The University of Massachusetts Amherst has received a $250,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to develop an online digital library that contains research findings and other materials about the ethical and responsible conduct of research. The grant, from the NSF’s Office of Integrative Research, funds a beta, or test site.
The online depository at UMass Amherst will contain written, video, audio and other material that can be used to teach responsible and ethical research practices to undergraduate and graduate students, along with postdoctoral researchers.
The UMass Amherst project will be directed by Jane Fountain, professor of political science and public policy and director of the National Center for Digital Government and Science, Technology and Society (STS) Initiative, and Marilyn Billings, scholarly communication and special initiatives librarian at the W.E.B. Du Bois Library.
The project is being developed in response to a new federal law and will direct faculty from a range of academic disciplines to appropriate resources for their classrooms, graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. The availability of a wide range of teaching materials and the ability to search for specific information is a key element of the project.
Fountain says, “The ability to freely, quickly and easily locate and review materials for use in training future generations of scientists and engineers is invaluable. A beta site that compiles existing materials with the objective of making them as freely and easily accessible and useful as possible, while incorporating Web 2.0 and social networking tools that might enhance and expand usability, is the starting point for a national digital library for the 21st century.” The materials collected by UMass researchers will provide a robust, up-to-date collection of multimedia, multi-purpose materials upon which a permanent site may be based, she says.
The federal law that created the project is called the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science (COMPETES) Act.