Information School News

 Data is the lifeblood of our digital society, but how our personal information is stored and shared is an understandably contentious issue. ‘ Tools for Life: Data Sharing and Public Health ’, a 20-month public engagement project which concluded in March 2021 and was headed by Information School Lecturer Dr Jonathan Foster, looked into the issues surrounding this idea in the context of patient data, with consideration of this issue being particularly important against the backdrop of the current NHS opt-out system for consent. Dr Jonathan Foster Alongside Dr Foster, the project involved fellow Information School Lecturer and expert in Health Informatics Dr Laura Sbaffi, and Professor Suzanne Mason, a clinician academic and Professor of Emergency Medicine based at the University’s School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR). With Jonathan’s expertise being in Information Management, the project had a broad knowledge base from both the health and the data side of the equation. The pro

  We’ve had several good news stories in the School recently, showing off the strength of our staff’s research! Lecturer Dr Mengdie Zhuang was published in the Conversation, discussing the varying degrees to which the public obeyed COVID lockdown rules Her piece, ‘Household mixing during COVID-19: our research suggests adherence to lockdowns in England declined over time’ can be read here . Lecturer Dr Susan Oman has an exhibit on Understanding Well-being Data in the Festival of the Mind The exhibit is based on her current research on well-being data, recently published as a book, and includes her recently produced videos. You can view the exhibit here . Drs Sara Vannini, Efpraxia Zamani, Caitlin Bentley and Suvodeep Mazumdar have all successfully attained Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) funding for their research projects Lecturer Dr Sara Vannini and Senior Lecturer Dr Efpraxia Zamani have received funding for their work on digital poverty with the Sheffield Mayoral Combined A

Levels of COVID-19 research data sharing have remained low during the pandemic, and preprinting of research on the virus has been lower than two initiatives tried to ensure it would be. This is according to a new report that examines the effectiveness of initiatives taken by players in the research ecosystem to promote sharing of COVID-19 research by stepping up open science approaches. While the efforts of scientific publishers and the research community have speeded up publication times for COVID-19 research, and made much of it freely accessible, more effort is needed if society is to truly benefit from open science, the Scholarly Communication in Times of Crisis: The response of the scholarly communication system to the COVID-19 pandemic report says.   The sharing of the SARS-CoV-2 genome is seen as the poster child for open science, and the pandemic held up as a turning point for open science. Yet the report finds this has only partly been realised. It makes a series of key recom