Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Using Ai-Assisted Programming To Develop Research Services Tools For Research Impact, Open Access Publishing & More, Gary Lee

FORCE 2026

Academic libraries play a vital role in scholarly communication, As research practices become more data‑driven and interdisciplinary, librarians can help scholars by creating and sharing flexible, customizable tools that align with local workflows and user needs.

AI Assisted programming (sometimes called “vibe coding”) offers a new way for librarians without extensive programming knowledge to develop such tools . This allows previously non-expert librarians to go from conceptual goals to working applications by rapid prototyping, experimentation, and roll-out, resulting in service innovation and improvement.

This presentation illustrates how librarians at HKUST have explored vibe coding with tools like GROK, POE, and …

Mapping The Landscape Of The Open Access Journals Using Open Journal Systems From Indonesian University Publishers, Maria Lamury

FORCE 2026

This study maps the landscape of open access (OA) journals published by Indonesian university publishers using the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform, highlighting collaborative efforts in advancing scholarly communication across institutional and disciplinary boundaries. Using the latest data from the OJS Beacon dataset and journal websites, this analysis examines the distribution, characteristics, and visibility of open access journals managed by 1,529 university publishers, representing a sample of 15,293 university publishers in Indonesia. Many research stated that Indonesia hosts the world’s largest number of OJS-based journals, with more than half adopting the Gold OA model. This balance reflects both the growing …

[2026 Honorable Mention] Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, Daylyn R. Reese

Ethnic Studies Research Paper Award

This research offers unique insights into the creation and development of the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary (N.M.S.) with a focus on indigenous populations’ roles (primarily Chumash and Costanoan). In this episode, I analyze what makes this NMS different from every NMS precluding it, how it recognizes a new goal in conservation (thrivability), and the areas in which improvements still must be made to authentically include and honor indigenous voices.

Political Power In The Digital Shadows: The Surveillance State And Far-Right Party Strength In Central And Eastern Europe, Abby K. Finley

Political Science Honors Projects

The recent rise of far-right leaders, from Donald Trump challenging democratic institutions in the United States to Viktor Orbán's fifteen-year autocratic reign in Hungary, has led me to my main research question: Why are some far-right parties stronger than others? Conducting process tracing analysis of Hungarian, Polish, Slovak, and Czech far-right politics from 2005 to 2025, I argue that far-right parties are stronger when they utilize the surveillance state to limit democratic institutions and actors. My findings clarify how far-right parties use the surveillance state and other tactics to maintain power within their nation.

Archiving In Advance Of Mission Completion, Molly Stothert-Maurer

Journal of Western Archives

This paper presents a detailed case study of the born-digital archiving efforts associated with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) Asteroid Sample Return Mission at the University of Arizona Libraries Special Collections. From the perspective of an archivist, the project exemplifies the integration of digital archiving into an active scientific mission, conducted in collaboration with multiple departments across the university. By preserving mission-critical content, including project management documents, social media interactions, and web content, this initiative serves as a model for resource light digital products utilizing batch descriptive techniques. The paper …

Enhancing Digital Literacy Programmes For Advanced Search Skills Of Adult Public Library Patrons, Santel Smit Ms., Nikiwe G. Momoti Dr

Urban Library Journal

Digital literacy enables individuals to confidently engage with electronic devices and digital resources. While many adults use these tools to search for information, some still lack the essential skills to do so effectively. This pragmatic paper investigates the basic digital literacy skills of adult patrons at Adriaanse Public Library in Cape Town. Framed by SCONUL Seven Pillars of Information Literacy through a Digital Literacy “lens”, we employed a sequential mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative pre- and post-tests with qualitative interviews among 30 purposively selected participants. Quantitative data was analyzed statistically while thematic analysis was used for qualitative data. The findings revealed …

Many Hands Make Light Work: Restoring Edu-Economical Debts For Black Males, Joyice Robinson Myers

VA Engage Journal

A college degree is closely linked to economic stability, yet only 20% of Black men in the United States hold a bachelor’s degree or higher. These disparities are not accidental; they are the cumulative result of systems that have systematically denied Black males equitable access to educational and economic opportunity across generations. This systematic review examines the compounding relationship among family structure, educational attainment, and economic standing for Black males, and considers what restoring that relationship could look like in practice. I integrate three theoretical frameworks—Education Debt (Ladson-Billings, 2006), African American Male Theory (Bush & Bush, 2013), and the R³ISE …

Policy Whiplash: Tariffs And Uncertainty Among Firms And Investors In 2025, Boau Lilly Shepherd

