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interdisciplinary research

FeaturedTranslation
Sujin Song

Why Is Design Ethics Still Stuck?

Designers shape far more than products or interfaces. They shape how people act, decide, and relate to the world around them. From recommendation systems to account settings, design quietly guides everyday behavior. Because of this, design is never neutral. It always carries ethical consequences, whether designers intend them or not. This article reworks selected ideas from the author’s research, Rethinking Design Ethics from the Perspective of Spinoza, for a general audience.

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Original
Ponego Letswalo

The AI-Powered Third-Party Risk Manager: Continuously Monitoring Vendor Security Posture

Modern enterprises are increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks through their third-party vendors, with over half of all data breaches now originating in the supply chain. Traditional third-party risk management (TPRM), reliant on manual, point-in-time assessments like annual questionnaires, is ill-equipped to address the dynamic nature of cyber threats. This paper proposes an AI-powered TPRM framework as a transformative solution. By enabling continuous, real-time monitoring of vendor security posture – AI streamlines risk assessments using intelligent questionnaires and provides dynamic, multi-factor risk scoring to prioritize critical vendors. The integration of AI into TPRM represents a paradigm shift from a static, reactive process to a dynamic, intelligent, and continuous safeguard, essential for security in an interconnected digital ecosystem.

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FeaturedTranslation
Rachel Williams

Training Librarians for Crisis Communication: Why Virtual Reality Might Be the Answer

When you step into your local public library on a typical afternoon, you might see children and their families gathered for story time, a retiree reading in a corner, or a student hunched over a laptop. But, just as often, librarians encounter a very different scene: a patron in crisis. Public libraries have increasingly become places where people facing houselessness, mental health crises, or other personal struggles turn for help.

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EducationFeatured
Jasmine Wemigwans

Looping the Red Thread of Information: Painting a Path of Indigenous Knowledge

As a mixed Ojibwe woman from Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory, I carry both pride and a sense of responsibility in how I represent my identity through academic and artistic spaces. I recently graduated from the Master of Information in Library Science Program at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information. My goal is to become a full-time librarian who integrates Indigenous knowledge into library and information systems. I am excited to share my painting with the Information Matters community as one way to contribute an Indigenous perspective in our shared field. This acrylic self-portrait, funded by an Ontario Arts Council bursary, reflects the concept of the “Red Thread of Information” (Bates,1999) and visually embeds my Anishnaabe worldview. The piece invites viewers to reflect on how identity and information phenomenon can be fused together into creative expressions.

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FeaturedTranslation
Jiawei Xu

Unlocking the Secrets of Interdisciplinary Research: How Blending Fields Shapes Scientific Impact

Science thrives on innovation, and interdisciplinary research (IDR)—which merges ideas from multiple fields—is often celebrated as a driver of breakthroughs. Nonetheless, a landmark study analyzing over a million journal articles reveals that the benefits of IDR are far from universal. Success hinges on the academic discipline, the effort required to weave ideas together, and how knowledge spreads through the scientific community over time.

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FeaturedOriginal
Quinn Remington

Resource “Accessibility” Is More Than Just “Posting It Online”

Not everyone has the time and money to book a flight across the world to look at an artifact in person, so how do researchers with limited funding access one-of-a-kind resources? The Internet is a godsend for collaboration, letting us share photos of ancient pottery fragments, 3D scans of mummified tissue, and create virtual tours of ancient Egyptian tombs. However, sharing becomes a little more complicated when that artifact contains thousands of individual pages in 61 diaries, handwritten by a steamship clerk living in nineteenth-century Iraq. The Svoboda Diaries Project (SDP) focuses on exactly that. For nearly two decades, this project has used new and exciting digital preservation methods and extensive collaboration to make these diaries accessible to everyone.

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FeaturedTranslation
Ning Zhang

Are Female Early-Career Scientists Less Likely to Conduct Interdisciplinary Research?

In recent decades, numerous countries have actively promoted and encouraged interdisciplinary research (hereafter IDR), as it is believed to promote scientific development and innovation. Recent studies have shown that interdisciplinary publications tend to attract more citations and gain higher societal visibility, thus potentially contributing to long-term career development. However, pursuing IDR requires significant time and effort to integrate knowledge from diverse disciplines, and such research may face difficulties in terms of publication and recognition compared to more traditional research. The high risk and uncertainty associated with IDR discouraged many ECSs that are facing “up or out” pressure.

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