The Scout Report -- Volume 24, Number 41

The peer review process is an essential part of publishing high-quality academic research, but it can be a time-consuming, thankless task, which often slows publication. One organization trying to change this is Publons, a company which "turn[s] peer review into a measurable indicator of a researcher's expertise and contributions to their field" as part of their mission to "speed up research by harnessing the power of peer review." Here, academic researchers can create a free profile and "import, verify, and store a record of every peer review [they] perform and every manuscript [they] handle as an editor, for any journal in the world, in full compliance with all editorial policies." Interested visitors can browse the more than 400,000 participating researchers as well as an extensive FAQ section detailing how Publons works for reviewers, editors, and publishers. Early-career researchers may want to check out Publons Academy, a free online course found under the actions tab. Publons was founded in 2012 in New Zealand by physicist Andrew Preston and social scientist Daniel Johnston. In 2017 it was acquired by Clarivate Analytics, the parent company of Web of Science, and that same year Publons won the ALPSP Innovation in Publishing Award. [JDC]

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Launched in October 2018, the Opportunity Atlas answers the question "Which neighborhoods in America offer children the best chance to rise out of poverty?" by using "anonymous data following 20 million Americans from childhood to their mid-30s." The result is a fascinating map showing the average adulthood outcomes of people born between 1978-1983 according to the census tract where they grew up. Visitors can explore the map by zooming into a particular place and selecting the outcome (e.g. household income) and demographics (e.g. parent income) they are interested in. They can also view several interactive stories (identified on the map by a book icon) that provide a tour through some of the insights the Opportunity Atlas offers. The Opportunity Atlas has several features that may be of interest to researchers and educators, including the ability to download raw data, save or link to specific map views, compare two different demographics, and import and overlay your own data. This resource provides tutorials, user guides, and detailed explanations of their methodology. The Opportunity Atlas is a collaboration between researchers at the US Census Bureau and Opportunity Insights (formerly the Equality of Opportunity Project), a research and policy group at Harvard University. [JDC]

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STEM educators and readers interested in robotics may appreciate RoboticsCourseWare.org, an open-access educational resource created "to facilitate the implementation of new robotics courses or the improvement of existing courses." Here, visitors will find a large collection of free teaching resources intended for use at the university level. As of this writing, these include downloadable compressed files for nine full courses, such as "Introduction to Robotics" courses contributed by Harvard University electrical engineering professor Robert Wood. The materials for this course include PowerPoint lectures, handouts, assignments with solutions, labs, MatLab files, a final project, and a final exam. RoboticsCourseWare.org also has several shorter offerings comprised of PowerPoints for individual lectures, such as "Robot Architectures," contributed by Josep Amat and Alicia Casals of the Technical University of Catalonia. Readers interested in additional resources may want to check out the links section for a number of other robotics sites and materials. RoboticsCourseWare.org was founded and developed in 2007 by Professors Aaron M. Dollar of Yale University, Daniela Rus of MIT, and Paolo Fiorini of the University of Verona. [JDC]

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Researchers and general audiences alike may be interested in the UNHCR Population Statistics Database. Here, readers can explore data on the United Nations Refugee Agency's persons of concern dating back to 1951 with the most recent data (as of this writing) being from 2017. The UNHCR classifies its persons of concern as refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced persons (IDPs), returned refugees, returned IDPs, stateless persons, and others of concern, with definitions of each group available on the database homepage. One of the main features of the database is an interactive world map where visitors can get a visual sense of the current global distribution of persons of concern by country and type. The database also enables more in-depth explorations of specific populations in a chosen year by providing demographic breakdowns by age and gender (available for data starting in 2000), "information about asylum applications in a given year and the progress of asylum-seekers through the refugee status determination process," and more. Each page of the database allows users to download their selected data as a CSV file for further analysis. [JDC]

