Purpose – Multiple disciplines such as finance, management and economics have contributed to governance research over time. However, the full intellectual structure of the governance “field” including the exchange of knowledge across disciplines and the large variety of governance topics remains to be uncovered. To appreciate the breadth of corporate governance research, it is necessary to understand the disciplinary sources from which the research stems. This manuscript focuses on the interdisciplinary underpinnings of corporate governance research.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper employs bibliometric analysis to trace the evolution of corporate governance using articles included in the ISI Web of Science database between 1990 and 2015. Journals included in these categories encompass a full range of business disciplines and provide evidence of the multi-disciplinary nature of corporate governance. It also uncovers the topics treated by disciplines under the governance umbrella using a machine learning method called latent Dirichtlet allocation (LDA).

Findings – Corporate governance research deals with a number of strategy-related topics. Unlike strategy topics that reside in a single discipline, corporate governance crosses disciplinary boundaries and includes contributions from accounting, finance, economics, law and management. Our analysis shows that over 80% of corporate governance articles come from outside the field of management. Our LDA solution indicates that the major topics in governance research include corporate governance theory, control of family firms, executive compensation and audit committees.

Originality/value – The results illustrate that corporate governance is far more interdisciplinary than previously thought. This is an important insight for corporate governance academics and may lead to collaborative research. More importantly, this research illustrates the usefulness of LDA for investigating interdisciplinary fields. This method is easily transferable to other interdisciplinary fields and it provides a powerful alternative to existing bibliometric methods. We suggest a number of topic areas within library and information science where this method may be applied, including collection development, support for interdisciplinary faculty and basic research into emerging interdisciplinary areas.

Celine and Julie Go Boating has enough material packed into its four hours to fuel any number of critical monographs and probably a few dissertations as well.* It’s part of the movie’s charm, though, and a self-referential nod to its own exploration of the qualities of magic, that it never feels heavy, stuffed, dense, or impenetrable. For almost 40 years the movie has remained open-armed, lighthearted, and glad to have you watch it. It’s even saved a seat for you on the sofa (literally).

Understanding faculty perceptions about OER is a vital step for those hoping to support the growth of OER initiatives at higher education institutions. Faculty members’ perceptions of OER often influence their interest in adopting open educational practices and their willingness to seek out support from campus staff. To explore how faculty members across their four institutions feel about open education, the authors developed a survey to discover faculty members’ (1) perspectives on, (2) barriers to, and (3) beliefs about OER use. The survey corroborated past research findings that faculty often have difficulty finding time to locate and evaluate OER, and that there is a need among the academic community to better compensate educators for their work developing open content. More notably, the authors discovered that the faculty who are aware of library support services and other institutional OER initiatives are more engaged in open educational practices and willing to explore OER, regardless of their prior experience with open education.

The field of library assessment continues to grow. The annual Library Assessment Trends Report provides a brief synopsis of the more important trends in library assessment. It is hoped these brief reports will facilitate the Dean of the Library’s understanding of assessment trends. These reports provide information that supports data driven decisions. Additionally, the reports are an outreach method that supports a greater institutional understanding of library assessment. Library assessment supports strategic planning, improved processes, and a greater understanding of our users’ needs.

Critical leadership studies (CLS) is a recent branch of leadership studies that examines assumptions and issues with mainstream approaches to leadership development and research. This paper reviews three areas of criticism from CLS. First, leadership is a poorly defined and ambiguous concept. Second, mainstream approaches to leadership can be harmful to followers. And third, there is little evidence demonstrating that leadership development is effective. Next, a recent attempt at library leadership development, the Nexus Project, is examined against the three CLS leadership criticisms. And finally, suggestions from the CLS literature are offered on how to pursue organizational improvements outside the context and shadow of leadership.

Open Access and Open Education both stress the importance of making knowledge available for individuals around the world, regardless of wealth or status. These are not wholly separate ideas, nor are they incompatible practices.

A primary motivation for using Open Educational Resources (OERs) is to increase access by reducing students’ financial burden. While this was a motivating factor in this study, the authors also were interested in understanding OER’s impact on student learning. Therefore, this study describes the adaption process for an OER textbook used in a junior-level undergraduate electricity course and evaluates this OER’s effectiveness to increase student access and improve learning over the baseline textbook. A quasi-experimental, non-equivalent design collected exam scores, and self-reported survey responses from n=144 students in a comparison (non-adapted OER; n=83) and treatment (adapted OER; n=61) group was used. Based on Student’s t, Kolmogorov Smirnov, and Chi-square (χ2) tests, the adapted OER was effective at improving access and learning while also saving enrolled students an average of $8,000 per year, collectively. A brief background of OER databases, materials, and methods used to develop the OER and the intellectual contribution of the newly adapted OER, and lessons learned are included in the study.

The Iowa State University Library is active in national and international efforts to transform scholarly communications and, in the process, to advance our own land-grant mission to share the knowledge Iowa State creates with Iowa and the rest of the world. Our library is recognized for its work around transformative open access agreements that enable our researchers’ articles to be published openly. We have invested heavily in green open access as well as in staffing and infrastructure to support the sharing of research data. And we work closely with our campus partners to ensure Iowa State faculty have access to the tools and support services they need to produce and disseminate research of the highest quality and with the highest impact...

Open Access and Open Education both stress the importance of making knowledge available for individuals around the world, regardless of wealth or status.

Writing a report, thesis, dissertation, journal article, or research proposal can be both intimidating and time consuming. We encourage all scientific writers to consider using a system called LATEX to create written documents because it can make large projects more manageable and increase your efficiency. With the advent on online services, using LATEX is easier than ever before. Online tools have made it possible for all scientists (regardless of computer savviness) to take advantage of its many features. In short, online LATEX could be a game-changer for you! In this article we explain what LATEX is and describe some of its many features that you can use to become a more productive writer