Library Guides: ILS 230: Data Science &amp; Society: Ethical, Legal, Social Issues: Project Proposal

Project Proposal Components

Your project proposal should be 100-200 words, and should include:

an explanation of the subject you would like to investigate;
how your subject relates to data science as a field of practice or study;
why you believe the subject you've chosen is worthy of investigation;
the main research question guiding your research project

Tips for Identifying Your Research Topic

You have several options for finding and developing a topic. These include:

identifying a real world case that interests you (a person, phenomenon, event, object, etc.)
locating a previously conducted case study in a peer-reviewed journal and summarize the case study

You can use your own experiences or popular sources in order to identify your subject of study. However, your explication of the case under investigation must be research-based. This means that you must cite reliable sources when providing your explication. At least one of these sources must be a peer-reviewed, scholarly publication.

Research topics may include:

the use of data science in targeted advertising
the use of data science in sports analytics
the use of data science in self-driving vehicles
the use of data science in recommendation systems
the use of data science in pandemic control
a non-profit organization using data science
data cleaning
algorithmic fairness
the use of data science in job listings
the use of data science in education
data collection on social media applications
the COMPAS recidivism algorithm

Popular Sources

Magazines

Wired
Popular Science

Blogs

News Sources

Factiva - A global information resource, providing full-text access to top national and international newspapers (including full text of the Wall Street Journal), newswires, business journals, market research reports, analysts reports and web sites. Contains over 8000 publications with content from 118 countries in 22 languages. Updated daily.
ABI/INFORM - Focuses on local and regional business news coverage of large corporations, privately held companies, local start-ups, executive profiles, marketing, finance, and industry news. Contains news and analysis, information on local markets, and more gathered from major business tabloids, magazines, daily newspapers, wire services, and city, state, and regional business publications.
Science Online - Full-text access to Science, First Release (the preprint version of Science, formerly called ScienceExpress), three virtual knowledge environments, Science Now, and other web sites. Coverage: Science available from 1997 - current

Reference Works

Uncertain Archives by Nanna Bonde Thylstrup (Editor); Daniela Agostinho (Editor); Annie Ring (Editor); Catherine D'Ignazio (Editor); Kristin Veel (Editor)
ISBN: 9780262539883
Publication Date: 2021-02-02
Scholars from a range of disciplines interrogate terms relevant to critical studies of big data, from abuse and aggregate to visualization and vulnerability. This pathbreaking work offers an interdisciplinary perspective on big data, interrogating key terms. Scholars from a range of disciplines interrogate concepts relevant to critical studies of big data--arranged glossary style, from from abuse and aggregate to visualization and vulnerability--both challenging conventional usage of such often-used terms as prediction and objectivity and introducing such unfamiliar ones as overfitting and copynorm. The contributors include both leading researchers, including N. Katherine Hayles, Johanna Drucker and Lisa Gitelman, and such emerging agenda-setting scholars as Safiya Noble, Sarah T. Roberts and Nicole Starosielski.
Information by Paul Duguid (Editor); Anja-Silvia Goeing (Editor); Anthony Grafton (Editor); Ann Blair (Editor)
ISBN: 9780691209746
Publication Date: 2021-01-26
A landmark history that traces the creation, management, and sharing of information through six centuries. Thanks to modern technological advances, we now enjoy seemingly unlimited access to information. Yet how did information become so central to our everyday lives, and how did its processing and storage make our data-driven era possible? This volume is the first to consider these questions in comprehensive detail, tracing the global emergence of information practices, technologies, and more, from the premodern era to the present. With entries spanning archivists to algorithms and scribes to surveilling, this is the ultimate reference on how information has shaped and been shaped by societies.

Relevant Journals

Scholarly Databases

History of Science, Technology, and Medicine This link opens in a new window
By integrating four bibliographies—the Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science, the Current Bibliography in the History of Technology, the Bibliografia Italiana di Storia della Scienza and the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine—the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine database offers outstanding value for interdisciplinary research. This database includes records of journal articles, conference proceedings, books, dissertations, serials, maps and other related materials in biological science; computer and information sciences; engineering; geography; and mathematics.
Sociological Abstracts
This database abstracts and indexes the international literature of sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from thousands of serials publications and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, conference papers and working papers. Cited references are included for many journal articles.
Anthropology Plus
Brings together two resources: Anthropological Literature from Harvard University, and the Anthropological Index from the Royal Anthropological Institute in the UK. Provides worldwide indexing of journal articles, reports, commentaries, edited works, and obituaries in the fields of social, cultural, physical, biological, and linguistic anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, folklore, material culture, and interdisciplinary studies. Offers coverage of all core periodicals in the field in addition to local and lesser-known journals.
Data-Planet Statistical Datasets
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Provides easy access to an extensive repository of standardized and structured statistical data containing more than 65 billion US and international data points from more than 90 sources. The over two billion time series provide immediate access to data presented in charts, maps, graphs, and table form, via multiple points of entry. There are up to 2 billion charts, maps, views, rankings, time series and tables available for use. All of the data have been standardized and structured, and described with up to 37 fields of metadata, including a controlled vocabulary. Includes Claritas Consumer Profile data, Claritas Financial and Insurance (CLOUT) data, Data Axle data for Canadian and United States businesses, Data Axle data for United States consumers, EASI Market Planner data, and Woods and Poole data.

- Provides data analysis tools to manipulate datasets, compare multiple indicators and sources, and derive new statistics
- Offers customizable visualizations of data, including tables, trend charts, geographic maps, and more
Academic Search Complete
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Academic Search Complete is a general academic index that indexes more than 8,200 magazines and journals from every academic discipline and provides the full-text of more than 4,600.

In addition, Academic Search Complete offers access to more than 75,000 videos from the Associated Press. Videos relevant to the search terms will appear in a carousel in the result list.
Web of Science: Core Collection
Access the world’s leading scholarly literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities and examine proceedings of international conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions.

-Science Citation Index Expanded (1900-present)
-Social Sciences Citation Index (1900-present)
-Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975-present)
-Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Science (1990-present)
-Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Social Science & Humanities (1990-present)
-Book Citation Index– Science (2005-present)
-Book Citation Index– Social Sciences & Humanities (2005-present)
-Current Chemical Reactions (1985-present)
(Includes Institut National de la Propriete Industrielle structure data back to 1840)
-Index Chemicus (1993-present)
-Emerging Sources Citation Index (2005 – present)