred collections policy. For items outside of our collections, interlibrary loan is integral—and this service includes borrowing e-books whenever possible.

In 2023, representatives from 11 member institutions within the Boston Library Consortium (BLC) formed the eBook Sharing Working Group. I was proud to co-chair the group with Marc Hoffeditz, Resource Sharing Manager of the BLC. Pamela Diaz, Northeastern’s Resource Sharing Lending Coordinator, was also a member. Our charges were:

  • Investigating a vendor-neutral, consortial approach to e-book borrowing and lending.
  • Crafting documentation to detail e-book borrowing and lending procedures, including license negotiations, holding considerations, system alterations, and adaptable workflows.
  • Exploring potential avenues for consortial e-book sharing, advocacy, and group acquisitions.
Cover of E-Book ILL Roadmaps

After a year of work, research, and collaboration with the greater BLC community, we published the E-Book ILL Roadmaps: Charting Pathways for Broader Adoption of E-Book Interlibrary Loan in June 2024. Later that year, Marc and I presented at the BLC Forum, the Northwest ILL Conference, and the Access Services Conference, and we were happy to learn that the Roadmaps won the American Library Association’s 2025 STARS Publication Recognition Award. We are excited about the potential for libraries across the world to implement them in their own ILL departments.

What is Inclusive Citation and Why Does It Matter?

As awareness of systemic racism grows on college campuses, one hot topic has been inclusive citation. So, what is inclusive citation, why does it matter, and what can we do about it?

Inclusive citation is about whose work we decide to cite. When we cite, we are situating our own work in the larger scholarly conversation about our topic. When we choose which sources to cite, our decisions influence who is part of that conversation—and who is not. Practicing inclusive citation means making intentional choices to find and cite the work of scholars with varied backgrounds and identities, in order to increase equity and inclusion in your field.

Why does inclusive citation matter? Citation counts are considered a metric of success for scholars, and can heavily influence job offers, promotions, tenure decisions, and more. However, there is a growing body of evidence showing that women and underrepresented minorities are consistently cited at lower rates than men, across disciplines. And the more a scholar’s work is cited, the more they will continue to be cited over time. This inequity makes it harder for people from underrepresented groups to succeed in their field.

How can we practice more inclusive citation? Here are a few ideas to get us started:

  • Analyze your reference list and ask yourself, who am I not citing? Are there other perspectives that I should consider?
  • Find a leading researcher in your field with a marginalized identity, and follow their work on social media.
  • Experiment with different search strategies or sources to bring back different (and potentially more diverse) results.
  • Make diversity of authors and perspectives a factor in prioritizing what research you decide to read.

Want to learn more?

What is inclusive citation? is a short tutorial that details these strategies and the research behind them.

The rise of citation justice: how scholars are making references fairer is an article from Nature that provides an excellent overview of research on citation inequities, efforts to diversify citations, and critical responses.

New policies will impact research data sharing and scholarly communication

We’re monitoring recent changes to policy and legislation that will likely impact the work of Northeastern University faculty, staff, and student researchers. Read on for a brief overview of three of these impending changes, in order of their expected implementation dates.

NIH (National Institutes of Health) Policy for Data Management and Sharing

What is it? The NIH’s new policy on data management and sharing aims to improve the reproducibility and reliability of NIH-funded work by broadening access to research uploads.

When will the changes take place? January 25, 2023

How might this impact researchers?

  • DMSPs: All NIH proposals will require the submission of a data management and sharing plan (DMSP). Previously, only NIH proposals above a certain funding threshold required a DMSP.
  • Data availability: Research data is expected to be made accessible “as soon as possible, and no later than the time of an associated publication, or the end of the award/support period, whichever comes first.” Further, the new policy strongly encourages the use of established repositories to share data.
  • Costs: Reasonable costs related to data management and sharing may be included in NIH budget requests.

Additional resources:

CHIPS and Science Act

What is it? The CHIPS and Science Act is primarily related to semiconductor manufacturing and the STEM workforce pipeline, but also includes some open science directives.

When will the changes take place? One year following enactment (circa September 2023)

How might this impact researchers? Once the act takes effect, applications for National Science Foundation awards will be required to include machine-readable data management plans (DMPs). We do not anticipate that this will significantly impact researchers, as most DMPs are already machine-readable unless they include tables or charts. This requirement will enable more seamless information sharing between systems used by institutions and funders, ultimately reducing the paperwork burden for researchers.

Additional resource:

White House Office of Science & Technology Memorandum: Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research

What is it? OSTP’s new memorandum (aka the Nelson memo) builds upon OSTP’s 2013 Holdren memo. The new memo will make research funded by all U.S. government agencies immediately available to the public. This eliminates the current optional 1-year embargo period and applies to both publications and the data underlying peer-reviewed research. Under the new Nelson memo, the definition of publications is widened beyond articles to also apply to peer-reviewed book chapters and conference proceedings.

When will the changes take place? The Nelson memo will first impact funding agencies, which will be expected to fully implement their public access and data sharing plans by the end of 2025.

How might this impact researchers? Once the memo goes into effect, researchers and members of the public will benefit from broader, more immediate access to federally funded research results. The memo urges the use of persistent identifiers (PIDs) to unambiguously identify authors, affiliations, funders, and more, so this would be a great time to acquire and begin using an ORCID iD if you don’t already have one. The U.S. government has also signaled interest in examining current academic incentive structures to better recognize institutions and researchers for their support of public access to research.

Additional resources:

The library is working with campus partners, including Research Administration and Research Computing, to develop guidance and resources to assist researchers as they navigate these changes. As always, if you need assistance with a data management or data management and sharing plan, or if you’re searching for a secure, permanent home for your research outputs, we’re here to help!