[BOAI] JSTOR Enabled Data Mining Project Signals Next Wave in Research

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from Kristen Garlock, via the ScholComm list.  --Peter Suber.]


Apologies for cross-posting….****

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October 22, 2012****

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JSTOR Enabled Data Mining Project Signals Next Wave in Research****

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New York, NY – A team of researchers led by Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom
of the University of Washington released
today<http://chronicle.com/article/The-Hard-Numbers-Behind/135236/>the
results of an 18-month long study of gender inequality among authors
of
academic papers.  The study is based on an analysis of the authors of more
than 1.8 million published research articles available through the
not-for-profit digital library, JSTOR <http://www.jstor.org/>. ****

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This project exemplifies the kind of research made possible by new digital
technologies that JSTOR has supported for more than a decade and that was first
publicized<http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/26/magazine/the-way-we-live-now-9-26-99-on-language-first-things-first.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm>in
1999 by the work of Yale University legal scholar and law librarian
Fred
Shapiro.  Shapiro used data from JSTOR to document first uses of words that
pre-dated the Oxford English Dictionary.  ****

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Fast forward to 2008 when JSTOR launched its self-service Data for
Research<http://dfr.jstor.org>website enabling anyone in the world to
explore its holdings and to freely
create datasets for use in their research. Today the site sees about 700
datasets created and downloaded annually. Larger scale projects like the
one undertaken by West, Bergstrom and their co-authors: Jennifer Jacquet,
Molly King, Shelley Correll, and Theodore Bergstrom are handled upon
request and in close collaboration with JSTOR’s Advanced Technologies
Research team.****

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“It’s beyond exciting to see the digital library we have spent years
creating being tapped into by computer scientists, digital humanists, and
other researchers around the world,” said Ronald Snyder, Director of the
Advanced Technologies Research team.****

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"By providing us information about millions of papers published over
centuries, these data allow us to ask questions about the structure of
scholarly communication on unprecedented scales,” said Bergstrom.” “ We see
the gender project as just the beginning,” added West.  “The data
really is a gold mine, and we are excited to continue to work with JSTOR
and utilize this powerful research environment."****

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While the research itself is ground-breaking, the benefits of projects like
the one just released by the West-Bergstrom team can reach beyond the
findings themselves. The West-Bergstrom team also created an interactive
tool <http://www.eigenfactor.org/gender> that allows others to explore the
underlying content based on the work they have done.  This demonstrates how
sharing large corpora of data can also lead to the creation of new ways of
exploring and discovery scholarship – effectively giving researchers
another lens through which to view the published literature. ****

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“Enabling new scholarship that was previously impossible, or nearly so, is
at the very heart of our mission to advance education through the use of
new technologies,” said Laura Brown, JSTOR Managing Director. “As more
scholars and students across disciplines are trained in data mining and
textual analysis, we look forward to supporting and advancing their work
through our Data for Research Program.”****

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More information on JSTOR’s Data for Research Program is available at
http://dfr.jstor.org or by contacting JSTOR at education at jstor.org.****

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JSTOR

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JSTOR (www.jstor.org) is a digital library of more than 1,500 academic
journals, books, and primary sources. JSTOR helps people discover, use, and
build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching
platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part
of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and
Portico.****

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