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For post-secondary science educators, the Public Library of Science (PLOS) offers this blog dedicated to "scientific ideas, observations, methods, and speculations, both old and new." This blog is currently headed (and primarily authored) by Mike Klymkowsky, a biology professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. In one recent post, Klymkowsky reflects on the history of the concept of genes and considers how to best teach students about genes. In another post, Klymkowsky explores the question "Is the popularization of science encouraging a growing disrespect for scientific expertise?" Each blog posts contains links to a number of related articles that may also be of interest. While aimed specifically at science educators, some of these blog posts may also appeal to science journalists and others who work in the field of science communication. Blog posts are tagged by topic (e.g., "public understanding of science") to facilitate easy browsing. [MMB]

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In addition to their numerous publications for children, Scholastic has many excellent resources for teachers. Those who are early in their teaching careers may especially appreciate this collection of classroom management resources, but experienced teachers may also find some new ideas here. Designed primarily for Pre-K through 8th grade (in varying intervals), these resources offer a plethora of tips, strategies, activities, and more to help teachers keep their students engaged and attentive. Examples include articles such as "Classroom Strategies for Maximizing Your Teaching" and "30 Classroom Procedures to Head Off Behavior Problems," as well as blog posts such as "Getting Organized for Academic Success: Tackling the Paperwork Trail." Each resource specifies the grade level range it is intended for, and visitors can filter the collection via a menu on the left, where they will find categories such as "Teacher Tips and Resources," "How I Do It," and "Behavior Problems." [JDC]

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Librarians, catalogers, and literature researchers may enjoy The Early Novels Database (END) project, which "generates high-quality metadata about novels published between 1660 and 1850 in order to make early works of fiction more available to both traditional and computational modes of humanistic study." Records in the dataset (a total of 2,041 as of September 2017) are encoded in MARCXML and a little more than half of the data is drawn from eighteenth-century novels held in the Penn Libraries' Collection of British and American Fiction. Visitors can explore END's dataset by visiting its GitHub page, which is accessible from a side tab on the homepage. On the GitHub page, tutorials for downloading and exploring the dataset are provided, as well as explanations of the custom END MARC schema used to catalog all of the novels. END project leaders include Rachel Sagner Buurma, Associate Professor of English Literature at Swarthmore College; and Jon Shaw, Director of Logistics and Access Services at the University of Pennsylvania. Visitors to the END site can also explore papers and student projects. [JLB]

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English literature instructors will appreciate this collection of free teacher handbooks from the Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST). Here, readers will find teaching resources created to accompany more than twenty of the acclaimed theater's productions, including plays by the Bard and by other playwrights. The Shakespeare teacher handbooks on offer cover most of the more commonly taught plays such as Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth, as well as some of the less popular plays like The Merry Wives of Windsor and Troilus and Cressida. Nearly all of the available Shakespeare handbooks exist as a lengthy, in-depth PDFs that includes background information on the Bard and on the specific play at hand, scholars' and directors' perspectives on the play, and multiple classroom activities and resources for engaging students with the text. The non-Shakespeare plays available here, such as Mary Stuart and Cyrano de Bergerac, have collections of online teaching materials that may not be as extensive as those for Shakespeare's plays but are still of value to educators. With each production season, CST continues to add new teacher handbooks, so it is worth checking back for updates. [JDC]

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One of the many digital offerings from the National Park Service is this fine collection of essays focusing on Latino heritage and history in the United States. The collection opens with a core essay by Stephen Pitti, Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University, who provides an "overview of the Latino journey...personified in five historical figures: the Cuban priest Felix Varela, the Mexican American author Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, the Puerto Rican bibliophile Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, the Guatemalan civil rights organizer Luisa Moreno, and the Mexican American politician Edward Roybal." The meat of this theme study is in the sixteen essays that follow Pitti's introductory essay. Written in accessible language by professors from across the country, these sixteen essays (eight of which are also available in Spanish) are organized into four groups discussing the role of Latinos in American nation-building, culture, economic life, and struggles for equality. As the NPS puts it, "Latino history is American history," and this resource offers an excellent introduction that students and scholars, as well as the general public, can appreciate. [JDC]

