By Rania Nasrallah-Massaad

We are living in a digital world, where connectivity has become a cornerstone of our existence. Social media grants us access to a social life from a distance, the COVID-19 pandemic being a prime example of this. Moreover, 21st century consumers are increasingly relying on digital transactions for almost everything, from purchasing clothes and food to online banking and recreational activities. Wi-Fi access has become essential for most establishments, from restaurants and cafes to schools and shopping centres. But with all this internet access, are we putting ourselves at risk? Behind the scenes we are exposing ourselves to constant surveillance, and limitless data is being gathered for the benefit of social media giants, advertisers and others.

Many issues around privacy are being raised, but to what extent should online consumers be concerned? As part of a new movement called “digital detoxing,” consumers are going offline indefinitely or for certain periods to protect their privacy and escape digital surveillance. However, it is unclear how popular digital detoxing has become, what socio-cultural motivations are driving consumers to go offline, and how this will benefit society and consumers. Do we need to go offline to ensure our privacy or are there alternatives to reduce our risk while benefiting from the convenience of a digital world?

What is this research about?

Professor Mariam Humayun has received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grant to study whether digital detoxing is an optimal practice to help consumers reclaim their privacy. She will examine the socio-cultural motivations that drive it, how it is evolving and what new forms of consumption practices will arise.

Project Title: Reclaiming Consumer Privacy: Escapes Through Digital Detoxing

Who will benefit from this research?

This work will help clarify changing trends in digital consumer activity and the factors that are driving consumers to escape digital surveillance. The knowledge gained will help inform research on digital consumer behaviour and reveal the negative aspects of social media consumption. Marketers will benefit from this information in developing more ethical practices. The findings can also help policy makers encourage business innovation to ensure individual consumer privacy. Finally, individuals will benefit by being able to make more informed decisions about their online consumer behaviour.

Learn more about the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grants.

By Lidiane Cunha

Predatory publishing can be thought of as the fake news of science. Some estimate that there are over 8,000 predatory journals that publish more than 400,000 research studies every year. By contributing to the widespread of dubious, unreliable, and even fake information, predatory journals and publishers cause the scientific community a lot of damage. These publishing practices also have a detrimental impact on people who rely on scientific information to develop their professional skills or inform their decisions at work. I interviewed Agnes Grudniewicz, an Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management to learn more about it.

First thing’s first: Defining predatory publishing

Until recently, there was a lack of consensus in the scientific community about what makes a journal predatory and how to identify it. This made it hard to fight this threat and evaluate its impact. But an interdisciplinary group of leading scholars from around the globe, including Professor Grudniewicz (Telfer School of Management); David Moher, Kelly Cobey, and Manoj Lalu (Centre for Journalology at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute), realized that to fight these unreliable sources that disseminate poor scientific information, they first needed to understand what exactly they are fighting.

After twelve hours of in-person discussion with 43 stakeholders from 10 countries, the group agreed on a consensus definition: predatory journals and publisher are “entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.” Their consensus definition was published in Nature.

Beyond the scientific community

Predatory publishing is a global threat to quality science, compromising valuable resources in the scientific community. “We all understand that researchers are under constant pressure to publish their work. Predatory publishers and journals take advantage of this publish-or-perish culture and aggressively promote their services,” explains Professor Grudniewicz.

But beyond what happens at universities and scientific organizations, she also urges us to recognize the impact of these predatory entities and their practices outside of the scientific community. Articles published in predatory journals can show up in Google searches, looking like high-quality peer-reviewed articles. In the age of modern technology where information is being shared at an incredible pace, many people may not know if the sources of scientific information they find are legitimate or fake.

How predatory practices affect students, our future thought leaders

Professor Grudniewicz believes that predatory publishing practices affect students in two ways. First, some graduate programs make it a requirement for students to publish before they graduate. “This causes them to feel a lot of stress and a sense of urgency,” she explains.  Students may unknowingly turn to predatory journals, as they usually offer very quick publication times, little peer review, and low publication fees. The trap of publishing in predatory journals can have major repercussions on one’s research career:

 “Sometimes students don’t know that publishing in a predatory journal can have long term negative consequences on their career. So they need strong mentorship and guidance to help them select legitimate journals, and perhaps we need to consider relaxing requirements to publish thesis papers prior to graduation.”

Second, we often ignore the impact of predatory entities on undergraduate and professional students who may not be getting any training on how to appraise evidence. “Without awareness of this problem or skills and tools to determine the legitimacy of a journal, these students who will become our future leaders may be using fake evidence in their work post-graduation,” she warns. 

For example, some of these students will become managers in health care organizations. They may need to search for evidence on a surgical intervention to help solve scheduling problems or optimise resources within their institution. If the manager doesn’t know about predatory journals and the fact that the research presented in these papers may have not been peer-reviewed or is fake, what are the unintended consequences? Many of these future leaders may base their decisions on bad information, potentially leading to problems down the line.

How the academic community can fight against this predator

By defining predatory publishing, Professor Grudniewicz’s team has already taken the first step in the fight against those who help spread low quality and fake scientific findings. Agreeing on a consensus definition helps unite those in the fight against predatory journals. It also provides a reference point for better understanding the influence of predatory entities, but more needs to be done. Professor Grudniewicz emphasizes the broad relevance of this problem:

“We need to acknowledge that this isn’t just a problem for researchers. We all use Google to search for information on the internet, so we all should know about predatory publishers. Think of how many times you may have Googled health symptoms you or someone you love is having. Just like we don’t want to get duped by ‘fake news,’ we also don’t want to be accidentally using fake science; whether that’s as researchers or professionals, and especially not in our private lives as patients or caregivers of someone with a serious illness.”

