Audience Tools

Specializations

  • Public Policy
  • Science of Science
  • Computational Social Science

Research Areas

Courses

  • INSC 501 - Theoretical Foundations For Information Science

Biography

I am an Associate Professor at the University of Washington's Information School where I direct the Puget Sound Clinic for Public Interest Technology (PCP). My research group is broadly focused on science, technology, and public policy. We study how public policy works, for whom, and under what circumstances. We contribute to fields like the science of science, computational social science, and computer supported cooperative work. Some topics we are working on now include the following:

-Labor: Workplace organizing in the service sector; evaluating the efficacy of public policy interventions in the gig economy; and wage theft prediction.

-Scientific Software: Modeling dependency networks vital to research communities; Economic valuations of public investment in software; and measuring sustainability in both open-source and research software.

-Municipal Governance: Policy diffusion in sub-national legislatures; Measuring constitutional churn in Latin America; Modeling effective rhetorical frames, gender dynamics, and special interest group impact on legislation in city councils.

I also lead the development of open-source research infrastructure at several institutions: I am the technical director of the Qualitative Data Repository at Syracuse University, as well as the States and Institutions of Governance in Latin America (SIGLA) project at Georgetown University. I co-lead the Council Data Project with my talented PhD student Eva Maxfield Brown.

Education

  • Ph D, Library and Information Science, University of Illinois, 2015
  • MSlis, Library and Information Science, University of Illinois, 2010
  • BA, English and History, University of Illinois, 2005

Awards

  • Movers and Shakers - Library Journal, 2020
  • Best Paper Award - ASIS&T Scientific and Technological Information Special Interest Group, 2015
  • Best PhD Dissertation Proposal - Beta Phi Mu, 2015
  • Early-Career Award - National Science Foundation, Workshop on Sustainable Scientific Software 3, 2015
  • FORCE11 - Oxford, Travel Award - Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, 2015
  • RDA DataSHARE Early-career Research Fellow - Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, 2015
  • Sustainability in Urban Contexts Early-career Research Fellow - International Social Science Council, 2015

Memberships

  • American Meteorological Society
  • ASIS&T
  • Earth Science Informatics Partners

