Blog

By Erik Sonne & Liselotte Brandstrup

More than half of the world’s population use social media. In line with the increasing popularity, interest in analyzing social media data has also grown. Do you work with social media data? Then keep reading.

What is social media analytics?
Social media analytics is a subset of data analytics that studies social media users' actions, clicks, and responses with a view to gauging interest, spotting trends, and improving offerings.

Key techniques in social media analytics include social listening, cluster analysis, data visualisation, behavioural analysis, and segmentation. Key measurements in social media analytics include monitoring followers, reviewing post clicks, and tracking page likes, impressions, page views, post reaches, engagements, actions on the page, and page previews.
 

Try out the Social Media Analytics tool
Social Media Analytics is a brand new social media tool from GlobalData Explorer, an important market research database available from CBS Library. You will find Social Media Analytics embedded within the GlobalData Explorer platform (Click Databases in the top menu).  

The Social Media Analytics tool allows you to analyse in depth all critical trends that are emerging on social media platforms around current affairs, industry events, companies, sectors, and more. Social Media Analytics covers X (formerly known as Twitter) and Reddit. You can filter your search results by timeline, geography, contributor type, company, sector, source (Twitter and Reddit), sentiment, and hashtag.

Go to Global Data Explorer

Check out the Social Media Analytics tool

By Mette Bechmann & Liv Bjerge Laursen

Are you an R or Python user? And are you planning to undertake bibliographic work? Whether you are conducting literature reviews or citation analyses, or exploring emerging trends, accessing bibliographic databases via APIs can prove very valuable.

APIs are available from many bibliographic databases and serve as digital bridges between a researcher and the data. Some APIs require a subscription for the bibliographic database, others do not.

For example, a subscription-based, classic bibliographic database like Scopus offers a range of APIs, many of which are designed for research use. The same does OpenAlex, which is a subscription-free, open-source bibliographic database. Elsevier and other academic publishers offer APIs as well.

The benefits of using an API compared to traditional extraction methods include access to larger volumes of metadata than would be available from web interfaces. With an API, researchers can also tailor their queries to specific research needs, in much the same way as an advanced query in Scopus.

You can filter results by publication date, author, keywords, and more, to make sure that you find precisely what you are looking for.
Below you will find guides to and general information about APIs from Elsevier and OpenAlex:

Elsevier Developer Portal (Scopus and ScienceDirect)
OpenAlex

Written by Liv Bjerge Laursen & Mette Bechmann

CBS Library has always been standing by to help researchers with the retrieval of literature, and now we have upgraded our service to include assistance with reviews too. 
A dedicated CBS Library review team now stands ready to help in the various stages of the review process with the following:

• Choice of review type (literature review, systematic review, meta-analysis….)
• Selection of bibliographic databases to search
• Search string organization and validation  
• Adaptation of search strings across databases  
• Implementation, management, and safeguarding of protocols  
• Introduction to software to support the review process  
• Preparation of data extraction from retrieved documents  
• Review of existing protocol/process  

The nature and extent of our contribution depend on the specific context and are of course coordinated in close dialogue with you.

We believe that this service is relevant for research projects and review papers, but perhaps you can think of other ways to use it too.
We will be happy to receive any inputs from you.

Please contact the Review Team for a talk about your project or visit CBSshare for more details.

By Mette Bechmann

This is the season for thesis writing – and the most popular titles in the methods section of the library are just flying off the shelves. However, a quick remedy for empty shelves is close at hand.
The SAGE Research Methods database not only contains lots of content on methodology, but it also provides features that can help students navigate.

 SRM comprises popular titles like Brinkmann & Kvale (2018) Doing Interviews, Flyvbjergs (2004) discussion of misunderstandings about case-study research, and much more.

Use the Methods Map … 
What strings everything together in SRM is a tool called Methods Map that allows for both purposeful and serendipitous exploration of broad or narrow manifestations of various methodological approaches, such as discourse analysis (click the link for an example).

When you are satisfied that you have found something useful, you can search the database for this topic by a click of your mouse.

… or other access points
If you search for a specific method, you can choose from a whole parade of content types in the right-hand menu, including Foundation Entries and Encyclopedia. The Foundation section provides definitions, short introductions, and outlines important trends and schools of thought, as well as core contributors.

So, if your students ever complain that they cannot get hold of relevant literature on methodology, please refer them to SRM on the library website. 

