Inna Kouper is Associate Scientist at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering and Data Analyst at the Center for Survey Research at Indiana University Bloomington. Her research focuses on emerging technologies, digital media, and data practices. She works on interdisciplinary projects that promote open science, data preservation, and data sharing. Additionally, she applies her language and regional expertise to analyze digital narratives.
An overview of practical, free, online resources and tools that you can begin using today to inco... more An overview of practical, free, online resources and tools that you can begin using today to incorporate research data management into your practice of librarianship from the Libraries for Research Data Interest Group of the Research Data Alliance. Translated from English into Russian.
All pages from the Love Data Week event website are archived here in PDF. Love Data Week was esta... more All pages from the Love Data Week event website are archived here in PDF. Love Data Week was established in 2016 as Love Your Data week. Originally created in the USA, it quickly grew to an international event in which a wide range of institutions, organizations, scholars, students, and other data lovers could celebrate their data. Coordinated by Heather Coates, the planning committee developed themes, wrote, curated content, developed activities, all to celebrate data in all its forms, promote good research data management strategies, ask hard questions about the role of data in our lives, and share data success and horror stories. Though the website is defunct, the event lives on, driven by the community
The research and education (R&E) community faces particular challenges regarding cybersecurit... more The research and education (R&E) community faces particular challenges regarding cybersecurity: diversity of size and autonomy, the use of diverse infrastructure (scientific instruments, sensor networks, sequencers, etc.), the highly collaborative and dynamic nature of scientific communities, and the specialized expertise needed to support cybersecurity in the research context. This webinar provides an overview of the ResearchSOC, which provides the R&E community with cybersecurity services, training, and information sharing needed to make scientific cyberinfrastructure resilient to cyberattacks and capable of supporting trustworthy, productive research. The ResearchSOC leverages existing cybersecurity services from Indiana University, Duke University, and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. It combines these operational services with the establishment of a community of practice for sharing best practices, lessons learned, and operational intelligence. The ResearchSOC couples these services with outreach and training, targeted at research projects and the higher education information security community, to educate them on information security for research. This webinar is ideal for technology managers supporting scientific research projects.NSF #1547272NSF #1840034Ope
Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2022
The paper examines information practices of five projects that emerged in response to the Russian... more The paper examines information practices of five projects that emerged in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The projects are conceptualized as resistance projects, i.e., the initiatives that stand against misinformation, censorship, and the invasion itself. The study used virtual ethnography and discourse analysis to examine the projects' web presence and social media channels and the materials about them. The paper describes the driving forces behind the projects, the technologies they use, and their information-related practices. The latter include information gathering, dissemination and mediation, extralinguistic communication, support and advice, and mobilization. One of the first attempts to document Russian information resistance, this paper provides insight into information behavior under oppressive conditions. It broadens the theorizing of misinformation and disinformation by shifting the focus from algorithmic countermeasures to misinformation, such as detecting bots or fake news, to human-centered activism.
2017 ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), 2017
PIDs and PID Kernel Information, activities of the Research Data Alliance, have the potential to ... more PIDs and PID Kernel Information, activities of the Research Data Alliance, have the potential to expand the utility and benefit of data provenance. The poster describes such expansion and outlines a study of the trade-offs of replacing the Research Object (RO) and OAI-ORE map solution of the SEAD publishing services with the PID Kernel Information approach.
The domain: A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of connections b... more The domain: A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of connections between people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that ...
Synthetic biology raises profound questions about humans’ abilities to control their own environm... more Synthetic biology raises profound questions about humans’ abilities to control their own environment and about the boundaries between living and non-living that can or cannot be crossed. Fundamental ethical, social, and political issues have to be addressed. Who should be contributing to the discussions that address those issues? How can we make sure that policy decisions incorporate concerns of various stakeholders? In this chapter I discuss these and other questions by combining methods of historical, linguistic and sociological research. I describe forms, themes, and stakeholders that contribute to the discussions of synthetic biology in the 20th–21st centuries. I argue that the evaluation of synthetic biology and similar emerging technoscientific areas benefits from a discursive perspective that is coupled with critical social theory and propose a framework that facilitates such a perspective. This approach brings synthetic biology into the space of social dilemmas that need to be negotiated as opposed to the space of scientific problems that need to be solved. It places synthetic biology into a broader social and cultural context and encourages the development of evaluation and governance frameworks that go beyond dichotomies of experts and ordinary public or fears and safeguards. It also raises questions of appropriate social, communicative, and technological structures that facilitate participation and critique.
