JSTOR SUSTAINABILITY:CREATING A MULTIDISCIPLINARY MAP FOR RESEARCHERS
31 March, 2016
Alex Humphreys, JSTOR Labs@abhumphreys
ASEH 2016 Panel: Digital Landscapes - Mapping History, Mapping the Discipline
JSTOR is a not-for-profit digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources.
Ithaka S+R is a not-for-profit research and consulting service that helps academic, cultural, and publishing communities thrive in the digital environment.
Portico is a not-for-profit preservation service for digital publications, including electronic journals, books, and historical collections.
ITHAKA is a not-for-profit organization that helps the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the
scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways.
JSTOR Labs works with partner publishers, libraries and labs to create tools for researchers, teachers and students that are immediately useful – and a little bit magical.
Sustainability is …
“development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
- UN Brundtland Commission“Our Common Future” report, 1987
THE CHALLENGE
Sustainability is inherently
multidisciplinary
A lot of academic research is focused on the single discipline it
contributes to
Researchers must discover and interpret research outside their
core discipline
creates need for
creates difficulty in
THE CORE PROBLEM, IN ONE DIAGRAM
Sustainability is inherently
multidisciplinary
A lot of academic research is focused on the single discipline it
contributes to
Researchers must discover and interpret research outside their
core discipline
creates need for
creates difficulty in
THE CORE PROBLEM, IN ONE DIAGRAM
“When I’m looking into a new topic, I try my
best to understand the story of it.”
Sustainability is inherently
multidisciplinary
A lot of academic research is focused on the single discipline it
contributes to
Researchers must discover and interpret research outside their
core discipline
creates need for
creates difficulty in
THE CORE PROBLEM, IN ONE DIAGRAM
How could JSTOR, with its broad corpus of scholarship, help?
JSTOR LABS’ APPROACH
Talk to users
[need a pic of some sort here]
Still taken from http://labs.jstor.org/blog/#!labs_week-building_jstor_snap
What innovation looks like.
Feasible Usable
Desirable
Image source: http://uxtraordinary.com/venn-pie-agram/
Iterayte. Iterrate. Itterate.Iterate.Iterate!
(rapidly)
Iterayte. Iterrate. Itterate.Iterate.Iterate!
(rapidly)Some ideas we tested but didn’t build: - Article Summary - Highlights - Why it Matters - Tweets about this article
OUR SOLUTION
labs.jstor.org/sustainability
TOPICS
• JSTOR Thesaurus: a controlled vocabulary w/ 48,000+ unique terms
• Each term has:- parents/children- synonyms, preferred/non-preferred terms - rules by which it is applied to an article
• Subject matter experts reviewed and extended the branches dealing with Sustainability
• With their input, we created ~750 topic pages, ranging fromacid rain to zoogeography
JSTOR Sustainability Topicshttps://public.tableau.com/profile/beth.dufford#!/vizhome/JSTORSustainabilityTopics/Story1
INFLUENTIAL ARTICLES
• Developed in partnership with Jevin West and the U of Washington’s DataLab
• Invented and core development completed in one week-long “flash build”
• Incorporates Eigenfactor, a citation-network based impact measure developed by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West
“When I’m looking into a new topic, this tells me the key papers and people. This is
the topic’s story, visualized.”
WHAT’S NEXT
• Keep iteratiing iterating- on the site- on the topics
• Incorporate into primary JSTOR site
• Create new “Sustainability collection” for libraries, consisting of new-to-JSTOR journals and research reports
• Explore the application of these ideas beyond Sustainability: - Security Studies - Human Rights - All of JSTOR…
THANK YOUAlex HumphreysDirector, JSTOR LabsITHAKA
http://[email protected]@ithaka.org
APPENDIX ADETAILS ONJSTOR’S FORTHCOMING SUSTAINABILITY COLLECTION
THE SUSTAINABILITY COLLECTION
» A new curated multidisciplinary collection of 100 new-to-JSTOR journals drawn from more than 20 disciplines
» Enhanced by research reports from over 40 leading think tanks around the world
» Tested and built in partnership with librarians and scholars
» Complemented by the strong base of content already in JSTOR – more than 200,000 articles from roughly 45 publications in the JSTOR Corpus that address various issues in sustainability
» Enriched by specialized tools geared to the interdisciplinary research
TOPIC COVERAGE»Sustainable Business Practices»Environmental Engineering»Environmental Studies»Environmental Science»Environmental and Natural
Resources Law»Energy Policy and Economics»Urban Planning and the Built
Environment»Development Studies»Climatology and Atmospheric
Science
»Human Ecology»Green Energy»Transportation and
Infrastructure»Land Conservation»Environmental History»Food Security»Agricultural Economics»Public Health and Population
Studies»Water Management»Waste Management
CONTENT HIGHLIGHTS BY DISCIPLINE
• EconomicsEnergy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics
Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press
American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural & Applied Economics Association
• Architecture / Built Env.
APT Bulletin, Association for Preservation Technology International
CTBUH Journal, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat
Built Environment (1978-), Alexandrine Press
• Public HealthJournal of Public Health Policy Sustainability, Palgrave Macmillan Journals
Environmental Health Perspectives, Brogan & Partners
Occupational and Environmental Medicine, BMJ Publishing Group
• Aquatic / Env. Sciences
Journal, American Water Works Association
Opflow, American Water Works Association
Water Environment Research, Water Environment Federation
Waterlines, Practical Action Publishing
CONTENT HIGHLIGHTS BY DISCIPLINE• LawNatural Resources & Environment, American Bar Association
Carbon & Climate Law Review, Lexxion Verlagsgesellschaft mbH
Ecology Law Quarterly, University of California, Berkeley
Journal of Land Use & Environmental Law, Florida State University College of Law • Sociology
Environmental Values, White Horse Press
Nature and Culture, Berghahn Books
Environment & Society, Berghahn Books
• Urban StudiesUrban Studies, Sage Publications, Ltd.
Ekistics, Athens Center of Ekistics
• EcologyEcological Applications, Ecological Society of America
Ecological Restoration, University of Wisconsin Press
Human Ecology, Springer Science + Business Media
Conservation Biology, Wiley Subscription Services, Inc.
APPENDIX BOPEN IN CASE OF NO INTERNET CONNECTION