May 1, 2017

On April 26, 2017, more than 70 people gathered in the A.J. Drexel Picture Gallery for the fifth annual 'Celebrating Drexel Authors' event, hosted by the Office of the Provost and the Drexel University Libraries.

This year's event - which was led by Provost M. Brian Blake, Danuta A. Nitecki, Dean of Libraries, and Ludo Scheffer, Chair, Faculty Senate - recognized a total of 75 Drexel faculty, staff and students from 13 different colleges for book and journal publications authored and edited in 2016. Works honored included textbooks and lab manuals, books on politics, nanomechanics and big data, as well as nursing study guides and works of fiction.

New for 2017, the event also recognized Drexel's most prolific journal authors, a group of authors that have proved challenging to identify in the past.

'While it seems like identifying Drexel authors should be easy through the Internet, it is not.  We are challenged to identify our faculty, staff and student publications,' Danuta A. Nitecki, Dean of Libraries, explained during the event. 'Books are more easily identified than journal articles because there are numerous commercial and scholarly interests to promote the sale of a volume, but even this can be a challenge. Articles, on the other hand, are more difficult to identify. They are not broadly promoted through Amazon or online catalogs, nor are they generally purchased by individuals except when institutional licenses do not cover free access to them. Furthermore, articles are seldom indexed by the author's institutional affiliation.'

To overcome these challenges, University Librarians used bibliographic data from Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science Core Collection database to identify 2,030 articles published in 2016 by Drexel-affiliated authors. Using this information, librarians pared down the article list to include Drexel colleagues who published 20 or more articles in 2016, as well as those included in the 2016 Highly Cited Researchers list.

'As Danuta noted, it hasn't been easy for our librarians to identify Drexel's contributions to scholarly articles, but we're keen to recognize journal publications at this event and beyond,' said Provost M. Brian Blake during the event. 'In the coming years, we look forward to identifying other ways of recognizing all of our prolific authors.'

Since the event was established in 2013, 276 members of the Drexel community representing all colleges have been recognized for their publications. Donated copies of the 2016 publications will be on display in the case by the Provost's Office in Main Building later this spring. Following their exhibition in the Main Building, copies will be moved to the Faculty Authors Collection in the University Archives.

A complete list of authors recognized at this year's event is available online.  

Did you publish in 2017? We want to know about it. Send your name and publication information to Stacy Stanislaw, Communications Manager, at svs22@drexel.edu.

[Photo: Drexel Authors and Editors pose for a group photo following the 'Celebrating Drexel Authors Event' (photo by Jaci Downs Photography)]