Many libraries are implementing or getting ready to implement research data services (RDS) (see, ... more Many libraries are implementing or getting ready to implement research data services (RDS) (see, for example, http://www.acrl.ala.org/acrlinsider/archives/6297). Oftentimes, these initiatives are reactive, responding to pressures originating outside the library, such as national or funder mandates for data management planning and data sharing. To provide effective support for researchers, libraries must be proactive and develop a shared vision of what they are trying to accomplish. Can such a vision supersede institutional differences while still accommodating diversity in implementation?nbsp; In this presentation we discuss a set of vision statements grounded in an analysis of the drivers of RDS vision as well as libraries' current goals and activities in RDS. We developed these statements based on our examination of documents that advance the need for RDS, such as the funding agencies' requirements, the US Office of Science and Technology Policy memo, and the Canadian Tri-...
Proceedings of the 13th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital libraries - JCDL '13, 2013
ABSTRACT In this poster we will present the SEAD project [1] and its prototype software and descr... more ABSTRACT In this poster we will present the SEAD project [1] and its prototype software and describe how SEAD approaches long-term data preservation and access through multiple partnerships and how it supports sustainability science researchers in their data management, analysis and archival needs. SEAD's initial prototype system currently is being tested by ingesting datasets from the National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics (1.6 terabyte of data containing over 450,000 files) [2] and packaging them for transmission to long-term archival storage.
Biodiversity Information Science and Standards, 2021
Panelists: James Macklin, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada; Anne Thessen, University of Colorado ... more Panelists: James Macklin, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada; Anne Thessen, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus; Robbie Burger, University of Kentucky; Ben Norton, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences Organizers: Kimberly Cook, University of Kentucky; Inna Kouper, Indiana University As research incentives become increasingly focused on collaborative work, addressing the challenges of curating interdisciplinary data becomes a priority. A panel convened at the TDWG 2021 virtual conference on October 19 discussed these issues and provided the space where people with a variety of experience curating interdisciplinary biodiversity data shared their knowledge and expertise. The panel started with a brief introduction to the challenges of interdisciplinary and highly collaborative research (IHCR), which the panel organizers have previously observed (Kouper et al. 2021). In addition to varying definitions that focus on crossing the disciplinary boundaries or synthesizing knowl...
An overview of practical, free, online resources and tools that you can begin using today to inco... more An overview of practical, free, online resources and tools that you can begin using today to incorporate research data management into your practice of librarianship from the Libraries for Research Data Interest Group of the Research Data Alliance. Translated from English into Russian.
All pages from the Love Data Week event website are archived here in PDF. Love Data Week was esta... more All pages from the Love Data Week event website are archived here in PDF. Love Data Week was established in 2016 as Love Your Data week. Originally created in the USA, it quickly grew to an international event in which a wide range of institutions, organizations, scholars, students, and other data lovers could celebrate their data. Coordinated by Heather Coates, the planning committee developed themes, wrote, curated content, developed activities, all to celebrate data in all its forms, promote good research data management strategies, ask hard questions about the role of data in our lives, and share data success and horror stories. Though the website is defunct, the event lives on, driven by the community
The research and education (R&E) community faces particular challenges regarding cybersecurit... more The research and education (R&E) community faces particular challenges regarding cybersecurity: diversity of size and autonomy, the use of diverse infrastructure (scientific instruments, sensor networks, sequencers, etc.), the highly collaborative and dynamic nature of scientific communities, and the specialized expertise needed to support cybersecurity in the research context. This webinar provides an overview of the ResearchSOC, which provides the R&E community with cybersecurity services, training, and information sharing needed to make scientific cyberinfrastructure resilient to cyberattacks and capable of supporting trustworthy, productive research. The ResearchSOC leverages existing cybersecurity services from Indiana University, Duke University, and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. It combines these operational services with the establishment of a community of practice for sharing best practices, lessons learned, and operational intelligence. The ResearchSOC couples these services with outreach and training, targeted at research projects and the higher education information security community, to educate them on information security for research. This webinar is ideal for technology managers supporting scientific research projects.NSF #1547272NSF #1840034Ope
Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2022
The paper examines information practices of five projects that emerged in response to the Russian... more The paper examines information practices of five projects that emerged in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The projects are conceptualized as resistance projects, i.e., the initiatives that stand against misinformation, censorship, and the invasion itself. The study used virtual ethnography and discourse analysis to examine the projects' web presence and social media channels and the materials about them. The paper describes the driving forces behind the projects, the technologies they use, and their information-related practices. The latter include information gathering, dissemination and mediation, extralinguistic communication, support and advice, and mobilization. One of the first attempts to document Russian information resistance, this paper provides insight into information behavior under oppressive conditions. It broadens the theorizing of misinformation and disinformation by shifting the focus from algorithmic countermeasures to misinformation, such as detecting bots or fake news, to human-centered activism.
