This document discusses challenges and opportunities for scholars and the scholarly enterprise in the digital age. It notes that digital technologies have disrupted traditional scholarly communications and enabled new forms of collaboration and open access to resources. However, it also warns of potential issues like data deluge, fragmentation of discourse, and shifting standards of peer review. The document advocates for flexible systems, partnerships, and strong institutional vision and strategy to help universities and scholars adapt to changes and ensure scholarship continues to thrive in the digital age.

1. Scholars, Scholarship and the Scholarly
Enterprise in the Digital Age
DET/CHE
November 29, 2011
San
Francisco, California
Richard N. Katz

2. Street Cred
PUBLICATIONS
Restoration of the North Pacific Coast Locomotive No. 12,
SONOMA, (California State Railroad Museum Technical Paper
No. 1, 1978).
The Legal Struggle to Abolish the House UnAmerican Activities
Committee: Papers of Jeremiah Gutman. (Meiklejohn Press,
1980).
The National Lawyers Guild: An Inventory of Records and
Index to Periodicals. (Meiklejohn Press, 1981).
Committed To Excellence in Records Management. Joint
Authorship with Richard P. West. (The Office, 1986).
The Academic Computing Environment. (Directors of
Educational Technology/California Higher Education,
1990).
Implementing the Vision: A Framework and Agenda for
Investing in Academic Computing. Joint authorship with
Richard P. West. (EDUCOM Review, 1990).
Sustaining Excellence in the 21st Century: A Vision And
Strategies For College And University Administration. Joint
authorship with Richard P. West. (CAUSE Professional Paper,
1992).
The Impact of Automation on our Corporate Memory. Joint
authorship with Victoria A. Davis, in Corporate Archives and
History. (Krieger, 1992).
Academic Information Management at the Crossroads: Time
Again To Review the Economics. (Serials Review, 1992).

3. The Digital Age, Part 1

4. Digital Age, Part 2
Real Disruption
• Sharp decline in
newspaper revenues
• No online business model
• No one under 30 years old
reads paper newspapers
• ≠ the end of news or the
end of news reporting

5. The Digital Age, Part 2
“We are today as far into
the electric age as the
Elizabethans had
advanced into the
Typographical Age.”
Marshall McLuhan, 1962,
The Gutenberg Galaxy
… The past dissolves before
the future resolves.”

6. Tool or Torrent?

7. The Scholar
A Renaissance
• Connected
• Empowered
• Enlarged
communities
• Less busy-ness
• Efficient

8. Busy-ness and the
Life of Scholar

9. Ending the
Busy-ness of Scholarship
• Discover
• Retrieve
• Assess
• Annotate
• Tag Dr. Ron Yanosky
EDUCAUSE Center
• Index for Applied Research
• Store
• In digital form 7x24x365

10. Liberation of the Scholar
• Optical fiber to the
home
• Wall size plasma
display
• From the Kuyper Belt
to your home
• World class Heidi Hammel,
Space Sciences Institute
science, loads of
public service and
time for the kids!

11. Scholarship
Research Teaching
Marie Curie
Application Integration

12. Pre Digital Age
Scholarly Communications

13. Scholarly Communications
in the Digital Age
Optiportal, UC San Diego and
University of Melbourne

14. Liberation of Scholarship

15. Liberation of Scholarly Resources
Hubble Telescope
Palomar 200 inch telescope, 1948

16. Scholarly Enterprise
• Declining
engagement
• Empty lecture
theatres
• Dwindling tutorials
• Rising Costs
• Continued low
participation by key
minorities in U.S.

17. Enterprise: Growth of For Profits
2005 2010
1999 2009
Institutions
--Number of public institutions 1,738 1,705
--Percentage of all institutions that are public 39.6% 36.8%
--Number of private, nonprofit institutions 1,745 1,713
--Percentage of all institutions that are private 39.7% 37.0%
--Number of for-profit institutions 909 1,215
--Percentage of all institutions that are for-profit 20.7% 26.2%
Enrollments
--Public institutions total 13,085,114 14,909,531
--Public institutions as a percentage of all students 74.5% 71.9%
--Private, nonprofit total 3,589,454 3,924,278
--Private, nonprofit as a percentage of all students 20.4% 18.9%
--For-profit total 899.896 1,893,712
--For-profit as a percentage of all students 5.1% 9.1%
Source: Inside Higher Education, January 18, 2011

18. Scholarly Enterprise:
Rise of the Edupunks
Jim Groom, with permission

19. Issues

20. Data Deluge and the
Curation of Knowledge
• Public good or private
good?
• Who will preserve
data for how long?
• IP rights management
• Privacy and access
controls
ISSUES

21. Scholarly Discourse: Tome, or Tweet?
ISSUES

22. Scholarly Isolation, Fragmentation and
the Shifting Locus of Scholarly Authority
• Scholarly isolation
• Fragmentation of the
scholarly landscape
• Continued decline of
the campus connection
• Balkanization of ideas
• Rising Incivility
ISSUES

23. Crowd Sourcing and the
Rise of Truthiness
Peer review by plebescite? Truthiness:
Shifting standards of scholarly “The quality of stating concepts
assessment one wishes or believes to be
true, rather than the facts.”
ISSUES

24. What Must We Do?
Operating
Philosophy
Standards Incentives
Flexible
Delivery Network of
System Partners

25. Summing Up
• Educational Technology is Better!
– Enabling and Disrupting
• Transformational Change is
Possible, even Likely
• Others will Make Change, too,
Making our Task Urgent
• There will be Giants and Minnows
– Institutions that are Guided by Strong Vision
and Strategy will Prosper
• Scholarship will Adapt (and prosper)
• This Community must help our Institutions
Adapt!

26. The Future?
• Shifting Societal Needs
• A Real and a Virtual Footprint
• S/he with the Best Metaphor Wins
• Strategies for Giants and Minnows
• Scholarship will Adapt (and prosper)
• The Big Challenges Relate to Purpose and Will
• Our Values Continue to Matter – More than Ever