University of Michigan Press Blog

Inside Higher Ed: Eszter Hargittai and "Research Confidential: Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have"

Originally published in INSIDE HIGHER ED, Oct. 30, 2009

For social scientists starting their careers, creating research models that work is crucial. A new book suggests that they may be unaware of problems they face in part because scholars don't share stories of what didn't work on their projects, and how to deal with particular challenges. Research Confidential: Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have has just been published by the University of Michigan Press. The essays in the collection are all by younger scholars, including the volume's editor, Eszter Hargittai, an associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern University, a fellow at the Berman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and a career advice columnist for Inside Higher Ed. Hargittai responded to questions about the book.

Q: I was struck by the part of your subtitle where you say "pretend they never have." Why do you think social scientists don't recognize or hide from problems with their research methods?

A: This title refers less to what social scientists recognize and more to what shows up in the final write-up of their projects. When one reads journal articles, the methodological sections tend to make the projects sound rather straight-forward. In books, details about methods are usually relegated to an appendix, at best, and do not tell the reader the reality of data collection. Instead, they are pretty, cleaned-up versions of what happened. For example, they will include the number of final interviews the researcher conducted, but they won't include details about how many attempts it took to get a person to come to an interview.

Announcing: M Publishing

Mission Statement

To be the primary academic publishing unit of the University of Michigan, with responsibility for the creation and promotion of scholarly, educational, and regional materials in digital and print formats. M Publishing commits to using the best emerging digital technology to disseminate such information as freely and widely as possible while preserving the integrity of published scholarship.

Strategy

M Publishing is a newly formed publishing organization within the University of Michigan Library with the purpose of aligning existing and future publishing activities of the Library with the core strengths and informational needs of the University.

The focus of M Publishing will be the development of information communities for well-defined audiences...

CONTINUE READING ABOUT THE NEW "M PUBLISHING"

What We Can Learn from the Balloon Boy

by Orville Gilbert Brim, author of new release LOOK AT ME! The Fame Motive from Childhood to Death, available now

    "It has become sadly and abundantly clear that the story of the boy in the balloon that captured the world’s attention last week was simply an elaborate hoax, carried out by the boy’s father.  At one level it looks like it was an attempt to get on reality TV.  But there is a very good chance that something else was involved, a little-studied aspect of human development I call the fame motive.
    Has our completely wired world caused more people than ever before to seek fame?  Or has it just caused those driven by the need for fame to surface more easily?

Press Release: New Digital Access Options for U-M Press Titles

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List of free-view UM Press titles in HathiTrust

U-M Press' digital transition

U-M Library's Digitization Project

HathiTrust

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ANN ARBOR, Mich.—The University of Michigan Press is joining with HathiTrust Digital Library to open electronic content for free online access. U-M Press plans to have 1,000 or more titles available for full viewing by the end of this year. 

Launched in 2008, HathiTrust is a digital preservation repository and research management tool for the world's great research libraries, focused on providing scholars in the digital age with the largest collection of electronic research material this side of Google Book Search and large-scale, full-text searching and archiving tools to manage it.

"Presses have had online previews and PDFs of sample chapters, tables of contents, and sometimes entire books on their Web sites for years," said Phil Pochoda, director of the U-M Press. "The HathiTrust partnership is something entirely new that takes into account the actual pursuit of broad dissemination of scholarly information.

"Security restrictions are in place to protect the integrity of the product, but with HathiTrust, a full view of the material is there. It's searchable and it's available to anyone with access. If you want to either search for or happen to come across Michigan Press books, you can look through them onscreen anywhere, anytime."

In keeping with the U-M's leadership role in the use of digitization and print-on-demand technology, U-M Press seeks to push the boundaries of the rapidly changing publishing world to position its resources where many different kinds of audiences can find them, Pochoda said.

Elinor Ostrom, University of Michigan Press Author, Wins 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics - First Woman to Win

The University of Michigan Press congratulates Elinor Ostrom, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics for her "analyis of economic governance, especially the commons"! She is the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in this category.

