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“Profiling” a Popular Honors Project in IRis

From time to time, I like to feature an object in IRis, our digital archive of research and scholarship at Northeastern, that’s been getting a lot of hits. I get a weekly report e-mailed to me of the most frequently accessed content in IRis, and there’s one honors project that’s been appearing near the top of that weekly list for quite a while now. “Profiling Pros and Cons: An Evaluation of Contemporary Criminal Profiling Methods” was submitted by Theresa M. Young in fulfillment of the Honors Program’s Junior/Senior Project requirement in 2006. In the past year, it’s been accessed 546 times, making it the second most-accessed document in IRis!

We use Google Analytics to track usage of both the library website and IRis, and there’s a lot of fascinating information to be found in those metrics. For example, almost 81% of visitors found Theresa’s project through Google searches; the most commonly searched phrase that brought them to her project was “criminal profiling pros and cons,” where it’s the top result. Although the majority of visitors came from the United States, people in a total of 18 countries accessed Theresa’s project. I found it particularly noteworthy that of the 5 visits from Iraq, 3 of them came via the Department of Defense. Is Theresa’s research having an impact on criminal justice in Iraq? Regardless of how it’s being used, the popularity and relevance of her work, both in the US and around the world, is undeniable.

(After graduating from Northeastern in 2006, Theresa Young went on to law school at the University of Richmond. While there, she served as Executive Editor of the Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest.)

Publishing Workshop with Gordon Hutner, Editor of American Literary History

Students in the humanities should consider attending this event on Thursday, January 27th. Even if you’re not an English major or grad student, if you’re considering a career in research and publishing in the humanities, I recommend hearing what Dr. Hutner will share about what goes into publishing a scholarly journal!

Here are the full details of the event, from the NU calendar:

440 Egan Research Center
Thursday, January 27, 2011, 12 – 1:15pm

Professor Gordon Hutner, a distinguished scholar of American literature and founding editor of the journal American Literary History, will be conducting a publication workshop to discuss how to publish work in a journal such as ALH. This is an incredible opportunity for students to meet an important figure in the field and to receive an inside view of the publication process.

Prof. Hutner will also deliver a talk the same afternoon as part of the Barrs Lecture Series. The talk is titled “The 21st Century American Novel: A History” and will be held at 5:30 p.m. in 340 Egan.

Please plan to attend both of these events, and come prepared for lively and valuable discussions.

Type of Event: Workshop/Training
Audience: Faculty/Staff, Students, Public
Cost: None
Sponsor: Department of English, Co-Sponsored by the Humanities Center
Contact Name: Department of English
Contact Phone: 617-373-4540
Contact Email: m.daigle@neu.edu
More info: www.english.neu.edu

On This Day: December 2nd

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). On December 2nd, 1970 (40 years ago!) the EPA began daily operations under Richard Nixon (one of few things he got right). This organization is responsible for researching and educating the public on environmental issues, as well as setting and enforcing environment-related legislation. Key programs you may be familiar with are vehicle emission standards, Clean Water Acts, and the Endangered Species Acts.

As a part of NU Libraries’ Federal Depository program, we have government-issued reports available in print and online that explore various EPA related topics in detail. You can take out a print article from our government stacks on the oversight of recent EPA decisions, or you can read an online article on the EPA lifecycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions. There is much to choose from, so celebrate 40 years by taking a look at these resources. To view the library’s entire EPA collection, keyword search “EPA” in NUCat.

The science of being a grad student

At the beginning of this semester, I had the opportunity to meet with several groups of new graduate students in the sciences. I quickly realized that they didn’t easily fall into either of my preconceived categories of “students” or “faculty.” Sure, grad students pay tuition like undergrads, but they often also work as research or teaching assistants, and especially in the sciences they’ll have the chance to gain experience publishing their research in scholarly journals. It’s been a while since I was a grad student myself (and never in the sciences), so I decided to do a little, well, research on the topic.

Quite by coincidence, I found a recently published book in the Hub that any grad student (or faculty member who works with grad students) would find helpful:

⇒ The Art of Being a Scientist: A Guide for Graduate Students and Their Mentors, by Roel Snieder and Ken Larner (Cambridge University Press, 2009)

It’s geared towards grad students and faculty in the sciences, but chapters on time management, the ethics of research, and “turning challenges into opportunities” will be of interest to anyone getting started in the world of research and publishing.

Over the summer I read a book called Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre — it’s a collection of Goldacre’s columns from The Guardian newspaper in Great Britain.* He’s a doctor who works for the National Health Service there, and has made quite a name for himself debunking various health claims from drug companies, advertising agencies, etc. It really showed me that skepticism is a good thing. He bases his writing on the concept of evidence-based medicine (also called evidence-based practice), which promotes the use of the scientific method to guide clinical decision-making. Goldacre points out in many of his columns that in fact evidence is sometimes ignored in order to promote a claim that is not supported by, for example, drug trials. He also cited this book as a classic in the field:

⇒ How to Read a Paper: The Basics of Evidence Based Medicine, by Trisha Greenhalgh (BMJ Publishing Group, 1997)

Another book on the topic in our collection is:

⇒ Studying a Study and Testing a Test: How to Read the Medical Evidence, by Richard K. Riegelman (5th ed., Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 2005).
(Also available as an e-book!)

I liked the second one for its inclusion of “flaw-catching exercises” designed to make readers think about why a certain statement is not supported by the example evidence. I’m not a scientist, but I still found reading about evidence-based practice really interesting!

As Scholarly Communication Librarian, I meet with a lot of faculty who are active in researching and publishing, but until this semester I had not had the pleasure of meeting many graduate students. At the library, we are especially interested in starting to work with researchers at all levels to support data management needs — you’ll see more about this in the months to come. I look forward to meeting more of you in the future and supporting your research and publishing needs as well!

* We don’t own Bad Science at this library but you can borrow it through NExpress!

Open Access Week: The Right to Research for Students

OA Week

Right to Research CoalitionThe Right to Research Coalition asserts that access to research is a student right. They’re working to redefine the current system of scholarly communication — in which access to published research is limited to those at institutions that can afford to subscribe to expensive journals and databases.

The huge expense of traditional subscription-based information is another issue driving the open access movement — why should that information be limited to those who can afford it? And it’s not cheap, either — check out the introductory animation on RRC’s homepage. You might be surprised that a subscription to ONE journal can be equal to or greater than a year’s worth of tuition at Northeastern! (See Sticker Shock: The Price of Library Resources for some price comparisons between journal subscriptions and big-ticket consumer items.)

To celebrate Open Access Week, the Right to Research Coalition is presenting a webcast tonight (Thursday, 10/21) at 7:00 pm Eastern time, in conjunction with UC Berkeley. You can find out more about it here: http://www.righttoresearch.org/blog/open-access-week-2010.shtml.