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Literary scholars and fans of Edgar Allan Poe may enjoy exploring The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore's website, which offers a large collection of resources. Visitors may wish to begin with "The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe," which has been peer-reviewed by NINES and contains e-texts of all of Poe's poetry and fiction in multiple editions, as well as Poe's letters, essays, and other writings. This resource also provides ample information about Poe as e-texts. Examples of included information are two scholarly biographies: the books The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Dwight R. Thomas and David K. Jackson and The Portraits and Daguerreotypes of Edgar Allan Poe (complete with illustrations); and full issues of Poe Studies / Dark Romanticism dating from 1968-1987. There is also a section devoted specifically to Poe's life in Baltimore, as well as information about the society itself. This website was first launched in 1997 and has been admirably maintained, updated, and expanded by the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, with its most recent update as of this writing occurring in August 2018. [JDC]

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Project FeederWatch, a citizen science program operated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Bird Studies Canada, is "a winter-long survey of birds that visit feeders at backyards, nature centers, community areas, and other locales in North America" whose data "helps scientists track broad-scale movements of winter bird populations and long-term trends in bird distribution and abundance." While participation in this program requires a small fee, visitors to the Project FeederWatch website will find a wealth of free resources. For example, on the Feeding Birds page found under the learn menu, readers can read about different types of bird feeders and food types, ways to make backyard feeders a safe place for birds, and tips for bird-friendly landscaping. Under the explore menu, visitors can (for example) view maps created using FeederWatch data, see regional population trend graphs of their favorite bird species, and download year-end reports dating back to 2005. The community section of FeederWatch offers photos taken by program participants, tips on bird feeding from participants, and the Project FeederWatch blog. For readers who love their backyard birds, the Project FeederWatch website is well worth exploring. [JDC]

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From the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission comes the story map Taking Pride: 150 Years of LGBT History. This story map "documents the history of LGBT culture in and around Greenwich Village" and is organized chronologically with the nineteenth century, the early twentieth century, and the time period after the Stonewall riots of 1969 as the main eras of focus. As readers scroll through this interactive presentation, they will see a map showing the locations of important LGBT historic sites accompanied by historical photographs and short explanatory text. While the map is automatically zoomed in to highlight the specific location being discussed, users can also zoom out to see all of the pins at once. Examples of the more than twenty sites highlighted in Taking Pride include Pfaff's, which was one of Walt Whitman's favorite haunts; playwright Lorraine Hansberry's residences; and the Keith Haring Studio and Foundation. Taking Pride provides general audiences with a quick, accessible visual overview of Greenwich Village's LGBT history. [JDC]

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The rise of the internet has given teens in recent decades a much different experience than those in past generations. In September 2018, the Pew Research Center released a study examining American teens and cyberbullying. This report, authored by senior researcher Monica Anderson, found that 59 percent of teens in the US "have personally experienced at least one of six types of abusive online behaviors" classified by Pew as cyberbullying, including name-calling, spreading false rumors, and receiving physical threats. Despite the prevalence of cyberbullying, the study found that a majority of teens feel that parents are doing a good job of handling cyberbullying. However, most teens are critical of how other groups, such as teachers, politicians, and social media sites, are addressing this issue. This study was based on Pew surveys conducted in March and April of 2018 of 743 US teens aged 13-17 and 1,058 parents of teens. Readers interested in more details may read the full nineteen-page report online or download it as a PDF. Readers may also visit links to related Pew publications, such as "Q&A: How and why we studied teens and cyberbullying." [JDC]

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The Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois recently launched a new website for their Live Plant Photos database, which contains (as of this write-up) over 20,000 photographs of flora from neotropical regions of the world. This database was established by Robin Foster and is currently headed by Nigel Pitman and Tomomi Suwa. Visitors can search this database by family, genus, species, country, or photographer. Visitors may be interested in participating in the museum's Rainforest Flowers project on Zooniverse, a citizen science project that invites people to help identify plants in this collection by tagging photographs of plants for features, such as color. In addition, visitors are invited to submit their own photographs of neotropical plants. This collection also contains a number of plant identification resources, including a series of field guides, available via a link at the bottom of the home page entitled, "About Live Plant Photos." [MMB]