Publications and Contributions

  • preprint
    Asymmetric by Design: How and Why Labor Policy Impacts Gig Workers (2023)
    Authors: Lindsey Schwartz, Nicholas Weber
  • Research Report
    Deactivation with and without Representation: The Role of Dispute Arbitration for Seattle Rideshare Drivers (2023)
    Authors: Lindsey Schwartz, Nicholas Weber, Eva M Brown
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Protecting Sensitive Data Early in the Re- search Data Lifecycle. (2023)
    Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality, 13(2) Authors: Sebastian Karcher, Sefa Secen, Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Soft-Search: Two Datasets to Study the Identification and Production of Research Software (2023)
    Authors: Eva M Brown, Lindsey Schwartz, Richard Huang, Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Professional Journal
    Speakerbox: Few-Shot Learning for Speaker Identification with Transformers (2023)
    Journal of Open Source Software, 6(Unknown Issue) Authors: Eva M Brown, To Huynh, Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    A survey of the state of the practice for research software in the United States (2022)
    PeerJ Computer Science, 8(Unknown Issue) Authors: J.C. Carver, Nicholas Weber, K. Ram, S. Gesing, D.S. Katz
  • Conference Paper
    Councils In Action: An Automated Approach to Curating Municipal Governance Data for Research (2022)
    ASIS&T Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology Authors: Eva M Brown, Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Paper
    Councils in Action: Automating the Curation of Municipal Governance Data for Research (2022)
    Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology Annual Conference Authors: J.M. Brown, Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Integrative urban AI to expand coverage, access, and equity of urban data (2022)
    The European Physical Journal Special Topics, pp. 1-12 Authors: William G Howe, J.M. Brown, B. Han, B. Herman, Nicholas Weber, A. Yan, Y. Yang
  • Book, Chapter in Scholarly Book-New
    Open Data Ethics (2022)
    Scholarly Communication and Open Culture Authors: Nicholas Weber, B Locke
  • Conference Paper
    Addressing research software sustainability via institutes (2021)
    Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on the Body of Knowledge for Software Sustainability (BoKSS'21) in conjunction with the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2021) Authors: D.S. Katz, J. Carver, N. Chue Hong, S. Gesing, S. Hettrick, T. Honeyman, K. Ram, Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Paper
    Collective harms and contextual integrity for sensitive data (2021)
    Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology Annual Conference Author: Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Council Data Project: Software for Municipal Data Collection, Analysis, and Publication (2021)
    Journal of Open Source Software Authors: Jackson Brown, To Huynh, Isaac Na, Brian Ledbetter, Hawk Ticehurst, Sarah Liu, Emily Giles, Katlyn M. F. Greene, Sung Cho, Shak Ragoler, Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Paper
    DSDB: An open-source system for database versioning curation (2021)
    Proceedings of the 2021 ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) Authors: J. Brown, Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Data curation as collective action during COVID-19 (2021)
    Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 72(3), pp. 280-284 Authors: K. Shankar, W. Jeng, A. Thomer, Nicholas Weber, A. Yoon
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    How data curation enables epistemically responsible reuse of qualitative data (2021)
    The Qualitative Report, 26(6), pp. 1996-2010 Authors: Karcher, D. Kirilova, C. Pagé, Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Introducing the Qualitative Data Repository's curation handbook (2021)
    Journal of eScience Librarianship, 10(3), pp. 8 Authors: R. Demgenski, S. Karcher, D. Kirilova, Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Professional Journal
    Public Libraries and Open Government Data: Partnerships for Progress (2021)
    Library Journal Authors: Carole L Palmer, Nicholas Weber, Kaitlin Throgmorton, Bree Norlander
  • Conference Paper
    Surfacing collective harms in privacy sensitive data (2021)
    Proceedings of the 2021 ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) Author: Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Paper
    Finite and infinite games: An ethnography of institutional logics in research software sustainability (2020)
    Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 57(1) Author: Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Using Open Data to Inform PublicLibrary Branch Services (2020)
    Public Library Quarterly, pp. 1-13 Authors: Nicholas Weber, Bree Norlander, K. R. Ostler
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Epistemic and Ethical Challenges to Qualitative Data Reuse (2020)
    The Qualitative Report Authors: S Karcher, D Kirolova, C Marte, Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Paper
    Human-in-the-Loop Curation: Open Source Tools for Scaling Privacy Sensitive Data Curation (2020)
    Open Repositories 2020 Authors: Nicholas Weber, S. Karcher, J. Myers
  • Conference Paper
    Making Public Records Legible: An Open-Source Platform forTranscribing Archived Multimedia (2020)
    Open Repositories 2020 Authors: Nicholas Weber, J. Brown
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Open Source Tools for Scaling Data Curation at QDR (2020)
    Code4Lib Journal, 49(Unknown Issue) Authors: Nicholas Weber, S. Karcher, J. Myers
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Annotation for Transparent Qualitative Inquiry (2019)