Economics Undergraduate Senior Theses

On April 2, 2025, President Donald Trump announced a series of reciprocal tariffs on U.S. trading partners, set to be implemented on April 9, 2025, a day he referred to as “Liberation Day”. Although these tariffs were paused almost immediately, they were subsequently renegotiated and revised throughout the summer of 2025. This paper finds evidence that Liberation Day caused a spike in uncertainty among firms and a spike in volatility among investors, while the subsequent summer revisions reduced uncertainty and volatility, despite tariff levels remaining substantially higher than those at the start of the year. These findings suggest that firms …

Individualism And Momentum Revisited: Evidence On The Persistence Of Cultural Drivers In Stock Market Returns, Hayley S. Sciubba

Economics Undergraduate Senior Theses

This paper reexamines the relationship between cultural differences and momentum strategy returns over the period March 2007 through March 2026, building on the Chui, Titman and Wei (2010) finding that higher individualism is associated with greater trading volume, volatility, and momentum profits. Cross-country cultural differences are measured using an individualism index developed by Minkov et al. (2017), which is related to overconfidence and self-attribution bias. Using monthly stock price data, I construct cleaned monthly returns and sort stocks into six-month momentum portfolios. Although many of the 41 countries common to the original and current samples have experienced changes in their …

Selective Contagion: Sovereign Credit Integration And Heterogeneous Shock Transmission In Emerging Equity And Derivative Markets, Fabiana Araujo Rincón

Economics Undergraduate Senior Theses

Contagion in Latin America is real but selective: the direction of spillover depends on whether a country is integrated more strongly into global or regional markets. Using a stacked event study across 90 manually identified shocks from 2001 to 2026, I estimate regional contagion and its determinants across credit, currency, equity, and derivative markets. Contagion travels through sovereign credit, not currency, and through economic, not political, shocks. Political shocks, despite their larger domestic impact, stay locally contained. The direction of spillover turns on shock origin: shocks from large, globally integrated economies depress their peers, while shocks from smaller, regionally focused …

Implied Variance Asymmetry As A Predictor Of Stock Returns Around Quarterly Earnings Dates, Matthew J. Sebastian

Economics Undergraduate Senior Theses

This paper investigates whether option-implied variance asymmetry, defined as the difference between upside and downside risk-neutral semivariances measured shortly before scheduled quarterly earnings announcements pre- dicts the cumulative abnormal return realized over the announcement win- dow. We find implied variance asymmetry positively and significantly pre- dicts announcement-window returns in S&P 500 companies: the high-minus- low quintile sort portfolio earns 45 basis points over a five-day window with a Fama-French four-factor alpha of 60 basis points, both statistically signif- icant. The results suggest a temporary break in market efficiency and are consistent with an informed-trading interpretation in which earnings specific information …

Unheard Voices: Language And Humanity In Memoirs Of Immigration From Latin America To The United States, Aj Setala

Honors Projects

At the time of writing this project, aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) raids and mass deportations are being carried out across the U.S. The need to recognize the humanity of those targeted grows with every deportation. In this project, I address the question - What does it mean to be human? - by considering how language impacts the ways in which others affirm or deny the humanity of immigrants. To do this, I examine the role language plays in memoirs of undocumented Latin American immigrants. My analysis is grounded in Gloria Anzaldúa’s borderlands theory and César Miguel R. Vega …

Blended Family Dynamics And Executive Functioning In Preschoolers: A Cross-Sectional Study, Kayla Butler

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Predictors And Outcomes Of Reading Intervention Success In Autistic Children: Memory And Brain Connectivity, Meagan Elizabeth Beckerson

ETDs from 2020-2029

Reading comprehension is a complex skill that relies on linguistic and cognitive abilities, including executive control processes. Creating a cohesive representation of text involves maintaining visual and verbal information in short term memory (STM) and using executive control skills to integrate information, apply it to questions, and draw inferences. Many autistic children demonstrate strong individual word reading (decoding) but poor comprehension, resulting in a discrepant reading profile. The role of STM and executive control—along with the underlying neural systems that support these processes—in reading comprehension and response to intervention has not been examined in autistic children with this profile. The …

Pieces Of The Pathway: A Qualitative Exploration Of Social Support For Individuals Navigating Houselessness, Desiree' Jane Duboise

Dissertations and Theses

Houselessness has long been an issue of pressing concern in the United States; and in Multnomah County, Oregon, approximately 10,526 people are experiencing houselessness. Social support has been identified as a critical factor in helping people navigate houselessness and will be explored in the current study. Specifically, the current study examines social support among populations with lived experience of houselessness as they navigate pathways through houselessness. The current study is situated within a broader study examining journeys through houselessness called the Pathways study, and it utilizes a subsample of individuals involved in the Pathways study. The Pathways study and the …

