Looking for Links: How Faculty Research Productivity Correlates with Library Investment and Why Electronic Library Materials Matter Most

Objective – This paper summarizes two studies that share the same research question: do universities produce more scholarly research when they invest more in their libraries? Research libraries spend a great deal of effort reporting their expenditures, collections statistics, and other measures that serve as a basis for interlibrary comparison and even rankings. The straightforward assumption implied by this activity is that libraries better serve their student and research communities when they are well-funded and well-resourced. The studies examined here both ask if that notion can be validated empirically, not because research libraries require some sort of justification, but because in an environment of tough budget decisions and shifting opinions about the changing role of libraries, it may be useful to demonstrate that sustained investment in libraries offers tangible returns or that the failure to do so can result in tangible costs.Methods – A cross-sectional design featuring ordinary least squares regression analysis was used in both studies to estimate the relationship between scholarly research productivity at U.S. doctoral institutions and an array of institutional characteristics presumed to influence that productivity. The concept of research productivity is operationalized as the total number of scholarly journal articles produced by each institution over a five year period – as journal articles represent the most common form of scholarly expression across the greatest number of academic fields. Serving as the dependent variable, this data was regressed against a variety of institutional characteristics including faculty size, research expenditures, and grant awards, and several library variables centered mostly on expenditures. The concept behind this design is that to realistically explore the relationship between levels of library investment and research productivity, all other institutional drivers of research productivity must also be represented in the dataset. While the design was similar for both studies, they each drew on different data sources and marginally different populations. Results – Both studies found that an institution’s research productivity is positively and significantly correlated with the level of investment it makes in its libraries. Furthermore, both studies found electronic library material expenditures to be particularly associated with increased productivity. This relationship was so strong that an institution’s level of research productivity appears to be sensitive to how its library’s collection budget is allocated between print and electronic materials. As the portion of the budget dedicated to non-electronic material grew, research productivity decreased in statistically significant fashion in both studies.Conclusion – While both studies succeeded in demonstrating the existence of an empirical relationship between library investment and research productivity, the most intriguing finding is that both studies observed a decrease in number of journal articles being produced as expenditures for non-electronic library materials increased. The conclusion is that the efficiencies of electronic resources offer such advantages over the use of traditional library materials in supporting scholarly research that productivity suffers as institutions dedicate a greater portion of their collection budgets to print materials at the expense of electronic materials

Of Library Budgets and Scholarly Productivity: What Academics Analytics Can Tell Us about how Library Spending Impacts Scholarly Communication at Different Types of Universities

This presentation was offered as part of the CUNY Library Assessment Conference, Reinventing Libraries: Reinventing Assessment, held at the City University of New York in June 2014

Assessing Research Productivity from an Institutional Effectiveness Perspective: How Universities Influence Faculty Research Productivity

Faculty research productivity studies typically focus on the scholarly performance of the individual researcher, although environmental and organizational conditions that are largely outside of the researcher’s control can significantly impact that performance. From an institutional effectiveness perspective, it is imperative for the higher education administrators and leaders who share the responsibility of managing and supporting their university’s research enterprise to understand how the institutional environment itself impacts the productivity of its research community. In this sequential mixed methods study, a quantitative framework was tested for assessing institutional effectiveness in research administration based on the assertion that this concept can be measured indirectly, at the departmental level, based on the calculation of a program’s residual scholarly output. This is the difference between the actual amount of scholarly output a program produces compared to the predicted amount of scholarly output that its resources suggest it is capable of producing. The assumption is that the institution’s effectiveness in supporting research is largely reflected by the extent to which a program over- or under-produces scholarship based on its level of resources. The residual scholarly output was calculated for each Ph.D.-granting biomedical engineering program in doctoral universities with a Carnegie classification of “highest research activity” for the period of 2014 through 2016. A sampling of those programs that achieved among the highest and lowest residual productivity levels then became the subject of a qualitative inquiry where researchers and administrators were interviewed with two goals in mind. The more ostensive goal was to reveal what factors, characteristics, resources, and conditions distinguish under- and over-producing programs for the purpose of informing best and worst practices in research administration. Equally important, the second goal was to determine if the quantitative framework was actually successful in distinguishing institutional effectiveness in supporting research. The study concludes that the quantitative framework proved to be a successful method for detecting institutional effectiveness in supporting research, and that the primary distinguishing characteristic between high and low-functioning environments was how well programs were able to reduce the general administrative burdens that researchers face, particularly in grant management and the operation of research laboratories

Disrupted Maturation of the Microbiota and Metabolome among Extremely Preterm Infants with Postnatal Growth Failure

Growth failure during infancy is a major global problem that has adverse effects on long-term health and neurodevelopment. Preterm infants are disproportionately affected by growth failure and its effects. Herein we found that extremely preterm infants with postnatal growth failure have disrupted maturation of the intestinal microbiota, characterized by persistently low diversity, dominance of pathogenic bacteria within the Enterobacteriaceae family, and a paucity of strictly anaerobic taxa including Veillonella relative to infants with appropriate postnatal growth. Metabolomic profiling of infants with growth failure demonstrated elevated serum acylcarnitines, fatty acids, and other byproducts of lipolysis and fatty acid oxidation. Machine learning algorithms for normal maturation of the microbiota and metabolome among infants with appropriate growth revealed a pattern of delayed maturation of the microbiota and metabolome among infants with growth failure. Collectively, we identified novel microbial and metabolic features of growth failure in preterm infants and potentially modifiable targets for intervention