    International Association for Social Science Information Services and Technology (IASSIST), 43(2), pp. 1-9 Authors: S Karcher, Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Paper
    DSDB: Reproducible Computational Modeling (2019)
    IEEE eScience Workshop on Research Objects 2019 Authors: J Brown, Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Proceeding
    DSDB: Reproducible Computational Modeling. (2019)
    RO Authors: Eva M Brown, Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Paper
    Open Data Publishing by Public Libraries (2019)
    Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL '19) Authors: Nicholas Weber, Bree Norlander
  • Conference Paper
    Packaging Legislative Event Data for Reuse Exchange (2019)
    IEEE eScience Workshop on Research Objects 2019 Authors: Nicholas Weber, J Brown
  • Conference Proceeding
    Packaging Municipal Legislative Event Data for Reuse \& Exchange. (2019)
    RO Author: Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Qualitative data sharing and synthesis for sustainability science (2019)
    Nature Sustainability, pp. 1-8 Authors: S M Alexander, K Jones, N J Bennett, A Budden, M Cox, M Crosas, Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Paper
    Simple, Standards-based Archiving in Dataverse (2019)
    IEEE eScience Workshop on Research Objects 2019 Authors: Nicholas Weber, J Myers, S Karcher
  • Conference Paper
    Addressing friction: FAIR and the case of qualitative data (2018)
    Research Data and Preservation Summit Authors: K. Jones, S. Alexander, S. Karcher, Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Poster
    Advancing Open Data: Aligning Education with Public Sector Data Challenges (2018)
    ASIS&T 2018: Proceedings of the 81st annual meeting Authors: Nicholas Weber, Bree Norlander, Carole L Palmer
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Conceptualization of a US Research Software Sustainability Institute (URSSI) (2018)
    Computing in Science Engineering, 20(3), pp. 4-9 Authors: J. C. Carver, S. Gesing, D. S. Katz, K. Ram, Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Paper
    Migration Patterns: Supporting the Long-Term Maintenance of Natural History Museum Databases (2018)
    Annual Meeting of the Association of Information Science & Technology Authors: A. Thomer, M. Twidale, Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Paper
    Mining Open Government Data Used in Scientific Research (2018)
    iConference 2018 Authors: Nicholas Weber, An Yan
  • Conference Paper
    Mining Open Government Data Used in Scientific Research (2018)
    International Conference on Information (iConference 2018) Authors: An Yan, Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Remediating Civic Tech (2018)
    iConference 2018 Proceedings Authors: Nicholas Weber, Eva M Brown
  • Conference Poster
    Remediating Civic Tech (2018)
    Proceedings of the iConference Authors: Nicholas Weber, Jackson Brown
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Assessing and tracing the outcomes and impact of research infrastructures (2017)
    Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology,, pp. 1341–1359 Authors: Matthew S Mayernik, David L Hart, Keith E Maull, Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Abstract
    Contextual Integrity for Qualitative Data (2017)
    Digital Humanities 2017 Author: Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Poster
    Integrating User Feedback with Open Data Quality Models (2017)
    ASIS&T Annual Meeting 2017 Author: Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Paper
    No Drones: Institutional Critique of UAS Data Accessibility and implications for Environmental Humanities (2017)
    Digital Humanities (DH) Authors: Nicholas Weber, L. Barbieri
  • Conference Paper
    Orchestrating Cloud Infrastructure to Manage Sensitive Data (2017)
    International Digital Curation Conference Author: Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Extended Abstract
    Sticky and Leaky Abstractions for Data on the Web (2017)
    11th U.S. Networked Knowledge Organization Systems (NKOS) Workshop Author: Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Poster
    Whose Truth? Digital Recordkeeping and Evidence in a Post-Truth World (2017)
    2017 iSchool Research Fair Authors: Nicholas Weber, Joseph T. Tennis
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Beyond the matrix: Repository services for qualitative data (2016)
    IFLA Journal, 42(4), pp. 292–302 Authors: Sebastian Karcher, Dessislava Kirilova, Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Introduction to Data Models Special Collection (2016)
    Data Science Journal, 15(Unknown Issue) Authors: Nicholas Weber, Karen Wickett
  • Ph.D. Thesis
    A framework for analyzing the sustainability of peer produced science commons (2015)
    Author: Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Community recommendations for sustainable scientific software (2015)
    Journal of Open Research Software, 3(1) Authors: Robert R Downs, W Christopher Lenhardt, Erin Robinson, Ethan Davis, Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Data Curation Workshop Book: Hong Kong (2015)
    Authors: J Stephen Downie, Andrea K Thomer, Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Paper
    Polycentric Governance in Sociotechnical Systems (2015)
    Proceedings of the iConference Workshop on Sustainability for Information Communication Technologies Author: Nicholas Weber
  • Conference Paper
    Towards a Model of Sociotechnical Systems Resilience (2015)
    Proceedings of the International Association for the Study of the Commons Annual Meeting Author: Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Community Recommendations for Improving Sustainable Scientific Software Practices (2014)
    Authors: Robert R Downs, W Christopher Lenhardt, Erin Robinson, Ethan Davis, Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Extending Curation Profiles to Study Enterprise-level Data Practices (2014)