Written by Mareike Buss

What do you do, if you want to publish your research data? CBS does not have a research data repository of our own, but you have other options. 
At the moment, CBS recommends using Zenodo or Harvard Dataverse as trusted repositories. A third option is the Danish National Archives (Rigsarkivet).

In this article, you will learn more about Zenodo. Harvard Dataverse and the Danish National Archives will be discussed in future newsletters from the library.

Zenodo is developed and operated by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and supported by OpenAIRE, the Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe. Data published on Zenodo is stored safely at CERN in multiple online and offline copies. The data can be linked to both research grants and publications, thereby supporting automatic reporting, e.g. for projects funded by the European Commission. It is possible to publish relatively large data sets (up to 50 GB per record; max 100 files).

In addition to data sets, other types of research outputs can be uploaded and shared on Zenodo, including publications, posters, presentations, software, etc. Use of Zenodo is free of charge.

Zenodo supports FAIR data publishing, i.e. it helps you make your data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.
Zenodo makes data findable and citable by assigning a DOI, a Digital Object Identifier, to all published data sets – and it also allows for the publication of multiple versions.
Zenodo makes data accessible and reusable by attaching a machine-readable data license that specifies the terms of data access and re-use.
Zenodo supports data interoperability by publishing metadata in compliance with widely recognized metadata standards such as DataCite’s metadata schema.

Learn more about FAIR data publishing at howtoFAIR.dk.

Recent examples of CBS-related data sets or reports published on Zenodo include:

• Seabrooke, Leonard, Tsingou, Eleni, & Willers, Johann Ole. (2018). EU Demographic Change Experts (Version 1) [Data set]. Zenodo.
• Hasselbalch, Jacob A. (2018). Questions in European Parliament on Brain Drain (Version 1) [Data set]. Zenodo. 
• Wildgaard, Lorna, Vlachos, Evgenios, Nondal, Lars, Larsen, Asger Væring, & Svendsen, Michael. (2020). National Coordination of Data Steward Education in Denmark: Final report to the National Forum for Research Data Management (DM Forum) (Version 1). Zenodo.

If you are curious to know more, please get in touch with Mareike Buss.

Written by Joshua Kragh Bruhn

A pilot of a what will be a mandatory online course in academic integrity for all new students to CBS was launched in Canvas earlier this week.

The purpose of the course is to ensure a basic and shared understanding in all CBS students, regardless of specialization, of key academic integrity issues and not least of how to avoid them to begin with.

The course is a collaboration between the Dean´s office, the student administration, the legal team, Teaching & Learning, and the library, and it discusses, through videos and prose, some of the main issues confronting students when they embark on their new life in academia, amongst these plagiarism and self-plagiarism.

In this very first iteration, students are invited to engage with the course on a voluntary basis, as at this stage we are mostly curious to find out what students think about the contents, the setup, etc.

New guide available
As part of the initiative, a brand new guide on how to work with integrity as a CBS student has been released to give more seasoned students a chance to brush up on their academic integrity skills as well. This guide is far more comprehensive than the course and includes, apart from plagiarism in its various manifestations, contributions on copyright and GDPR, bias in research, falsification and fabrication of data, and much more. 

We hope that this guide will help relevant stakeholders at CBS align their understanding of the issues in order that the message conveyed to students is always correct and consistent.

As lecturers, you can use the guide as a point of reference for students who are struggling with basic academic skills, as a chance to brush up on CBS guidelines and regulations, and as a segway to classroom discussions about what is required to perform with integrity, at CBS and in academia generally. 

If you have any questions, please reach out to Joshua Kragh Bruhn

Written by Mareike Buss

Research data should be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, in short: FAIR. This is the gist of the “FAIR Guiding Principles for Scientific Data Management and Stewardship”.

Even though the acronym FAIR sounds catchy, the FAIR principles are quite technical and tricky, once you start looking at the details.
The new educational website www.howtoFAIR.dk, brought to you by the Danish National Forum for Data Management, gives you a practical introduction to the FAIR principles by showing you how to make your research data (more) FAIR.

The website takes you on a deep dive into the subject matter of FAIR research data. Over the course of about two hours, you will be guided through the steps you can take before, during, and after your research project to help you produce FAIR research data.

In short video clips, you will meet researchers from Engineering, Health Sciences, Humanities, and Social Sciences, who demonstrate how they have made their data FAIR. You will find recommendations, guidelines, and examples for quantitative, qualitative, and sensitive research data.

Curious?
Take a look at the website trailer

Already know everything there is to know about FAIR?
Test yourself with the FAIR quiz

If you have any questions, please contact Mareike Buss