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The March 2025 Image of the Month, Basketball team celebrates courtside, circa 1991, has been posted
Learn the details of critical appraisal during a four-part training series spanning March-April from UAB Libraries’ Clinical, Academic and Research Engagement team; each session is available at no cost to faculty, staff and student researchers.
Critical appraisal is a systematic process for evaluating research to determine its trustworthiness, value and relevance using transparent methods to assess data in published research.
All workshops are virtual and take place 11 a.m.-noon.
March 19 — Introduction to Critical Appraisal
This essential introductory workshop is designed to sharpen participants’ abilities to evaluate medical research critically. Register online.
March 26 — Study Designs: Strengths and Weaknesses
This workshop will deepen participants’ understanding of research study designs and their implications in medical science. Register online.
April 9 — Assessing Risk of Bias
Participants will learn to elevate research evaluation skills and identify and assess bias in medical research. Register online.
April 23 — Statistical Analysis and Interpretation
Participants will unlock the power of statistics in medical research. Register online.
During the last several years, the amount of scientific research data being published by universities, including UAB, has increased significantly due to a unique combination of new federal mandates and updates to publisher requirements. There has never been a centrally located resource available across the UAB enterprise to collect those datasets — until now, with the creation of the new Research Data Catalog from the Office of Scholarly Communication in UAB Libraries.
According to DataCite, a nonprofit organization that tracks research outputs, data publication has increased tenfold during the last decade.
From 2022 to 2023 alone, the number of newly registered DOIs — or unique strings of numbers and letters that identify documents like books, articles and government reports — in repositories tracked by the DataCite network grew from 7,745,931 to 18,049,694. That equals an increase of more than 10.3 million records in a single year.
Hosted in the UAB Digital Commons, the Research Data Catalog is an online collection of records describing datasets generated by UAB researchers; rather than directly including or storing datasets, the catalog functions as a directory to help users discover UAB-deposited datasets in external repositories like Zenodo and Dryad.
Before creating the catalog, the lack of a central repository to search across dataset records was a severe hindrance to data discovery at UAB, said Marla Hertz, research data management librarian for the OSC.
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"Anyone who's tried to locate the raw data underlying scientific research likely knows the pain that can come with that process. We desperately need better tools to make the discovery of data easier, and we think this new catalog is just the thing to do that.” |
“A recent report from Digital Science on the state of open data showed that 75% of researchers feel they have received no support with planning, managing and sharing their research data,” Hertz explained. “The OSC helps bridge that gap. And anyone who's tried to locate the raw data underlying scientific research likely knows the pain that can come with that process. We desperately need better tools to make the discovery of data easier, and we think this new catalog is just the thing to do that.”
Currently, the catalog has more than 100 dataset records deposited in Dryad and Zenodo repositories by UAB researchers spanning from 2012-2024, as well as custom records for unique, UAB-exclusive datasets, such as data from the REGARDS study, the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistics Center, and CFAR.
Who can use the catalog?
The catalog is available open access through the UAB Digital Commons, UAB’s digital repository maintained by UAB Libraries — meaning it is accessible to anyone, anytime, across the globe. However, several of UAB’s constituent groups could find the Research Data Catalog particularly useful, Hertz says.
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Learn more about the new catalog in this webinar: |
- Researchers can find their own data in the catalog and identify collaborators and methodology expertise.
- Administrators can track and report on data outputs, plus monitor compliance to open data requirements.
- Educators can find and use datasets for course instruction.
- Students can explore different areas of research and identify experts in fields of interest.
“The data catalog has something for everyone,” Hertz explained. “I often hear from researchers who struggle to figure out where to preserve their data. They ask me, ‘Where do other people at UAB share their research data?’ Now you can figure it out by browsing through the new data catalog.”
Learn more about the new catalog in this webinar:
Where Does UAB Deposit Their Research Data? Enhancing Data Discovery with a New Data Catalog — 11 a.m. Feb. 11, register in advance
A framework for success
Creating and maintaining the Research Data Catalog was a key goal in UAB’s Research Strategic Initiative: Growth with Purpose, the enterprise’s road map to multiply the positive impact of our research and reach $1 billion in research expenditures. (Learn more about Growth with Purpose in a town hall scheduled March 19.) Hertz is a member of the initiative’s working group focused on research data management, co-chaired by Ralph Zottola, assistant vice president for Research Computing in UAB Information Technology, and Suzanne Judd, Ph.D., professor of biostatistics and interim chair in the Department of Health Behavior in the School of Public Health, the goal of which is to enhance research data management systems to support the growing research enterprise.
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UAB researchers who have published datasets and would like their information included in the catalog can submit a dataset entry to the Research Data Catalog using this form. |
Going forward, the catalog will continue to be populated with records to datasets from Figshare and ICPSR, and the Office of Scholarly Communication is open to suggestions for other data repositories to prioritize; contact Marla Hertz mihertz@uab.edu or Amy Reese reesea@uab.edu with requests. A FAQ guide also is available.
The OSC team also will continue to add custom records for unique, large-scale UAB data projects, such as electronic medical record data discovery using DataLENS, and the i2b2 data discovery tool — both from UAB’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science — and more. The catalog also will update annually to add new records from the existing list of data repositories.
“The data catalog can help break down information silos across the UAB enterprise,” Hertz said. “We hope researchers use it as a networking opportunity to find collaborators and methodology experts.”
UAB researchers who have published datasets and would like their information included in the catalog can submit a dataset entry to the Research Data Catalog using this form.
The February 2025 Image of the Month, Denman Hall, circa 1975, has been posted.
UAB-affiliated authors can publish open access in select Wiley gold and hybrid open access journals at no cost to the author through an ongoing read-and-publish agreement between Wiley and UAB Libraries.
Unlike traditional publishing systems, open access journals do not require a subscription to access paywalled resources; to offset that loss of revenue, most OA publications collect what is called an article processing charge (APC) in order to publish.
The average APC cost is just over $1,600, according to an article published earlier this year in Sci Ed, and UAB Libraries funds up to 100 Wiley APCs per year on a first-come, first-served basis. Since Jan. 1, 2023, UAB Libraries has saved more than $773,000 in APC fees for UAB authors via its agreement with Wiley.
“The Wiley agreement is one of the most significant ways UAB Libraries can equip our authors to publish open access,” said Jeff Gravline, J.D., associate dean for Research and Scholarly Communication and director of the Office of Scholarly Communication in UAB Libraries. “We’re excited to continue offering APC funding assistance for the third year running.”
After the cap is reached, UAB-affiliated authors remain eligible for a 15% discount on APCs when publishing open access with Wiley.
Get the details
To qualify for APC funding through UAB Libraries’ agreement with Wiley, authors must currently be affiliated with UAB and be either the lead or corresponding author on the article. Articles must be a Research Article, Review Article or a Case study, and it must have been accepted on or after Jan. 1, 2025. Authors also are limited to one funded APC per calendar year. Find additional details in this research guide.
More opportunities to publish open access
In addition to its agreement with Wiley, UAB Libraries also has read-and-publish agreements with Springer Nature, which has saved more than $397,00 for UAB authors since January 2024, and Cambridge Publishing, which has saved more than $100,000 for UAB authors since January 2021.
Two new agreements with Mary Ann Liebert Inc. and The Company of Biologists were launched in January 2025, and UAB also has ongoing agreements with IOP Publishing, the Association for Computing Machinery and the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Learn more about open access publishing support through UAB Libraries in this research guide, and contact Graveline (jgraveli@uab.edu) in the Office of Scholarly Communication with questions.