1:30pm – 201 Gilmore Hall

Council Members present:

Kellie Bodeker, John Doershuk, Carin Green, Erin Irish, Robert Kirby, Yasar Onel, Cheryl Reardon, Catherin Ringen, Paul Romitti, John Rosazza, Neil Segal, Alberto Segre, Linda Snetselaar and Paul Soderdahl.

Guests:

Interim Provost Butler and Rich Hichwa

Agenda Item 1:  Meeting with Interim Provost Butler

The subcommittee chairs provided a summary of their subcommittee work and goals.

Interim Provost Butler thanked members for serving on the Research Council and reiterated how important research is to a university and specifically to UI.

Regarding the Authorship Guidelines Subcommittee: He is currently serving on the Elsevier Academic Executives Advisory Board, with members from the US, Europe and Asia.  Publishers are also struggling with authorship issues.  Only 4% of publications have a single author and recently a record was set with the CERN, Large Hadron Collider (LCH) publication, which has approximately 3,000 authors.  There have been discussions regarding databases that universities have, with information compiled from CVs, and the Office of the Provost and the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) have discussed ways of organizing the University’s authorship/publication information. 

Regarding the Subcommittee on Enhancing Undergrad Research:  Undergrad research has been included in the strategic planning process and budgetary process.  They are thinking in terms of where undergrad research is not common and how to make it more customary.  Work is being done on the next Capital Campaign document and the undergrad research message will be included in that.

Regarding the Centers and Institutes Subcommittee:  There seems to be a lot of loose ends regarding centers and institutes at the University and it’s good that the Research Council, by way of this subcommittee, is investigating.  He reminded the subcommittee to look at policies regarding faculty affiliations with centers and institutions as well. 

There is a very good working relationship between the Office of the Provost and the OVPR. They communicate well, meet regularly and are looking ahead regarding issues. Currently the Office of the Provost and OVPR are working together with the UI Foundation with regard to funding for the Obermann Center. Cluster Hires are going well, with three underway at different stages; 1) water sustainability 2) aging and, 3) digital pubic humanities.  They’ve had good/relevant input from the university community on these cluster hires.

Agenda Item 2: Approval of November 19th Meeting Minutes

Carin Green moved to approve the minutes from the November 19th meeting, seconded by Erin Irish. The minutes were approved.

Agenda Item 3: Publication Waiver Subcommittee Update

There was a recent request for publication waiver from the Department of Computer Science. The subcommittee recommended that the request be denied, because the contractor wouldn’t negotiate on the restrictive language. There was a training session held December 1st for subcommittee members.

Centers and Institutes Subcommittee report

The subcommittee is developing a white paper. The Dean of the College of Public Health was previously director of the Institute for Health Research and Policy at UIC, where they have a white paper on Centers and Institutes. The subcommittee will review that white paper and will also check if ISU has a white paper. Their goal is to review these white papers by the next meeting.

Authorship Guidelines Subcommittee report

The subcommittee had a draft prepared before today’s breakout session and the majority of that survived. They are fine-tuning the attribution of authorship and authorship role.

Enhancing Undergraduate Research Subcommittee report

The subcommittee has finalized a survey for undergrads. Questions are both demographic and queries regarding research experience. They will begin work on the faculty survey next.

Agenda Item 4: Next Meeting Date and Time

After polling for the best day/time next semester for Research Council meetings, it looks like Mondays work for most. Sue will send another query to find which Monday of the month and time will be best.

The meeting adjourned at 3:00 p.m.