UFIT Reports Predatory Academic Journals and Conferences Targeting Faculty

UF faculty are receiving suspicious emails purportedly from legitimate Open Access journals and conferences. They are actually from predatory companies disinterested in furthering scholarly research. Their only goal is to make money and steal academic output.

UFIT has blocked 636 million email messages this academic year. However, predatory emails are not necessarily caught by the SPAM-blocking technology in use, since these emails do not contain malicious attachments and generally link to a recognized web domain.

Damon G. Lamb, UF assistant professor of psychiatry, has prepared this list of recommendations to consider before submitting an Open Access article or conference presentation.

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Getting Started with UF’s Research Computing Environment

UFIT’s Research Computing team facilitates supercomputing resources for UF by supporting faculty research and discovery via the use of HiPerGator and by offering expert consulting and proposal support services. You can access Research Computing resources and services by first obtaining a research computing account. See UFIT’s Getting Started webpage for more information and to request an account. 

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UFIT Enables Zoom Pro Accounts for UF

UF’s Zoom enterprise (campus-wide) licensing agreement provides a Zoom Pro level account to all faculty, students, and staff with active Gatorlink login credentials. Zoom Pro accounts include unlimited meetings of up to 100 participants, screen sharing, conference recording, and chat. Large group (100+) webinars and dedicated Zoom Rooms are also available at an additional cost. While the Zoom service has been available at UF since last summer, several updates went live on May 13, 2019.

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UFIT Announces Price Reduction for Storage Backup Services

A price reduction for UFIT’s storage backup service will go into effect July 1, 2019. The minimum savings customers will see is 40%, with further reduction in costs for customers who frequently request data recovery. Another advantage of the new pricing is that departments can accurately budget for storage needs, because costs will be predictable based on amount of data stored.

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UFIT Offers Free Summer Training

UFIT offers face-to-face, webinars, and “just-in-time” (pre-taped) trainings for research and instructional faculty, graduate students/TAs, and staff. Visit UFIT’s Training webpage, select your “Affiliation,” and then choose the “Format” of training you wish to complete. You can also see all available training by not checking any of the format types.

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Awarded Projects for May 2019

Congratulations to Herman Knopf and Mildred Maldonado Molina for their award from Florida’s Office of Early Learning; and Philip Poekert for his awards from Florida’s Office of Early Learning and the Lafayette Parish School System.

For more details, see the Awarded Projects table.

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Submitted Projects for May 2019

Best wishes to Maria Coady for her proposal to the Spencer Foundation; Alice Kaye Emery for her proposal to the Florida Department of Education; Lynda Hayes for her proposal to the Florida Department of Education; Maya Israel for her proposal to the National Science Foundation; Maya Israel for her subcontract proposal NSF Flow Through from Michigan State University; Tina Smith-Bonahue, Kristen Kemple, Anne Corinne Manley, and Sondra Smith for their proposal Caplan Foundation Flow Through from the University of Florida Foundation; Philip Poekert for his proposal to Study Edge; Philip Poekert for his subcontract proposal DHHS Flow Through from WestEd; Philip Poekert and Paige Pullen for their proposal to the Charleston County School District; Yuxi Qiu and Philip Poekert for their proposal to the American Educational Research Association; and Christopher Redding for his proposal to the American Educational Research Association.

For more details, see the Submitted Projects table.

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First Year Accomplishments: A Message from IES Director Mark Schneider

At the end of his first year as Director of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), Mark Schneider has summarized some IES accomplishments. He emphasized how IES is focusing on its mission “as an applied research agency.” IES will continue to invest in basic research even though that is not its primary function. Instead, the work of IES focuses on “improving the outcomes of learners throughout the life cycle.” This requires an emphasis on “translating research for widespread use to improve outcomes.”

To realize this principle, IES has undertaken several concrete steps. For example, it has imposed a new 15-page limit for its reports, meaning the reports need to be “better thought out and more concisely written.” IES is rethinking the What Works Clearinghouse website and its Practice Guides with the goal of making the WWC website more useable for a wide range of users. IES is also considering how different and more modern data analytic and data visualization tools could help with the examination of its data.  Read more →

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IES List of Proposed Interventions for the Systematic Replication RFA

Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Director Mark Schneider has provided a list of interventions having strong evidence of impact. IES will release the Systematic Replication RFA sometime later this spring, and these interventions are the ones IES will support for replication.