    iConference 2014 Proceedings Authors: Nicholas Weber, Carole L Palmer
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Paratexts and documentary practices: Text mining authorship and acknowledgment from a bioinformatics corpus (2014)
    Examining Paratextual Theory and its Applications in Digital Culture, pp. 84–109 Authors: Nicholas Weber, Andrea K Thomer
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    The phylogeny of a dataset (2014)
    Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 51(1), pp. 1–11 Authors: Andrea K Thomer, Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Using Named Entity Recognition as a Classification Heuristic (2014)
    iConference 2014 Proceedings Authors: Andrea K Thomer, Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Complications in climate data classification: The political and cultural production of variable names (2013)
    Advances In Classification Research Online, 23(1), pp. 57–58 Authors: Nicholas Weber, Andrea K Thomer, Gary Strand
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Dispatches, digests and doodles: Exploring the significant properties of field notebooks (2013)
    Authors: Andrea K Thomer, Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Foundations of data curation: the pedagogy and practice of “purposeful work” with research data (2013)
    Arch J, 3(Unknown Issue) Authors: Carole L Palmer, Nicholas Weber, T Munoz, AH Renear
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Lead, lag or get out of the index: Exploring macro-economic indicators of data use (2013)
    Authors: Nicholas Weber, Andrea K Thomer
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Niche modeling: Ecological metaphors for sustainable software in science (2013)
    arXiv preprint arXiv:1309.1810 Authors: Nicholas Weber, Andrea Thomer, Michael Twidale
  • Conference Proceeding
    Research Problems in Data Curation: Outcomes from the Data Curation Education in Research Centers Program (2013)
    AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, 1(Unknown Issue), pp. 1645 Authors: CL Palmer, MS Mayernik, Nicholas Weber, KS Baker, K Kelly, MR Marlino, CA Thompson
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    The Product and System Specificities of Measuring Curation Impact (2013)
    International Journal of Digital Curation, 8(2), pp. 223–234 Authors: Nicholas Weber, Andrea K Thomer, Matthew S Mayernik, Bob Dattore, Zaihua Ji, Steve Worley
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    The relevance of research data sharing and reuse studies (2013)
    Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 39(6), pp. 23–26 Author: Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Combined methods, thick descriptions: Languages of collaboration on Github (2012)
    Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 49(1), pp. 1–4 Author: Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Current trends and future directions in data curation research and education (2012)
    Journal of Web Librarianship, 6(4), pp. 305–320 Authors: Nicholas Weber, Carole L Palmer, Tiffany C Chao
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Integrating Conceptual and Empirical Studies of Data to Guide Curatorial Processes (2012)
    Authors: Carole L Palmer, Tiffany C Chao, Nicholas Weber, Simone Sacchi
  • Conference Proceeding
    Rainmakers, space mirrors and atmospheric vacuums: a bibliometric mapping of geoengineering research (2012)
    Proceedings of the 2012 iConference, pp. 639–640 Author: Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    System Slack in Cyberinfrastructure Development: Mind the Gaps (2012)
    Authors: Nicholas Weber, Karen S Baker
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Value and context in data use: Domain analysis revisited (2012)
    Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 49(1), pp. 1–10 Authors: Nicholas Weber, Karen S Baker, Andrea K Thomer, Tiffany C Chao, Carole L Palmer
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Knowledge Infrastructure: The Research Library’s Role in Information Transfer (2011)
    Author: Nicholas Weber
  • Technical Report
    Report on the Data Curation Research Summit (2011)
    Authors: Nicholas Weber, Tiffany C Chao, Carole L Palmer, Virgil E Varvel, Jr
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Shaken and stirred: ASIS&T 2011 attendee reactions to Shaking it up: embracing new methods for publishing, finding, discussing, and measuring our research output (2011)
    Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 48(1), pp. 1–2 Authors: Alex Garnett, Heather Piwowar, Kim Holmberg, Jason Priem, Christina K Pikas, Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Shaking it up: embracing new methods for publishing, finding, discussing, and measuring our research output (2011)
    Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 48(1), pp. 1–3 Authors: Alex Garnett, Kim Holmberg, Christina K Pikas, Heather Piwowar, Jason Priem, Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    The analytic potential of scientific data: Understanding re-use value (2011)
    Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 48(1), pp. 1–10 Authors: Carole L Palmer, Nicholas Weber, Melissa H Cragin
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Evaluating data citation and sharing policies in the environmental sciences (2010)
    Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 47(1), pp. 1–2 Authors: Nicholas Weber, Heather A Piwowar, Todd J Vision
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Which Life-Cycle? Data Curation and Records Management Education (2010)
    Author: Nicholas Weber
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Hebbian learning in the agglomeration of conducting particles (1999)
    Physical Review E, 59(3), pp. 3165 Authors: M Sperl, A Chang, Nicholas Weber, A Hübler