2017 ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), 2017
PIDs and PID Kernel Information, activities of the Research Data Alliance, have the potential to ... more PIDs and PID Kernel Information, activities of the Research Data Alliance, have the potential to expand the utility and benefit of data provenance. The poster describes such expansion and outlines a study of the trade-offs of replacing the Research Object (RO) and OAI-ORE map solution of the SEAD publishing services with the PID Kernel Information approach.
The domain: A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of connections b... more The domain: A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of connections between people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that ...
Synthetic biology raises profound questions about humans’ abilities to control their own environm... more Synthetic biology raises profound questions about humans’ abilities to control their own environment and about the boundaries between living and non-living that can or cannot be crossed. Fundamental ethical, social, and political issues have to be addressed. Who should be contributing to the discussions that address those issues? How can we make sure that policy decisions incorporate concerns of various stakeholders? In this chapter I discuss these and other questions by combining methods of historical, linguistic and sociological research. I describe forms, themes, and stakeholders that contribute to the discussions of synthetic biology in the 20th–21st centuries. I argue that the evaluation of synthetic biology and similar emerging technoscientific areas benefits from a discursive perspective that is coupled with critical social theory and propose a framework that facilitates such a perspective. This approach brings synthetic biology into the space of social dilemmas that need to be negotiated as opposed to the space of scientific problems that need to be solved. It places synthetic biology into a broader social and cultural context and encourages the development of evaluation and governance frameworks that go beyond dichotomies of experts and ordinary public or fears and safeguards. It also raises questions of appropriate social, communicative, and technological structures that facilitate participation and critique.
Many libraries are implementing or getting ready to implement research data services (RDS) (see, ... more Many libraries are implementing or getting ready to implement research data services (RDS) (see, for example, http://www.acrl.ala.org/acrlinsider/archives/6297). Oftentimes, these initiatives are reactive, responding to pressures originating outside the library, such as national or funder mandates for data management planning and data sharing. To provide effective support for researchers, libraries must be proactive and develop a shared vision of what they are trying to accomplish. Can such a vision supersede institutional differences while still accommodating diversity in implementation?nbsp; In this presentation we discuss a set of vision statements grounded in an analysis of the drivers of RDS vision as well as libraries' current goals and activities in RDS. We developed these statements based on our examination of documents that advance the need for RDS, such as the funding agencies' requirements, the US Office of Science and Technology Policy memo, and the Canadian Tri-...
Proceedings of the 13th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital libraries - JCDL '13, 2013
ABSTRACT In this poster we will present the SEAD project [1] and its prototype software and descr... more ABSTRACT In this poster we will present the SEAD project [1] and its prototype software and describe how SEAD approaches long-term data preservation and access through multiple partnerships and how it supports sustainability science researchers in their data management, analysis and archival needs. SEAD's initial prototype system currently is being tested by ingesting datasets from the National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics (1.6 terabyte of data containing over 450,000 files) [2] and packaging them for transmission to long-term archival storage.
Biodiversity Information Science and Standards, 2021
Panelists: James Macklin, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada; Anne Thessen, University of Colorado ... more Panelists: James Macklin, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada; Anne Thessen, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus; Robbie Burger, University of Kentucky; Ben Norton, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences Organizers: Kimberly Cook, University of Kentucky; Inna Kouper, Indiana University As research incentives become increasingly focused on collaborative work, addressing the challenges of curating interdisciplinary data becomes a priority. A panel convened at the TDWG 2021 virtual conference on October 19 discussed these issues and provided the space where people with a variety of experience curating interdisciplinary biodiversity data shared their knowledge and expertise. The panel started with a brief introduction to the challenges of interdisciplinary and highly collaborative research (IHCR), which the panel organizers have previously observed (Kouper et al. 2021). In addition to varying definitions that focus on crossing the disciplinary boundaries or synthesizing knowl...
This presentation aims to discuss a specific approach to visualizing data and information called ... more This presentation aims to discuss a specific approach to visualizing data and information called "narrative visualization". It illustrates techniques and challenges of bringing data to life through multiple examples and discussion on such important concepts of storytelling as theme, author-reader relationship, narrative structure and point of view.
