The second call for STSMS in Grant period 4 is published. The call includes 5 STSMS and the topics are:

1. Topic 1.1: Who and What Fails Credibility of Research Assessment? Reflections on Public Discourse, Expert Knowledge, and Democracy(WG1)
2. Topic 1.2: Data Citation (WG1)
3. Topic 3.4: Identifying of and publishing in questionable social sciences and humanities (SSH) journals (WP3)
4. Topic 4.1 Drivers and barriers in achieving impact in impact on policy from and by European SSH projects (WG4)
5. Topic SIG ECI:Between a rock and a hard place: career demands versus good research for early career investigators (SIG ECI); two vacancies

More information on STSMS can be found here. The call can be downloaded here..

In Memoriam

Prof. Judit Bar-Ilan

1958 – 2019

Prof. Judit Bar-Ilan

In July 2019 the scientometric community lost one of its outstanding scholars, Prof. Judit Bar-Ilan. Judit was a leading professor at the Department of Information Science of Bar-Ilan University in Israel, having chaired the department from 2008-2012. Recently, she was academic head of MALMAD, the Israeli Inter-University Center for Digital Information Services.

Judit received her doctorate in computer science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and started her research in information science in the mid-1990s at the School of Library, Archive and Information Studies (Hebrew University of Jerusalem). She moved to the Department of Information Science at Bar-Ilan University in 2002, where I met her almost immediately, as the pre-award manager of the university research support office.

Judit was scientifically prolific in many sub topics of our field. Her academic input could be felt in citation analysis, informetrics, information retrieval,  ‘altmetrics’, research assessment, internet research, information behavior, search engines, usability and more. She was, finally, the Editor-in-Chief and founder of the international Open-Access journal “The Journal of Altmetrics”.

She received numerous competitive research grants and awards, and sat on more program committees and editorial boards than I can count. For her outstanding contributions, she received the Derek de Solla Price Memorial Medal of the journal Scientometrics in 2017, and the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) awarded Judit the 2018 ASIS&T Research in Information Science Award for her significant impact in the field. These awards, so rightfully deserved, highlight her academic life and work and acknowledge her outstanding contributions to Information Science, and in particular, to the field of scientometrics.

As many colleagues have noted these past few weeks, “Judit was such a nice person and a truly great scholar”. See this page for personal reflections –  .

On a very personal note, Judit was my PhD supervisor, having also studied under Prof. Sara Fine (who died prematurely as well). She was no less than a brilliant scholar, driven by curiosity, with an eye for detail unmatched by other lecturers during my studies. She was a true academic giant in her field, a methodical researcher, kind but firm, and a true inspiration to her peers and students. I learned a tremendous amount from her, also watching her interact with peers at conferences.

Judit is already missed by her many students and peers, world-wide, who either worked with her, studied under her, or read her work in her 200+ published articles.

May her memory be for a blessing.

Dr. Eric Zimmerman

Testimonials

I had learned about Judit’s passing yesterday and immediately felt shocked and saddened.  However, I feel glad to have spent some lovely moments with her at the last ISSI conference in China (we visited some Wuhan sites together) when she won the Derek de Solla Price award, and at other venues including ENRESSH meetings.  She was such a positive and highly contributive person in our profession and will be greatly missed.

Dr. Alesia Zuccala

I am utterly dumbfounded. Judit was such a nice person and a truly great scholar. She brought a lot to ENRESSH. We interacted a lot when she applied to join, but my fondest memories are the wonderful round table at the Antwerp ENRESSH/RESSH conference where her insights into books and the SSH were so powerful. She will be sorely missed, but remembered with much fondness. She will live on in all she brought to the fields in which she worked.

Prof. Geoffrey Williams

Prof. Judit Bar-Ilan

With great sadness we inform you of the death of a dear member, Prof. Judit Bar-Ilan. Her untimely death came as a sudden shock to those of us who knew her. ENRESSH is grateful for her valuable contributions to our network. We have published an In Memoriam for Judit by Eric Zimmerman. If you would like to include a testimonial, please contact Stefan de Jong.

From October 21-25 Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań will host ENRESSH’s 3rd training school. The training school focuses on national bibliographic databases and their uses for evaluating and understanding research. The call for trainees is published today and can be found here. The call text is available for download as well.

Old town of Poznań

The Association of American University Presses holds its annual meeting from June 11-13. Elea Giménez Toledo will present two ENRESSH projects on open access books on the second day of the meeting. She will talk about bibliodiversity, or publishing diversity, in the Ibero-American context and present the Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism of which ENRESSH is a co-founder.

The call for STSMs for Grant Period 4.1 is published! The call dan be downloaded here. More information on STSMs can be found here.

The LSE Impact Blog published ‘To unlock ECR Impact, create stable career identities’, blogpost by ENRESSH members Corina Balaban and Paul Benneworth. They highlight key structural barriers that limit the impact of Early Career Investigator research and argue for the need to introduce an ethos and long term vision to deliver impact in higher education organisations.

On 30 April Belgian ENRESSH members organised a national ENRESSH day to exchange knowledge on evaluation and impact of the social sciences and humanities with stakeholders. ENRESSH collaborated with the University of Saint Louis-Bruxelles, the University of Antwerp, the Ministry of Wallonia-Brussels Federation and hub.brussels in delivering this day.

The day was a huge succes. About 60 participants from a variety of professional backgrounds participated – policy makers, research evaluators, academic researchers and representatives of funding agencies, the rectors’ conference as well as the European University Association and the Young European Research Universities. Many of them expressed their positive opinion about the day. The programme and presentations give an impression of the Belgian ENRESSH day can be found here.

ENRESSH is one of the founding signatories of the Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication. Policy-makers, leaders, universities, research institutions, research funders, libraries, and researchers are invited to sign the Helsinki Initiative to promote multilingualism in scholarly communication.

ENRESSH supports the Helsinki Initiative with its statement ‘Balanced Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication’, which is available in multiple languages over here.

ENRESSH launches its working paper series. The first working paper,  “Impact evaluation in Norway and in the UK- A comparative study, based on REF 2014 and Humeval 2015-2017”, is by Marta Wróblewska