Presentations

  • Implementing Data Services for Indigenous Scholarship and Sovereignty (2023)
    International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology Conference (IASSIST 2023) - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
  • Data Services for Indigenous Scholarship and Sovereignty (DSISS) project (2022)
    Seattle, WA
  • Co-creating an NSF Proposal on Civic Innovation with Community Partners: Case study (2021)
    Going Public: Advocacy, Activism, and Building Trust - Online
  • Integrating Research and Teaching for Data Curation in iSchools (2020)
    2020 ASIS&T Virtual Annual Meeting - Virtual
  • Conceptual Models in Sociotechnical Systems (2020)
    2020 ASIS&T Virtual Annual Meeting - Virtual
  • Finite and Infinite Games: An Ethnography of Institutional Logics in Research Software Sustainability (2020)
    2020 ASIS&T Virtual Annual Meeting - Virtual
  • Infrastructures of Digital Humanities (2020)
    2020 ASIS&T Virtual Annual Meeting - Virtual
  • Knowledge infrastructure for qualitative inquiry (2020)
    Knowledge Infrastructures Workshop - Los Angeles, CA
  • SIG-CM2020 Conceptual Models in Digital Libraries, Archives, and Museums (2020)
    ACM/IEEEJoint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) - Online
  • Annotation for Transparent Inquiry: Innovating on openness in qualitative social science (2019)
    iAnnotate - Washington, D.C.
  • Open Data Publishing by Public Libraries (2019)
    Joint Conference on Digital Libraries - Urbana-Champaign, IL
  • Workshop on Conceptual Models in Digital Libraries, Archives, and Museums (2019)
    ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) - Urbana-Champaign, Illinois
  • Advancing Open Data: Aligning Education with Public Sector Data Challenges (2018)
    Association for Information Science & Technology Annual Meeting - Vancouver, British Columbia
  • Conceptualizing a Research Software Sustainability Institute (2018)
    National Science Foundation - Chicago, Illinois
  • Conceptualizing a Research Software Sustainability Institute (2018)
    National Science Foundation - Berkeley, California
  • Confronting the expanse of data education: From local open data to global cyberinfrastucture (2018)
    Association for Information Science & Technology Annual Meeting - Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
  • Educating information professionals for data challenges: From local open data to global cyberinfrastructure (2018)
    ASIS&T Annual Conference - Vancouver, British Columbia
  • Ontology Driven Data Discovery (2018)
    National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) - Annapolis, Maryland
  • Working Group 1 on Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (2018)
    Robert Wood Johnson Foundation - New York, New York
  • Working Group 2 on Annotation for Transparent Inquiry (2018)
    Robert Wood Johnson Foundation - New York, New York
  • Push, Pull, Spill: Election Data and Citizen Engagement in a Global Context (2017)
    Global Election Technology Summit - San Francisco, CA
  • CAQDAS Preservation for Developers (2016)
    Archiving Qualitative Data Software - New York, NY
  • Modeling Cultural Evolution with Metadata Collections (2016)
    International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications DC-2016 - Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Future of Software Citation (2015)
    Renaissance Computing Institute - Washington, D.C.