Dr. Altman's Current Projects and Research (a.k.a. What is Micah Doing?)

(For conference & such see forthcoming appearances.
And for stuff that is done see  publications & CV)

What’s new?

• [4/14] Tides Foundation awards the Pizzigatti Prize for  our work on DistrictBuilder
• [2/28] Special guest-edited virtual issue of American Journal of Political Science on electoral geography published
• [2/15] Joined editorial board of Statistical Associates Publishing
• [2/1] Joined editorial board of Social Science Computer Review
• [1/10] Course slides for Obtaining Research Funding, posted
• [1/8]  Preprint posted, Richmond Law Review article analyzing the effectiveness of crowd-based participative electoral mapping

2012

• [12/25] Presentation Posted on auditing distributed digital preservation networks, from the Fall CNI Meeting
• [12/20]  National Academy of Sciences releases For Attribution:  Developing Data Attribution and Citation Practices and Standards [includes our chapter on data citation practices]
• [11/15] Presentation posted from the International Colloquium on Redistricting, hosted by the Instituto Federal Electoral
• [10/25] Report posted from the NSF/UNC  Curating for Data Quality workshop.
• [10/23] Slides posted from the 2012 PLN Community Meeting
• [10/15] Our DistrictBuilder software wins the 2012 Data Innovation Award for social impact from O’Reilly Strata.
• [9/27] Slides from  Needs for Data Management & Citation Throughout the Information Lifecycle  (NISO Forum, September 2012) posted
• [9/26] Joined the Task Force on Registering Researchers in Authority Files, OCLC Research
• [9/25] Our (Harvard-led) privacy research project, Privacy Tools for Sharing Research Data, is officially funded.
• [9/21] Report of our International Workshop on Contribution and Scholarly Authorship released.
• [8/30] Our DistrictBuilder software wins the 2012 award for Best Political Science Software, from the American Political Science Association. 
  
• [7/31] Slides from Assessing and Mitigating Bit-Level Preservation Risks (Digital Preservation 2012) posted
• [7/26] Sloan-funded, Harvard-led project on journal data sharing using OJS and the Dataverse Network announced.
• [7/3] Preview of our SafeArchive poster  for the lightning talks & poster sessions at Open Repositories 2012
• [6/11] Video and slides posted from a  talk on the future of scholarly communications at the Georgetown University Scholarly Communication Seminar
• [6/5] Slides and examples posted from our training on using SafeArchive to audit digital preservation , delivered at IASSIST 2012
• [6/1] Amazon Research in Education awards computing grant to support SafeArchive training.
• [6/2]  Preprint posted for an article on redistricting principles in the Case Western Law Review
• [5/16]  International Workshop on Contributorship and Scholarly Attribution held at Harvard.
• [5/10] Preprint posted for a chapter on data citation in Developing Data Attribution and Citation Practices and Standards Report from an International Workshop, National Academies Press.
• [4/30] MyDataCan project publicly announced.
• [March 2012] The Encyclopedia of Political Science, on which I served as editor for quantitative methods, was selected by RUSA for its 2012 Outstanding Reference Source award.

Current Research and Development Projects

• Founder & Project Lead, SafeArchive, SafeArchive is a solution for archival storage and replication management. Designed by the Data-PASS partners, it is a storage platform for policy-driven, distributed replication of digital holdings. The current version of SafeArchive is a self-contained system that can be installed, used and maintained by institutional staff without technical expertise. The set of open source tools can easily be used by libraries, museums and archives that wish to replicate their own content.
• Board of Directors, Open Researcher & Contributor ID. ORCID, Inc. is a non-profit organization dedicated to solving the name ambiguity problem in scholarly research, and brings together the leaders of influential universities, funding organizations, societies, publishers and corporations from around the globe.
• Principle Investigator (with Michael McDonald), the Public Mapping Project. The drawing of electoral districts is among the least transparent processes in democratic governance. All too often, redistricting authorities maintain their power by obstructing public participation. The resulting districts embody the goals of politicians to the detriment of the representational interests of communities and the public at large. We have developed DistrictBuilder to increase participation and transparency in the electoral process.
• Senior Scientist, MyDataCan. MyDataCan™ puts your data under your control to improve your life. You can collect, assemble, and distribute your own personal data, across data silos, including health information, without a fee, and optionally elect to participate in activities that use your data to improve the quality of your life.
• Senior Research Scientist, Data Sharing System for Journals.  This project will help establish a formal linkage between scholarly publications and the underlying research data by integrating the OJS PKP and Harvard Dataverse Network systems.
• Collaborator, Privacy Tools for Sharing Research Data. This project will define and measure privacy in both mathematical and legal terms, and explore alternate definitions of privacy that may be more general or more practical. The project will study variants of differential privacy and develop new theoretical results for use in contexts where it is currently inappropriate or impractical. The research will provide a better understanding of the practical performance and usability of a variety of algorithms for analyzing and sharing privacy-sensitive data. The project will develop secure implementations of these algorithms and legal instruments, which will be made publicly available and used to enable wider access to privacy-sensitive data sets at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science’s Dataverse Network.

 Affiliations, Responsibilities, and Entanglements

• Non-Resident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution. The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization — America’s top Think Tank. Its mission is to conduct high-quality, independent research and, based on that research, provide innovative, practical recommendations that strengthen American democracy; foster economic and social welfare, security, and opportunity; and advance a open, safe, prosperours, and cooperative international system.
• Coordinating Committee, National Digital Stewardship Alliance. The NDSA is a coalition of over one hundred public, private, and governmental organizations committed to establish, maintain, and advance the capacity to preserve our nation’s digital resources for the benefit of present and future generation.
• Steering Committee, Data Preservation Alliance for Social Sciences (Data-PASS).  Data-PASS is a voluntary partnership of organizations created to archive, catalog and preserve data used for social science research.
• Executive Board, Information Technology & Politics Organized Section, American Political Science Association.  The Information Technology and Politics section promotes innovative work in the intersection of political science and information science.
• Board of Directors, iSolon. iSolon is a policy institute committed to exploring and advancing opportunities for democratic reform brought about by new information technologies.  
  
• Editorial Board, American Journal of Political Science. The AJPS is the official journal of the Midwest Political Science Association. It is consistently ranked as one of the top journals in political science.
• Editorial Board, Journal of Information Technology & Politics. JITP is the official journal of the Information Technology and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. It publishes innovative work in the intersection of political science and information science.
• Editorial Board, Social Science Computer Review, An interdisciplinary journal covering social science instructional and research applications of computing, as well as societal impacts of information technology. It is ranked 28 out of 83 in Library Journals.
• Editorial Board, Statistical Associates Publishing. Publisher of free online statistics textbooks.
• Committee member, CODATA/ICTSI/BRDI  task group on data citations standards and practices. The Task Group is examining a number of key issues related to data citation, help coordinate activities in this area, and promoting common practices and standards in the scientific community
• Advisory Board, Duracloud for Research (DfR) . DfR project’s primary goal is to create a software solution and set of services that will help researchers preserve and manage their project data.
• Member, Task Force on Registering Researchers in Authority Files,  OCLC Research. To develop recommendations on: whether registering researcher names in authority files is viable; the challenges that need to be addressed and overcome; the best models for channeling or funneling the registration of researcher names; mechanisms for linking among different systems; whether the potential benefits suffice to warrant the effort to register researcher names.