New Paradigms In Scholarly Communication (Ibm)

Open Science & Open Research - New Paradigms in Scholarly Communication Cornelius Puschmann University of Düsseldorf [email_address] 25 June 2008

Issues

Where are we?
The Web has given a huge and growing global community access to a wealth of knowledge
The bulk of this knowledge is not created by academics, whose main job is “knowledge creation”, but by “amateurs” who donate their spare time
Much of what academics create is locked away in specialized journals and publications
Paradox: those who could contribute most lag behind furthest
What are the reasons and where is change taking place?

Non-reasons
Proprietary, valuable information? (patents etc) in most cases no
Lost publishing revenue? (selling books) generally no, very few publications make the author money
Plagiarism? possible, but the risk exists with any form of publishing

Is it really “publishing”?
our interpretation of the Web is shaped by metaphors associated with paper, printing and publishing
e.g. “web sites / pages / forms ”, “ email ”,
but Web 2.0 is increasingly detaching itself from these sources

Why academia is resistant to opening up
parts of academia are still highly invested in paper
information overload
“Is change a good thing?”
“Why would I want people to find me?”
“It's open access if I have access, right?”

Reaction to perceived information overload
many researchers use paper-age methods to work with digital information
browsing instead of searching
“putting things on the Web” instead of “research happening on the Web”
finality vs. versioning
controlling quality and making available are conflated

“Is change a good thing?”
researchers tend to be traditionalists
peer-review, quality control etc central paradigms
lack of control, order and selection on the Web seen with skepticism by some
goal is generally to preserve tried and trusted procedures and port them to the Web (but does that work?)

“Why would I want people to find me?”
small, highly specialized and tightly knit research communities
inward-looking
assumption that nobody outside the field cares
lack of interdisciplinary focus

“It's open access if I have access, right?”
most academics have easy access to scholarly journals through their libraries
the libraries cover the subscription costs
many perceive this as “open access”
academics aren't directly affected by the costs associated with commercial publishing since they don't have to pay for it
younger researchers often can't risk challenging traditions - “publish or perish”

Change

Digital Humanities
new approach to Humanities (literary studies, musicology) using computational approaches and presentation techniques
new tools and methods have the potential to shine a new light on “old data”
http://www.projectbamboo.org/

WALS
www.wals.info
interactive atlas of the world's languages and their typological features (syntax, lexicon, phonology)
originally on paper and CD-ROM
now interactive, uses Google Maps
feature set and maps can be used for other projects (remixing)

OpenWetWare
www.openwetware.org
collaborative wiki for research labs in biology/biological engineering
started by grad students in 2004
originally used by two labs, now international project

ThoughtMesh
www.thoughtmesh.net
system for collaboratively tagging and linking scientific texts
content of parts can be assessed without reading everything
opens the door for “vertical papers”, i.e. finding, reading and citing small chunks of information instead of horizontally digesting the entire article

SciVee
www.scivee.tv
basically YouTube for scholarly content
“pubcast” accompanies/supplements a written paper
one clip for a paper on motor neurons in the spinal cord of mice has garnered 225.000 views since December 2007
especially attractive for content that can be described visually

Encyclopedia of Life
www.eol.org
Wikipedia for the world's species
developed (mostly) by experts using scientific taxonomy
attempt to concentrate all knowledge on living organisms on Earth in one resource
will include video, audio, photos and illustrations

Current approach to research and publishing + records uses = public not public
“human-readable” only
static
primarily textual

“Web-enabled” approach to research and publishing + records uses = public
semantically annotated
dynamic and interactive
different modes of presentation (audio, video)

Integrating and interlinking academic content

Using blogs in teaching

“Web-enabling” content from scholarly journals

E-journal editor's blog

Thanks for listening!

New Paradigms In Scholarly Communication (Ibm)

by Cornelius Puschmann on Jun 25, 2008

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New Paradigms In Scholarly Communication (Ibm) — Presentation Transcript