Assignments

For All Assignments you are to write at the bottom of your assignment write the following "I have neither given nor received aid while working on this assignment. I have completed the graded portion BEFORE looking at anyone else's work on this assignment. Signed YOUR NAME".

Contents

Assignment 0

Before the start of the first class please
  • Put your gmail account information in this google spreadsheet INLS 700 Roster
  • Review the course webpages.
  • Join the class listserv. Add yourself to Course Listserv
  • Learn how to use our class work page (Google Sites wiki). It is linked off of main page, click on Class Work Wiki, this is where we put our work. You should create a page (make sure when you create it you select "put under Assignment 0", and edit it to put in some text and a picture. In our first class you'll have to put your work up on the class work wiki, so you'll have a head start if you're already familiar with using it.
  • Bring your laptop to class (every class)

Assignment 1

Write 1-2 pages about how scholarly communications have changed for a particular domain/discipline; get evidence by either (a) interviewing a faculty member or senior researcher, or (b) researching literature about an area. Acadmedic disciplines are fine, but you can examine any organizational type (academic, industry, governement, non-profit, etc).

Assignment 2

Plan an approach for developing and delivering support for open access at university of your choice. Suggest you interview and talk with library at a different university if possible to learn about their experience. Can be a plan for developing and supporting OA at university that doesn't have a program, or if university already has support for OA, then a plan for evaluating its success/failures and propose changes to improve OA at that university. Provide a detailed plan covering implementation, budget, risks, benefits and a way to measure your successs after 2 years (2-3 pages).


Assignment 3

Practice Education and Marketing: Draw up a plan for how you would promote OERs to faculty at UNC (or university of your choice). Be sure to think about how to get faculty engaged, how to get them to participate, and how to handle concerns about OERs. (2-3 pages)


Assignment 4

You are to perform two investigations into scholarly value. You should:

  • Investigate the "impact"of two academics of your choice in detail using three tools: Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar. For all three view the citations. Additionally in Scopus use "Analyze Search Results" link (above search results) to access their tools, and in WoS use the "Analyze Results" and "Create Citation Report" tools.
  • Investigate the "impact" of two articles of your choice in detail using two tools: Scopus and Altmetrics. In Scopus once you've clicked on an article to display it, on the far right, towards bottom you will see "Metrics" pane. Look at this and click on "view all metrics" for full details. For altmetric, install the plugin in your browser, then click on it once the article is up in your browser. You'll see a popup with impact summary, in the popup click on "click for more details" to see full report.

  • Write a narrative explaination of your investigation and findings (including resulting output from the tools, i.e. paste in the summary graphs/tables). You are contrasting how the different tools evaluate the same authors/articles.

    Assignment 5

    Do a comparison of Scholarly Resource managers: mendeley, refworks, endnote, zotero. Have them use, evaluate and report. Agree on framework for comparison, and which ones to evaluate. Suggested evaluation criteria: Standard Functions of Reference Managers:

  • Import citations from databases, webpages, and library catalogs
  • Have the full-text content items (PDFs (full-text), html,) saved in Reference manager (easily)
  • Upload your existing digital collection of content (PDFs) from your computer to reference manager
  • Create bibliographies in most output styles
  • Format citations for papers
  • Manage, categorize, and organize citations
  • Add notes, make annotations on articles in your collection
  • Web-based so you can use from multiple computers
  • Work offline
  • share your article collection with others
  • view others article collections
  • interact socially with other researchers
  • work as part of group

  • Final Project

    Choose one of these two options for your final assignment:

    Research Topic: Choose an area of interest to you, do research to learn more about it. Writeup a report of your findings, and how this connects to what we've learned in class. Give a 10-12 minute preseentation on the important takeaways from what you've learned about your project area. You should post your presentation report (which may continue additional information) as well as your presentation materials on the class work page. For your presentation, plan it as if you are presenting to the heads of the departments in the organization you work for.

    Job Interview: You are interviewing for scholarly communications officer position at University X. Give a 12 minute long presentation on what you would attempt to achieve at university of your choice. Provide specific plan based on that university. Prepare high quality presentation materials and do an outstanding job in your presentation (so much so that we'd want to hire you on the spot). I encourage to you to provide supplementary materials linked from your presentation.

    EVERYONE: Dress professionally, like you're presenting to upper management. Be sure to practice your presentation and finish close to but NOT over 12 minutes. We will allow 4 minutes for questions for each speaker. Make your presentation something you're proud of and want to include in your portfolio. Good luck!