Agnes Grudniewicz is an Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management. Her research is focused on primary and community care and aims to improve health care systems and services for patients with complex health and social needs. She is a member of the Centre for Journalology at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute where she provides her qualitative methods expertise to help with the fight against predatory journals. Learn more about her work.

By Lidiane Cunha

A change in investing in a key commodity market in Canada and the world

Oil is one of the most traded commodities around the globe, as well as Canada’s largest commodity export. “The oil market is also one with the highest proportion of index investing in the commodity market,” says Fabio Moneta, an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management.

To understand the impact of index investing in the oil market, we first need to delve into two different investment strategies: active and passive. Investments are considered active when investors purchase and sell funds in hopes of beating the stock market’s average returns, outperforming benchmark indexes such as the TSX, S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average. Investments are considered passive when investors simply follow a benchmark index to match its performance.

Passive investment has become a popular strategy over the years, accounting for 37% of combined U.S. mutual fund and exchange traded fund (ETF) assets by 2017. In 1995, only 3% of these funds were passive. Investors who buy, sell and trade oil and other commodity funds seem to have followed this trend. They have been increasingly relying on benchmark indexes in their trading activities. “The first commodity ETF was launched in 2004, but today investors can access over 90 of such funds,” says Moneta.

Due to costs associated with the physical storage of commodities, commodity ETFs do not directly purchase assets. Instead, such funds trade in “futures contracts” for commodities. Futures contracts have been traded in Chicago since 1864. They are standardized agreements to buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price and at a specified time in the future. Futures contracts play an important role in the commodity market. For example, they allow commodity producers and users to reduce the risk of a price change by fixing the future transaction price.

What’s this project about?

These recent practices represent a significant economic development. They are contributing to an increase in financial capital invested in commodities, a process that finance scholars and experts refer to as the financialization of commodities. But what impact do they really have on commodity markets such as the oil market?

This is one of the main questions motivating Moneta’s new research project. He will examine how passive investment and financialization influence the oil futures market and other commodity futures markets. To carry out this research, he has been awarded a Social Sciences and Humanity Research Council Insight Development grant.

Project title: Oil Investing and the Financialization of Commodities

Who will benefit from this study?

Understanding the impact of passive investment and the financialization of commodity markets will benefit investors, finance practitioners and market regulators. Commodity producers and consumers could also benefit from Moneta’s insights. Increasing our knowledge of investment practices in the oil market could be of great importance to Canadians:

“Right now, Canada relies heavily on commodity markets, especially the oil market. These new financial phenomena must be carefully understood because they involve the Canadian economy.”

Moneta’s research will also answer important questions about the impact of the financialization of commodities on futures markets. “Futures markets provide price discovery and price signals concerning aggregate demand and supply of commodities,” Moneta says. Investors and other finance experts use these estimates to make significant investment decisions that can have broader market implications. “Therefore, it is crucial to examine if the financialization of commodities and other non-fundamental forces affect the futures markets,” he adds.

Learn more about the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grants.

By Lidiane Cunha

Education as key to promoting social inclusion

Poor quality school education continues to be one of the most pressing societal challenges of our times. Several countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East (collectively referred to as the Global South) often face social inequality created by gender, ethnic and religious discrimination. Countries in the Global South that fail to address existing inequalities through their education system are unlikely to create inclusive societies.

“Social inclusion is a serious socioeconomic problem, but it requires many different forms of organizing efforts,” says Suhaib Riaz, Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management. Riaz believes that such efforts must emerge not just from one but from multiple stakeholders, whether grassroots community groups or large-scale global programs.

To address the challenges, not-for profit, for-profit and governmental organizations must develop and implement more effective social interventions. This calls for social innovation, which researchers define as novel, just and sustainable solutions to tackle social problems and transform the social systems. “Using social innovation is key to address inequalities in school education and provide quality education to school children,” says Riaz.

What’s this research about?

In a new research project, Riaz will examine how corporations, NGOs, government agencies and humanitarian organizations innovate to develop effective, sustainable solutions to improve primary and secondary education. His research team includes Arjun Bhardwaj, (University of British Columbia) and researchers on the ground in India.

Riaz’s team has just received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Development grant for research that builds on his broader work on understanding and addressing societal grand challenges. While the focus will be India, their findings could have implications for other countries in the Global South.

Project Title: Organizing to address societal challenges: Insights from multiple stakeholder interventions for education among the marginalized

What’s the potential impact of this research?

Insight gained from Riaz’s project could provide new frameworks of value to international and local organizations supporting social interventions across the Global South, where they are most needed. In particular, their findings and recommendations could benefit:

• local humanitarian organizations operating in the Global South,
• organizations based in Canada and other developed countries that would like to organize or support interventions to improve education and promote social inclusion worldwide.

The researchers hope that their findings can be applied not only to the Global South, but to all countries that struggle to foster social inclusion through their education systems. Riaz’s project could also help us better understand Canada’s role in this regard.

“Our insights can contribute to the general goals of developing stable, peaceful and just societies across the globe, goals in which Canada has an opportunity to take the lead.” 

Suhaib Riaz

Learn more about the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grants.