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Readers who enjoy nonfiction books about science and history may be interested in What I Left Out, a series of recurring features published by the excellent online magazine Undark. In What I Left Out, "book authors are invited to share anecdotes and narratives that, for whatever reason, did not make it into their final manuscripts." While these installments are not published on an entirely regular basis, each offers readers fascinating content to supplement the book at hand. One recent entry in the What I Left Out series is "Battling the Scourge of 'Embalmed Milk,'" in which Deborah Blum, author of The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, recounts the story of how two Indiana scientists helped turn the state into a national leader in public health at the turn of the twentieth century. Other authors featured here include Caroline Williams, David George Haskell, and Mary Roach. To date, there are more than two dozen What I Left Out installments, and more are sure to be added. [JDC]

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Begun in 2001 as a quarterly print publication from the University of California Press, Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture now makes an increasing amount of its old and new content available online. A wide variety of authors' and scholars' work can be found in Gastronomica, from working chefs and photographers to scholars of many disciplines. The editorial page promises a mix of "examinations of historical trends and transformations in food and eating; analyses of the political, economic, and social dimensions of food production and consumption; research briefs on emerging issues in fields related to food research and innovation; and interviews with key figures in the world of food (scholars, activists, producers, and consumers)." This certainly plays out in the table of contents of the most recent issue (Spring 2018), which lists research articles on topics as varied as food distribution; a biography of the "Chinese Julia Child"; and anti-intellectualism, and natural food. There's also a photo essay entitled "Who Harvests Our Food," on migrant farm workers. Full text of these articles are available to subscribers only; however, readers affiliated with large universities are likely to find that their library subscribes to Gastronomica. [DS]

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Seafile is a cloud storage solution similar to Dropbox or Google Drive. However, unlike those services, the Seafile server is self-hosted on hardware controlled by the user. Users can interact with their files in two primary modes. In the first mode, using the Drive client, files are downloaded as needed without an initial synchronization step. Copies of files that are in use are stored locally, both for speed and to provide offline access, but users don't need to have space locally for all their cloud files. In Syncing mode, a library of files is synchronized to the local device. After the initial synchronization, only changed portions of files are sent over the network. In both modes, users may opt to enable client-side file encryption, which encrypts files prior to sending them to the server. Seafile desktop clients are available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Mobile clients are available for Android and iOS devices. Seafile servers are available for Windows and Linux. Home users may be interested in the Raspberry Pi version. [CRH]

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digiKam is a professional-quality photo management system. It supports a five-stage photographic workflow: import, organization, browsing, processing, and publishing. The import step is able to work with any digital camera supported by Gphoto2. This covers many hundreds of models, with a full list linked from the digiKam features page. The organize step allows users to group photos and videos into albums and sub-albums, each of which can carry comments and tags. The browsing mode supports lightbox-style side-by-side comparisons of pictures and offers a sidebar that displays comprehensive image metadata. Image processing support includes color correction and enhancement out of the box, with additional filters available as plugins. In the publication step, photos and albums can be exported to numerous services including Flickr, SmugMug, and Facebook. Additionally, albums can also be imported from Facebook and Shwup. digiKam executables are available for Windows, macOS, and Linux AppImage containers. Most Linux distributions also include a digiKam package. digiKam is free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License. Instructions for obtaining source code are included on the download page. [CRH]

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This resource was originally featured in the 10-07-2017 Scout Report, and it continues to provide a rich gateway to numerous online exhibits and features celebrating America's Latino cultural heritage.

On September 8th, 2017, in honor of Hispanic Heritage month, Google Arts and Culture launched Latino Cultures in the US - an extensive collection that features dozens of curated online exhibits and thousands of digitized items. This extensive site is the result of collaboration with many museums and cultural institutions, including The Smithsonian, the National Museum of Mexican Art, the National Hispanic Cultural Center Foundation, and many more. Visitors can browse these exhibits by topic, including Influential figures (featuring Dolores Huerta, Roberto Clemente, and Sonia Sotomayor, among others), Discover U.S. Latino art, The LGBTQ experience, Defining moments in Latino history, and much more. A few of the many highlights of this collection include The Masters of Murals, Up Close, which allows visitors to closely explore murals created by artists including Diego Rivera and Mario E. Castillo; a collection of nine Latino neighborhoods that one can explore via Google street view; and the powerful Voices Oral History Project, which allows visitors to explore photographs and interviews of Latinos who served in WWII.

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