Interactions of Neuroimmune Signaling and Glutamate Plasticity in Addiction

Chronic use of drugs of abuse affects neuroimmune signaling; however, there are still many open questions regarding the interactions between neuroimmune mechanisms and substance use disorders (SUDs). Further, chronic use of drugs of abuse can induce glutamatergic changes in the brain, but the relationship between the glutamate system and neuroimmune signaling in addiction is not well understood. Therefore, the purpose of this review is to bring into focus the role of neuroimmune signaling and its interactions with the glutamate system following chronic drug use, and how this may guide pharmacotherapeutic treatment strategies for SUDs. In this review, we first describe neuroimmune mechanisms that may be linked to aberrant glutamate signaling in addiction. We focus specifically on the nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) pathway, a potentially important neuroimmune mechanism that may be a key player in driving drug-seeking behavior. We highlight the importance of astroglial-microglial crosstalk, and how this interacts with known glutamatergic dysregulations in addiction. Then, we describe the importance of studying non-neuronal cells with unprecedented precision because understanding structure-function relationships in these cells is critical in understanding their role in addiction neurobiology. Here we propose a working model of neuroimmune-glutamate interactions that underlie drug use motivation, which we argue may aid strategies for small molecule drug development to treat substance use disorders. Together, the synthesis of this review shows that interactions between glutamate and neuroimmune signaling may play an important and understudied role in addiction processes and may be critical in developing more efficacious pharmacotherapies to treat SUDs

Safety and activity of varlilumab, a novel and first-in-class agonist anti-CD27 antibody, for hematologic malignancies.

CD27, a costimulatory molecule on T cells, induces intracellular signals mediating cellular activation, proliferation, effector function, and cell survival on binding to its ligand, CD70. Varlilumab, a novel, first-in-class, agonist immunoglobulin G1 anti-CD27 antibody, mediates antitumor immunity and direct killing of CD27+ tumor cells in animal models. This first-in-human, dose-escalation, and expansion study evaluated varlilumab in patients with hematologic malignancies. Primary objectives were to assess safety and the maximum tolerated and optimal biologic doses of varlilumab. Secondary objectives were to evaluate pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, immunogenicity, and antitumor activity. In a 3 + 3 dose-escalation design, 30 patients with B-cell (n = 25) or T-cell (n = 5) malignancies received varlilumab (0.1, 0.3, 1, 3, or 10 mg/kg IV) as a single dose with a 28-day observation period, followed by weekly dosing (4 doses per cycle, up to 5 cycles, depending on tumor response). In an expansion cohort, 4 additional patients with Hodgkin lymphoma received varlilumab at 0.3 mg/kg every 3 weeks (4 doses per cycle, up to 5 cycles). No dose-limiting toxicities were observed. Treatment-related adverse events, generally grade 1 to 2, included fatigue, decreased appetite, anemia, diarrhea, and headache. Exposure was linear and dose-proportional across dose groups and resulted in increases in proinflammatory cytokines and soluble CD27. One patient with stage IV Hodgkin lymphoma experienced a complete response and remained in remission at \u3e33 months with no further anticancer therapy. These data support further investigation of varlilumab for hematologic malignancies, particularly in combination approaches targeting nonredundant immune regulating pathways. This trial was registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov as #NCT01460134

The ‘spirit of sport’, WADAs code review, and the search for an overlapping consensus

In this paper, we argue for the recognition that anti-doping is in itself first and foremost an ethical position. The current World Anti-doping Code formulation of ‘the spirit of sport’ is an acknowledgement of this point and a counterweight against scientific and technicist understandings of the nature of anti-doping itself. We critically review the Code formulations on ‘the spirit of sport’. Based on a theoretical background of various approaches to normative agreement and consensus in a setting of diversity of ‘comprehensive views’, we argue for revision of the Code. Specifically, we argue for a re-formulation of ‘the spirit of sport’ in terms of athlete protection and the preservation of the integrity of sporting competition that could meet requirements on an overlapping consensus among all WADA stakeholders. This is not just a matter of formality and Code acceptance. An overlapping consensus is not a mere modus vivendi but a normative consensus based on fair, honest, and transparent discourse in which participants deliberate in a setting of mutual respect and trust, and of ‘decency’, which is a basis for a consensus that cultivates authentic stakeholder commitment

Fairness in the WTO Trading System

We first provide a brief critique of the utilitarian principle as a guide to fairness in the world trading system. We then turn to the alternative conception of fairness in terms of economic equity, exploring the meaning of its two components: equality of opportunity and distributive justice. We thereafter proceed to discuss the conditions of autonomy and reciprocity that have to be met in order to realize greater fairness in multilateral trade negotiations. Next, we comment on aspects of procedural justice that are necessary for the functioning of a fair trading system. Finally, we conclude with an overall assessment of the considerations of the fairness achieved in the Uruguay Round multilateral negotiations.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78166/1/ipc-109-brown-stern-fairness-wto-trading-system.pd