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AERA Requests Comments on 2020 Annual Meeting Programming

The American Educational Research Association (AERA) invites you to submit ideas contributing to the development of the 2020 Annual Meeting theme: The Power and Possibilities for the Public Good When Researchers and Organizational Stakeholders Collaborate.

Deadline to submit ideas: Tuesday, May 28, 2019 at president@aera.net.  

Call for Submissions Released: May 10, 2019

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NIH Requests Information on the Need for an NIH Data Enclave

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a request for information (RFI) to explore interest in whether NIH should use funds to develop, host, and maintain a secure data environment (data enclave). The data enclave would allow researchers to access de-identifiable NIH scientific information not made available to the public.

Deadline to submit comments: Thursday, May 30, 2019 at https://grants.nih.gov/grants/rfi/rfi.cfm?ID=86

Currently RePORTER provides the public with a searchable repository of NIH-funded projects, and ExPORTER provides files on funded projects for download. These tools contain non-sensitive information on NIH funded projects. In recent years, NIH has noted an increasing demand for access to sensitive information collected via the grants process.

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NSF Requests Information on Future Topics for the NSF Convergence Accelerator

The National Science Foundation (NSF) issued a request for information (RFI) in conjunction with NSF’s 10 Big Ideas. The purpose of this RFI is to seek input on future NSF Convergence Accelerator tracks within the 10 Big Ideas, or on other topics that may not relate directly to a Big Idea but that may have national impact.

Deadline to submit comments: Monday, June 24, 2019 at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/GVNQ75C and complete the online questionnaire.

The purpose of the Convergence Accelerator is to accelerate use-inspired convergence research in areas of national importance, and initiate convergence team-building capacity around exploratory, potentially high-risk proposals in three convergence topics (tracks) with each track aligned with one of NSF’s 10 Big Ideas, namely Harnessing the Data Revolution (HDR) (track A1) and the Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier (FW-HTF) (tracks B1 and B2). These tracks also align with Administration R&D Priorities including leadership in artificial intelligence (see July 2018 memo M-18-22), the President’s Management Agenda (see Cross Agency Priority Goals), and the U.S. 5-Year STEM Education Strategic Plan.

Ideas suggested in response to this RFI should be similar in scope to tracks A1, B1, and B2, which are broad enough to each support a set of related research teams working together as a cohort.

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Find the Latest Funding Strategies for NIH Institutes and Centers

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) offers information on the latest fiscal policies, as well as links to the funding strategies for each Institute and Center (IC) that offers grant awards.

You can use the NIH Funding Strategies webpage to better understand the NIH’s approach to grant funding and stay updated on key budget policies.

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Science Gateways: What Are They and How Can They Boost Your Research?

Founded in 2016, the Science Gateways Community Institute was one of the National Science Foundation’s first software institutes funded via the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure’s Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) program.

Science gateways allow access to resources for researchers, educators, and students. Through a variety of online interfaces, such as Web portals or mobile apps, gateways support a community of tools, applications, and data collections providing shared resources.

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Nondisclosure Agreements and Confidentiality in the Review of Proposals and Manuscripts

UF faculty members are routinely asked by funding agencies or foundations to review research proposals submitted by researchers at other institutions. In the course of agreeing to review, the reviewer is normally asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement that requires the reviewer to keep the contents of the reviewed materials confidential. The same holds true in the review of manuscripts for journals. It is important that the signee abide by the terms of these agreements. The federal agencies take these agreements pertaining to proposal review very seriously and have recently reiterated these confidentiality requirements to the academic community.

UF expects that faculty serving as reviewers understand and abide by the terms of these nondisclosure agreements. It is not required that these nondisclosure agreements for proposal or manuscript review be reviewed by central administration. Please note that nondisclosure/confidentiality agreements for other business purposes must be reviewed by the Division of Sponsored Programs or the General Counsel before execution.

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