This week’s collection of articles from around the web focuses on some core elements of success: self-care, personal belief systems, fresh thinking, fundamentals, integrity, and being able to stand for something. As the first full week of 2020 comes to an end, these articles remind us of the importance of core values and beliefs in our daily work.

Confucius once said, “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you don’t stop.” Be sure to judge yourself and your progress against your own goals and beliefs rather than the influences or expectations around you and keep going toward those goals in the year ahead. Happy writing!

The problem of self-care in higher education

Self-care is not a purely solitary activity that we somehow innately know how to do, but a practice that is learned and is guided by those who care about us. Struck by Czerwiec’s insight, I asked the class, “Don’t we need others to help us care for ourselves?” That’s when George said it. In its wake, the room was very quiet. The seminar had instantly become a profound — and vulnerable — space.

You have to believe that what you do matters

It is easy to start feeling hopeless when you look at what passes for ‘leadership’. I actually think our political leaders want us to feel this way. People who feel helpless find it hard to do anything, which is exactly what some powerful people want.  Holding on to hope and encouraging other people to be hopeful too is now a political act. We must believe every ‘little’ thing we do for the positive matters. We must do the work.

New year, new decade, new thinking about research!

Welcome to a new year of SAGE MethodSpace! Let’s welcome 2020 with fresh thinking about our work as researchers, writers, and instructors or supervisors working with student or novice researchers. MethodSpace will continue to offer original posts, content from other respected sites, interviews with methodologists and researchers, practical tips, and links to resources. We’ll interact with you through four webinars in 2020, as well as occasional Tweetchats. Monthly themes will allow us to go in greater depth than is possible with a single post.

Back to basics: When in doubt, get fundamental

In the face of these trying decisions, when it comes to publishing technologies in 2020, I would strongly urge a return to some fundamental facts. While the needs of specific disciplines and communities will vary across content and technology providers, there are some essential principles we cannot avoid.

Integrity: The most important research practice

Researchers engage in a wide range of activities, from identifying problems and questions, designing and conducting inquiries, analyzing and interpreting data, to disseminating findings. For those activities to be deemed worthwhile, for their findings to be seen as credible, the researcher’s integrity must be beyond question. Research designs and the nature of involvement of human participants are often evaluated by ethics review boards, but the focus on approval of data gathering means little attention is given to other phases or implications of the study (Kara, 2018). A commitment to reach integrity is rarely part of the oversight process.

Tracking the path to research claims

Remember the phrase staking a claim? That’s what we are actually doing when we claim something. We are metaphorically placing a marker in a field that we are prepared to stand on, stand for –  and defend. We plant that marker at the end of the account of our research. We’re here, we say. This is where, why and how I’ve got to this point.

Study: Recommended systems may increase citations

Recommender systems that promote related articles across publisher platforms increase citations according to a new study. The paper, “The Citation Advantage of Promoted Articles in a Cross-Publisher Distribution Platform” was published in JASIST online on 23 Dec 2019 by Paul Kudlow, Co-founder of TrendMD.