January 8, 2018

In December, the Drexel University Libraries welcomed Yury Gogotsi, PhD, Distinguished University and Charles T. and Ruth M. Bach Professor, as the guest speaker at the first ScholarSip event of the 2017/2018 academic year.

This year, the theme for the ScholarSip event series is Research Matters: Connecting Drexel to Global Scholarship. During each quarterly event, a distinguished Drexel professor will address this theme by reflecting on how the dissemination of research through publication is critical to the development of knowledge in a particular field.

To kick off the fall event – the 19^th held since the series was launched in 2011 – guests enjoyed light refreshments while Danuta A. Nitecki, Dean of Libraries, shared her thoughts on the important role research plays within academic institutions.

“We want to use this year’s event series to raise the conversation about the issues and relationships between scholarship and what it means to provide access to research,” she said at the start of the event. “It is part of a research university’s core responsibility to generate scholarly outputs and to position those outputs well within the global communications landscape. The more accessible research is, the more likely it is to be used and cited by other researchers, which enhances researchers’ reputations – and that of their institution – over time.”

Following Dean Nitecki’s remarks, Professor Gogotsi took the floor to reflect on his own experiences and the changes he’s witnessed in the world of research and scholarly communications over the last few decades.  

For example, technology – particularly advancements in telecommunications – has dramatically changed the scholarly research landscape. Today, Gogotsi explained, collaboration is integral to generating successful and meaningful research that benefits society. 

“I publish many articles, but I don’t do it alone. I collaborate with students and post docs and colleagues from around the world. This is an important change from 30, 40, 50 years ago. People used to have one PhD advisor with one student write a scholarly paper. Now, so many published papers have 10 or more authors, and that’s how people publish dozens of papers in a year, because everyone contributes. We do things that are interdisciplinary now too. It’s all about team work – research teams work on these projects, and then we can [publish] more and so help more.”

Gogotsi also touched on the importance of disseminating research, an issue that is relevant to not just researchers, but also universities and their libraries. Reiterating Dean Nitecki’s opening comments, Gogotsi agreed that capturing and sharing research outputs so others can benefit from the research is not easy, but it is important, and it can’t be done alone.  

“[As researchers], we produce knowledge, and then we publish it. But one of the challenges we all face is sharing and presenting that new knowledge in a clear way so everyone can understand it and benefit from it,” he said. “Our libraries and universities do a great job explaining the work of science and engineering for our society and the Drexel community – for progress; for prosperity.”

To view the event recording online, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS8ZHc0oCH0

About ScholarSip
ScholarSip is an annual event series hosted by the Drexel University Libraries that seeks to nurture Drexel’s intellectual life and cross-campus community through informal gatherings where faculty and professional staff exchange ideas sparked by greater awareness of interdisciplinary research. Each event includes social time to build acquaintances and a short “food for thought” presentation from a member of the Drexel community to stimulate conversation.