ORCIDs in the ETD submission process

Poster presented at Open Repositories 2016 in Dublin, IrelandIn early spring of 2015 the University of Texas at Austin added an option for graduate students to claim and add an ORCID to their ETD submission. At the time, we weren’t prepared to publicize the option but we want to make it available for anyone to use. We intended to provide education and outreach at some point in the future. In the summer of 2015, library staff noticed that many submissions were coming through Vireo with an ORCID included. An initial look at the data revealed approximately 29% of students had chosen to include an ORCID. This was quite a surprise, so in an effort to better understand how many students were choosing this option, we decided to investigate the use of ORCID for all 2015 submissions. A complete assessment of ORCID will be done once all the December 2015 submissions are finished being processed in late February. We intend to look at total numbers, numbers by department, and by degree level (masters vs doctoral). We will present our findings along with plans for integration of ORCID with our DSpace repository, and a discussion of marketing efforts to increase the use of ORCID.UT Librarie

Outreach Outcomes and Batch Processing Tools for IR Deposited Faculty Work

Poster presented at the Association of College & Research Libraries 2017 Conference in Baltimore, MD.UT Librarie

Exploring Accessibility Practices in Institutional Repositories

Institutional repositories (IRs) provide open access and availability to research and scholarship. One area that needs improvement is ensuring the accessibility of this digital content to people with disabilities. In the fall of 2019, a team of librarians from six universities and organizations administered a survey to better understand current practices in this area and gauge the current landscape of accessibility efforts in IRs. The specific focus of this project looked at accessibility to the digital content itself stored in the repository, rather than the repository platform. This presentation discusses the key findings from the survey, lessons learned, and potential next steps. In addition to presenting our findings, we hope to gather feedback and suggestions from the community

Librarians Opening Up Open Education: A University, Community College, and Public Library Partnership to Increase OER Usage in Texas

Full book available for free download at https://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/publications/booksanddigitalresources/digital/9780838936566_OA.pdfUT Librarie

Should Chat Reference be Staffed by Librarians? An Assessment of Chat Reference at an Academic Library Using LibStats

This study analyzes 1,557 chat reference questions received at Grand Valley State University Libraries over four semesters to determine the quantity and nature of the questions. Results indicated that use of chat reference was low and that less than a quarter of chat questions required a librarian to answer. The cost of a librarian answering a chat question ranged from $37 to$439 per question. The findings suggest that assigning chat reference to trained reference assistants will not affect patron service and that it is not cost effective to use reference librarians to answer chat questions

Identifying Molecular Features Associated with Psychoneurological Symptoms in Women with Breast Cancer Using Multivariate Mixed Models

Breast cancer (BC) is the second most common cancer among women. Research shows many women with BC experience anxiety, depression, and stress (ADS). Epigenetics has recently emerged as a potential mechanism for the development of depression.1 Although there are growing numbers of research studies indicating that epigenetic changes are associated with ADS, there is currently no evidence that this association is present in women with BC. The goal of this study was to identify high-throughput methylation sites (CpG sites) that are associated with three psychoneurological symptoms (ADS) in women with BC. Traditionally, univariate models have been used to examine the relationship between methylation sites and each psychoneurological symptom; nevertheless, ADS can be treated as a cluster of related symptoms and included together in a multivariate linear model. Hence, an overarching goal of this study is to compare and contrast univariate and multivariate models when identifying methylation sites associated with ADS in women with BC. When fitting separate linear regression models for each ADS scale, 3 among 285,173 CpG sites tested were significantly associated with depression. Two significant CpG sites are located on their respective genes FAM101A and FOXJ1, and the third site cannot be mapped to any known gene at this time. In contrast, the multivariate models identified 8,535 ADS-related CpG sites. In conclusion, when analyzing correlated psychoneurological symptom outcomes, multivariate models are more powerful and thus are recommended

Penalized Ordinal Regression Methods for Predicting Stage of Cancer in High-Dimensional Covariate Spaces

