Information School News

We are thrilled to announce that we have attained the position of number one in the world for Library and Information Management in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025! "We are very proud to be ranked number one in the world for Library and Information Management, for the fifth consecutive year. This is a great honour for all at the Information School, and is a testament to the outstanding teaching and world-leading research conducted in the School.  These rankings reflect our outstanding reputation established over six decades, our excellent reputation among employers, the high quality of our research publications, the large number of citations our papers attain, and of course the achievements of our students and alumni. Our ranking as Number One in the World for Library and Information Management is thanks to the dedication of all Information School staff, who both deliver and support the inspirational teaching which prepares our students so well for rewarding caree...

The Information Systems Research group (ISRG) in the School of Information, Journalism and Communication (IJC) and the Institute for Global Sustainable Development (IGSD), were pleased to co-host a seminar by Prof Silvia Masiero (University of Oslo) centred around her new book, Unfair ID (Sage, Data Justice Series, October 2024). Using a data justice lens to explore narratives of unfairness in, and harm caused through digital ID, Silvia presented some of the ethnographic findings contained in the book, building on her 14-year research on the use of Aadhaar's biometrics in the Indian Public Distribution System (PDS). Find out more about Unfair ID here.

In November 2024, the University hosted the annual CILIP Prison Libraries Group Training Day. This was organised by CILIP’s Prison Libraries Group alongside Dr Jayne Finlay, Lecturer in Librarianship at the Information School. Three students from the Information School received bursaries to attend the event and have reflected on their experiences below. Rebecca Breinholt, MA Librarianship I’m interested in the work of prison libraries but know very little about how they actually operate so I was incredibly grateful to be given a student bursary to attend the CILIP Prison Libraries Group Training Day. Excited but a bit unsure of myself when I showed up, I quickly discovered how kind, dedicated, and knowledgeable the people engaged in this work proved to be. We heard from professionals on a range of topics including literacy and creativity, helping prisoners access legal information, neurodiversity, family projects, as well as a report on the results of a large study of UK prison librar...

MORPHSS aims to investigate and promote open research practices in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS).  The project is designed to create frameworks and guidelines to encourage adoption of open practices in HSS as well contribute to our knowledge of such practices. The three-year, £800,000 project is a collaboration between Cambridge University Library, Cambridge Digital Humanities, Coventry University, the University of Sheffield and the University of Southampton. It is jointly funded by the Research England Development (RED) Fund, the Wellcome Trust and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.  The work to be carried out at Sheffield will be led by Stephen Pinfield, who now has a process in train to recruit a postgraduate research associate to work on the project for the next two years. The Sheffield team will contribute to the project as a whole but will focus for a significant proportion of their time investigating open practices in the Social Sciences, pa...

Professor Stephen Pinfield has contributed to an article for The Conversation, entitled 'The peer review system no longer works to guarantee academic rigour - a different approach is needed' The article discusses the issues with academic peer review and the innovative platform MetaROR which is intended to help address some of these problems, whilst also acting as a sort of 'metaresearch experiment'. Read the article here.

Returning to Sheffield after more than a decade has been a mixture of nostalgia and new opportunities. I first came here in 2011 to complete my MA in Librarianship, and now, I find myself back as a visiting scholar at the Information School. My time as a visiting researcher at the University of Sheffield has been truly rewarding. I am an academic staff at Harran University in Turkey supported for this visit by Tubitak (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey). This visit has been a great opportunity for my academic and professional development. I am conducting research on artificial intelligence within GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) institutions. I have especially valued the support of my supervisor Dr. Andrew Cox who has guided me through this process. He is an extremely helpful, supportive and understanding person. The University of Sheffield has provided me with an excellent working environment, surrounded by helpful staff and dynamic research...