Emotion-Focused Teaching And Preschool Children's Social, Emotional, And Self-Regulatory Development, Brielle Emily Petit

Dissertations and Theses

Contributing to the literature on supportive mechanisms for children's development of social, emotional, and self-regulatory competencies, the current study examines the contributions of emotion-focused teaching in preschool classrooms. Emotion-focused teaching is a framework used within preschool classrooms that encompasses three domains of teaching that support children's development of emotion skills—how teachers display their own emotions or emotion-related behaviors and actions (modeling), the ways they respond to children's emotional expressions (responding), and how instruction is used to inform children about emotions and related processes (instructing). More frequent emotion-focused teaching has been shown to be a …

Modeling The Spread Of Competing Narratives In Multimodal Social Media Network, Mayor Inna Gurung

Theses and Dissertations

Social media has fundamentally transformed how narratives are produced, contested, and disseminated, enabling competing interpretations of the same event to spread rapidly across networked populations. Understanding how narratives gain traction over others in these environments is critical for addressing misinformation, supporting informed public discourse, and designing effective counter-messaging strategies. Yet existing research largely treats narrative propagation as a single-process phenomenon and focuses predominantly on textual data, overlooking both the competitive dynamics between opposing narratives and the growing role of visual symbolic communication in shaping how narratives are received. This dissertation addresses these gaps through a multi-platform, multimodal framework applied to …

Regimes Of Pain: Violence, Silence, And The Reproduction Of Power In Indonesia, Andi Achdian, Erna Ermawati Chotim

Jurnal Politik

This article examines political violence in Indonesia as a continuing mode of governance that extends beyond periods of open repression. Focusing on three historical episodes—the mass violence of 1965–1966, militarised rule in Aceh during the Military Operations Zone, and the racialised violence of May 1998—it argues that violence does not disappear after formal repression ends, but is reorganised within everyday life through bodily injury, social silence, fear, and learned endurance. To explain this process, the article develops the concept of regimes of pain, defined as forms of power that produce and normalise bodily suffering in order to sustain political order. …

The Relationships Between Adult Cyberbullying Victimization, Introversion, Extroversion, And Demographic Variables, Amber Paige Arrington

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Tel Shor: Jewelry, Dress And Cosmetic Articles From Three Persian Burials, Amir Golani, Eli Yannai

Qadum: Journal of Excavation Reports from Israel

The excavation northwest of Tel Shor exposed the partial remains of a Persian-period cemetery. Within the burial site were three intact tombs, two belonging to adult females and one to a child of undetermined sex. The burial goods include a rich corpus of jewelry, comprising earrings and finger rings, pendants, beads for necklaces and a few dress and cosmetic articles. The good state of preservation of the tombs allowed the funerary items to be studied in their archaeological context. Two of the tombs were exceptionally rich in finds, indicating the high social status of the deceased.

Tel Shor: The Glass Vessels, Tamar Winter

Qadum: Journal of Excavation Reports from Israel

Among the glass vessels from Tel Shor is a cast bowl adorned with beaded decoration, dated to the late Hellenistic period, which contributes to the currently meager data on the distribution of this quite rare type. A third-century CE bottle, unearthed alongside a Roman-period clay bottle, supports the attribution of the tomb in which they were found to the Roman period.

Tel Shor: Stamped Amphora Handles, Donald T. Ariel, Tania Panagou

Qadum: Journal of Excavation Reports from Israel

The excavation at Tel Shor yielded three closely dated stamped amphora handles: two Rhodian, dating to 158–137 BCE, and one Knidian, dating to the third quarter of the second century BCE.

Tel Shor: A Cemetery From The Persian Period And Finds From The Late Chalcolithic–Roman And Ottoman Periods In The Western Jezreel Valley / תל שור: בית קברות מהתקופה הפרסית וממצאים מהתקופות הכלקוליתית המאוחרת–הרומית והעות׳מאנית במערב עמק יזרעאל, Eli Yannai

Qadum: Journal of Excavation Reports from Israel

A salvage excavation c. 50 m northwest of Tel Shor uncovered a cemetery dating to the Persian period, as well as two Iron Age graves and one Roman-period grave that overlies a Persian-period cist grave. Pottery sherds dating from the late Chalcolithic period, the Early, Intermediate and Middle Bronze Ages and the Iron Age were also found, indicating settlement at the site from the fourth millennium BCE through the Persian period. Above the Persian-period cemetery stratum were a settlement surface and refuse heaps dating from the Hellenistic period. The Roman-period grave may indicate that the area continued to serve as …

Recognizing And Rewarding Peer Review: Rethinking Research Assessment For Openness, Fairness, And Global Equity, Tung Tung Chan, Bernd Pulverer, Johan Rooryck

FORCE 2026

The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) Working Group on Recognizing and Rewarding Peer Review has developed a comprehensive framework for reforming how scholarly review is valued within research careers. Our recommendations address a fundamental question: how can peer review, a critical yet often invisible scholarly contribution, be made visible, credited, and meaningfully integrated into research assessment?