In September 2014 a librarian asked for examples of good and bad data management practices on the... more In September 2014 a librarian asked for examples of good and bad data management practices on the JISC Research Data Management mailing list. The examples were to be used in training courses and engagement efforts. Following this exchange and several suggested links to examples, a session at the Research Data Alliance (RDA) plenary (a global organization to facilitate data sharing) further highlighted the need for a repository of such examples. The repository would serve as a community resource to promote best data management practices, but also serve larger goals of effecting change in cultures around research data. Responding to this need, the UK Digital Curation Centre and the RDA Engagement Interest Group are launching a service to collect and organize stories about failures and successes in research data management, sharing, and re-use. This poster will describe our effort to date with launching this service. We will outline the framework for organizing the stories and our initiatives to collect them. We will also share preliminary results from the first round of story solicitations and highlight the challenges of making the stories useful. We hope that the poster will stimulate a discussion about education, engagement and outreach in social science data exchanges.
The poster provides a critical overview of various themes in big data research and discussions, d... more The poster provides a critical overview of various themes in big data research and discussions, drawing on relevant writings in the sciences, humanities, policy, and trade literature and contextualizing the phenomenon of Big Data within larger socio-economic developments.
Joint Conference on Digital Libraries 2013, Jul 2013
This poster describes our experiences as four CLIR/DLF
postdoctoral fellows in developing data s... more This poster describes our experiences as four CLIR/DLF
postdoctoral fellows in developing data services at our respective
universities. We report on our particular activities and
achievements, which we synthesize into a common framework
that can guide the development of data services at other academic
institutions. The analysis of our experiences suggests the necessity
of stronger cooperation of units within universities as well as
increased and more diverse collaborations among universities.
Association for Library and Information Science Education Conference (ALISE’09), Jan 2009
Theories, concepts, and methods routinely cross disciplinary boundaries. Murray and Evers (1989) ... more Theories, concepts, and methods routinely cross disciplinary boundaries. Murray and Evers (1989) define this practice as theory borrowing, i.e., “taking a concept or theory out of its original social and historical context and using it in another to explain the same or a different social or natural phenomenon.” Recent studies demonstrate that the field of information studies borrows theories from different disciplines of social science and humanities (Pettigrew and McKechnie, 2001). But what are the patterns of borrowing from particular disciplines? This poster reports the findings of a study that looked into patterns of borrowing from sociology by examining the content and citations of five volumes of the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology.
Our findings show that the ways sociological content is incorporated into information studies are quite diverse and eclectic. Researchers draw on a variety of theoretical frameworks, yet they rarely incorporate theories as a whole. Rather, they seek out particular theoretical statements, concepts, or empirical observations that can help them to support their research on information. For example, they can refer to the whole domain (e.g., sociology of knowledge) as their theoretical orientation. Or employ a particular concept (e.g., social capital) to test certain relationships. Information studies researchers also tend to rely on the importation work of others, i.e., those who already re-worked sociological theory and appropriated it for the purposes of information studies. Thus, Rob Kling is one of the most frequently cited authors in the context of sociological concepts and information studies. Classic sociologists such as K. Marx, R. Merton, N. Luhman, and A. Giddens are mentioned much less frequently.
References
Murray, J. B., Evers, D. J. (1989). Theory borrowing and reflectivity in interdisciplinary fields (pp. 647-652). In Srull, T.K. Advances in Consumer Research. Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research.
Pettigrew, K. E., & McKechnie, L. (. (2001). The use of theory in information science research. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52(1), 62-73.
Uploads
Papers by Inna Kouper
postdoctoral fellows in developing data services at our respective
universities. We report on our particular activities and
achievements, which we synthesize into a common framework
that can guide the development of data services at other academic
institutions. The analysis of our experiences suggests the necessity
of stronger cooperation of units within universities as well as
increased and more diverse collaborations among universities.
Our findings show that the ways sociological content is incorporated into information studies are quite diverse and eclectic. Researchers draw on a variety of theoretical frameworks, yet they rarely incorporate theories as a whole. Rather, they seek out particular theoretical statements, concepts, or empirical observations that can help them to support their research on information. For example, they can refer to the whole domain (e.g., sociology of knowledge) as their theoretical orientation. Or employ a particular concept (e.g., social capital) to test certain relationships. Information studies researchers also tend to rely on the importation work of others, i.e., those who already re-worked sociological theory and appropriated it for the purposes of information studies. Thus, Rob Kling is one of the most frequently cited authors in the context of sociological concepts and information studies. Classic sociologists such as K. Marx, R. Merton, N. Luhman, and A. Giddens are mentioned much less frequently.
References
Murray, J. B., Evers, D. J. (1989). Theory borrowing and reflectivity in interdisciplinary fields (pp. 647-652). In Srull, T.K. Advances in Consumer Research. Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research.
Pettigrew, K. E., & McKechnie, L. (. (2001). The use of theory in information science research. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52(1), 62-73.