The pathological description of the stage of a tumor is an important clinical designation and is considered, like many other forms of biomedical data, an ordinal outcome. Currently, statistical methods for predicting an ordinal outcome using clinical, demographic, and high-dimensional correlated features are lacking. In this paper, we propose a method that fits an ordinal response model to predict an ordinal outcome for high-dimensional covariate spaces. Our method penalizes some covariates (high-throughput genomic features) without penalizing others (such as demographic and/or clinical covariates). We demonstrate the application of our method to predict the stage of breast cancer. In our model, breast cancer subtype is a nonpenalized predictor, and CpG site methylation values from the Illumina Human Methylation 450K assay are penalized predictors. The method has been made available in the ordinalgmifs package in the R programming environment

Recruiting for Epigenetic Research: Facilitating the Informed Consent Process

Because the effects of epigenetic (gene-environment interaction) changes have been associated with numerous adverse health states, the study of epigenetic measures provides exciting research opportunities for biobehavioral scientists. However, recruitment for studies focusing on any aspect of genetics poses challenges. Multiple factors, including lack of knowledge regarding a research study, have been identified as barriers to recruitment. Strengthening the informed consent process through extended discussion has been found to be effective in recruiting for research studies in general, yet there is a paucity of information that focused on such a recruitment strategy for epigenetic studies. In this paper, we share our experiences with strategies to strengthen the informed consent process as well as provide samples of materials developed to heighten potential participants’ understanding of epigenetics, in 4 epigenetic research studies with women from diverse backgrounds experiencing a range of health issues. The combined enrollment success rate for epigenetic studies using the process was 89% with participants representing a diverse population. We posit that carefully developed recruitment scripts provided a foundation for improving potential participants’ understanding of the research project. Easy to understand illustrations of the epigenetic process provided a basis for active engagement and encouraged individual questions

Talkin' 'Bout OER

This is an informational document with talking points about open educational resources for different potential audiences, like faculty, administrators, and students. The document was started as a brainstorming activity at an OER Workshop at UT Austin on July 24, 2018.UT LibrariesCenter for Open Educational Resources and Language Learnin

Perceived Stress Levels, Chemotherapy, Radiation Treatment and Tumor Characteristics Are Associated with a Persistent Increased Frequency of Somatic Chromosomal Instability in Women Diagnosed with Breast Cancer: A One Year Longitudinal Study

While advances in therapeutic approaches have resulted in improved survival rates for women diagnosed with breast cancer, subsets of these survivors develop persistent psychoneurological symptoms (fatigue, depression/anxiety, cognitive dysfunction) that compromise their quality of life. The biological basis for these persistent symptoms is unclear, but could reflect the acquisition of soma-wide chromosomal instability following the multiple biological/psychological exposures associated with the diagnosis/treatment of breast cancer. An essential first step toward testing this hypothesis is to determine if these cancer-related exposures are indeed associated with somatic chromosomal instability frequencies. Towards this end, we longitudinally studied 71 women (ages 23-71) with early-stage breast cancer and quantified their somatic chromosomal instability levels using a cytokinesis-blocked micronuclear/cytome assay at 4 timepoints: before chemotherapy (baseline); four weeks after chemotherapy initiation; six months after chemotherapy (at which time some women received radiotherapy); and one year following chemotherapy initiation. Overall, a significant change in instability frequencies was observed over time, with this change differing based on whether the women received radiotherapy (p=0.0052). Also, significantly higher instability values were observed one year after treatment initiation compared to baseline for the women who received: sequential taxotere/doxorubicin/cyclophosphamide (pp=0.014). Significant predictive associations for acquired micronuclear/cytome abnormality frequencies were also observed for race (p=0.0052), tumor type [luminal B tumors] (p=0.0053), and perceived stress levels (p=0.0129). The impact of perceived stress on micronuclear/cytome frequencies was detected across all visits, with the highest levels of stress being reported at baseline (p =0.0024). These findings suggest that the cancer-related exposome has an impact on both healthy somatic cells and tumor cells, and may lead to persistent chromosomal instability. In addition, stress was a significant predictor of chromosomal instability; thus, interventions that aim to reduce stress may reduce acquired soma-wide chromosomal instability for cancer survivors