Developed through a collaborative effort across 16 European organisations, the Working Group’s outputs offer targeted recommendations for four key stakeholder groups: research performing organizations, research funding bodies, publishers and editors, and individual researchers. These recommendations are structured across five key dimensions:
(1) Openness: …

Open Research Information - How To Support Publishers To Make Metadata Openly Availble, Bianca Kramer

FORCE 2026

Research information, or scholarly metadata, is important for decision making around strategic priorities, distribution of resources, and evaluation of researchers and institutions. It is also used to assess the effect of policies, and to find and assess research results. Open research information (free to access and free to (re)use) is increasingly valued for fair assessment and equitable decision making, and is also important in digital sovereignty.


The Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information calls on organizations performing, funding and evaluating research to make openness of research information the default, work with services and systems that support and enable open research …

Mapping Themes, Aligning Strategies: Institutional Research Analytics With Bertopic And Genai, Danping Dong, Pin Pin Yeo

FORCE 2026

Libraries and research offices are increasingly tasked with making sense of unstructured institutional data, such as research publications and strategic documents. These insights help inform decision-making and leadership planning. This session shares how SMU Libraries leveraged BERTopic, an open-source topic modeling tool, together with generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude, to extract meaningful insights from faculty publications and support institutional sensemaking.

In one use case, we applied BERTopic to university-authored publications to surface thematic groupings related to research about Asia. Generative AI tools were then used to summarize each cluster into human-readable narratives, enabling research landscape mapping, identification …

Sharing The Load: Building An Open Research Information Collective, Cameron Neylon, Bianca Kramer

FORCE 2026

The rise of open research information resources is transforming the way we track, analyse and study research systems. Increasingly sources like OpenAIRE, OpenAlex, Crossref, DataCite, ORCID, ROR and others are being used as the basis for making decisions, designing interventions

and understanding progress. This operates both at the small scale, where access to data and evidence is easier than it has ever been, to the very large scale analysis of whole systems. Modern open data sources provide access, including access to full copies of the data, but there has been less focus on providing this access in a way that …

Researcher Impact Framework: Building Audience-Focused Evidence-Based Impact Narratives, Giovanna Lima

FORCE 2026

While a wealth of resources has been developed to help researchers plan for and communicate their projects anticipated impact when applying for funding proposals, not many resources have been developed for researchers when communicating their own impact as researchers at an individual level.
To support researchers in doing this Dr Giovanna Lima and Sarah Bowman have developed the Researcher Impact Framework (RIF). This framework helps to better share a broad spectrum of the researcher’s achievements in generation of knowledge, development of individuals, forming collaborations, supporting the research community and broader society.
The RIF provides a structure for crafting audience-focused evidence-based …

A Developing Critical Lens Based On Distinct Scholar Experiences In Scholarly Communication, Angel Y. Ford

FORCE 2026

Scholars around the world, even from core research locations, express frustration at the processes of sharing and disseminating research. Scholars discuss the confusing or conflicting reviews they receive, and the astronomical fees to publish in Open Access (OA) journals, but when these global factors are combined with regional factors for scholars in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the view of the scholarly communication landscape can quickly go from challenging, to treacherous and at times a career stunting topography with a variety of obstacles and barriers. The terrain scholars cross to obtain, produce, and disseminate research outputs looks different based on …

Opening Keynote: From 'Publish Or Perish' To Purpose And People: Going Together On Research Assessment Reform, Lily Kong

FORCE 2026

Universities hold a unique position as the brain trusts of society — creating knowledge, countering misinformation, and catalysing innovation that drives societal progress. Yet the cultures of "publish or perish" and competitive rankings have led academia to focus on certain metrics, and in so doing, chase misplaced goals. This has resulted in some misdirections: misconduct, data manipulation, mistreatment of early-career researchers, and a troubling misalignment between what scholars pursue and what society needs. How can we begin to rethink research impact beyond standard metrics to embrace both academic excellence and societal contribution? In the spirit of FORCE 2026's theme, Prof …