Dr. Ostrom is Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University Bloomington. She is the author of UMP title RULES, GAMES, AND COMMON-POOL RESOURCES and a contributor to three UMP collections from the Workshop in Political Theory and Analysis: POLYCENTRIC GAMES AND INSTITUTIONS, POLYCENTRICITY AND LOCAL PUBLIC ECONOMIES, and POLYCENTRIC GOVERNANCE AND DEVELOPMENT.

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30% Discount - To receive 30% off the list price of these titles, enter promotional code ostrom09 when checking out through the online shopping cart from one of these book . Offer only valid at the University of Michigan Press, not available in bookstores. Offer expires December 30, 2009.

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Click below for more information on Dr. Ostrom's work:

University of Michigan Press Partners with HathiTrust

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Access the University of Michigan Presss
HathiTrust Launch Page

|Press Release: UMP Partners with HathiTrust|

What is HathiTrust?

HathiTrust is a digital repository and research management tool for the United States' great research libraries, focused on providing scholars in the digital age with the largest collection of electronic research material this side of Google Book Search, large-scale full-text searching and archiving tools to manage it, and the ability to very easily flip through and purchase full titles in both print and electronic form.

"Presses have had online previews and PDFs of sample chapters, tables of contents, and sometimes entire books on their websites for years. The HathiTrust partnership is something entirely new that takes into account the actual pursuit of broad dissemination of scholarly information. Security restrictions are in place to protect the integrity of the product, but with HathiTrust, a full-view of the material is there, it's searchable and manageable, and it's available to anyone with access to the Trust. If you want to either search for or happen to come across Michigan Press books, you can view them onscreen anywhere, anytime, and decide if you are interested in making the purchase...This is just one of the many avenues we're pursuing to allow today's readers to find and 'flip through' a book to see if it meets their needs and interests without ever turning an actual page." —Phil Pochoda, Director of the University of Michigan Press

For more information on UMP's Digital Transition,
Visit: www.press.umich.edu/digital

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2009 University of Michigan Press Book Award winners honored

A ceremony last night honored the two recipients of the University of Michigan Press Book Award: Joanne Leonard, author of Being in Pictures: An Intimate Photo Memoir; and Tobin Siebers, author of Disability Theory.

       

Leonard and Siebers mark the second time in a row the awards committee has chosen to honor two authors.

The Press Book Award is given to the best work published by the University Press in the prior two calendar years and written by a member, or members, of the University of Michigan faculty.

The Colbert Report | The Information Master

by David Bell, originally appeared in The New Republic on October 7th, 2009

The Information Master by Jacob Soll

Soll is also the author of Publishing The Prince (2005)

"That resonant piece of verbal shorthand, TMI--or Too Much Information--would make a fine epigraph for our age. Anyone with an Internet connection today has access to exponentially greater quantities of writing, images, sound, and video than anyone on earth could have imagined just twenty years ago. Small wonder that we have become obsessed with the idea of "information" as an abstract substance independent of its content--something that we accumulate, measure, and "process," rather than ponder and understand. And small wonder that the management and control of information, whether by its "producers," by governments, or by corporations such as Google, has emerged as an increasingly important political concern, and as a subject of scholarship."

Turow, Author of The Hyperlinked Society, in New York Times: "Two-thirds of Americans Object to Online Tracking"

    

Joseph Turow is co-editor of new release The Hyperlinked Society and a featured writer in the Best of Technology series

by Stephanie Clifford, originally published in the NYT on Sept 29, 2009

"ABOUT two-thirds of Americans object to online tracking by advertisers — and that number rises once they learn the different ways marketers are following their online movements, according to a new survey from professors at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley.

Joseph Turow, lead author of a study on consumers’ feelings about online tracking, said, “The most important thing is to bring the public into the picture, which is not going on right now.”

       

Learn more about Joseph Turow and The Hyperlinked Society

Q&A with Mardi Link, author of Isadore's Secret

Isadore's Secret: Sin, Murder, and Confession in a Northern Michigan Town is a gripping account of the mysterious disappearance of a young nun in a northern Michigan town and the national controversy that followed when she turned up dead and buried in the basement of the church.

Mardi Link, a former crime reporter and author of When Evil Came to Good Hart discusses her latest true crime book.

  Listen to the podcast