Keynote given at the NFAIS 2018 meeting in Alexandria, Virginia, USA on 28 February 2018 The world of information is transforming at a bewildering pace. The assumptions of yesterday, the stable institutions and cherished practices increasingly seem to be vanishing before our eyes. The first assumption of any new strategy seems to be “what would this look like if we built it from scratch, today”. And yet continuity matters, we don’t build new tools, institutions and practices from scratch, they evolve in a messy and contingent way from what we have available to us in the moment. In this talk, Neylon unpicks the underlying drivers of change, and how they are coupled to a long history of how we manage information. Neylon will discuss how the different perspectives of important groups—scholars, publishers, funders, platform providers and the myriad of information professionals—lead to a partial focus that can make us simultaneously fearful of the change we see and blind to the shifts that actually matter. If the arc of history bends towards justice then it follows that the arc of our knowledge and information environment necessarily bends towards greater scale and greater diversity. At the same time it is the values that underpin scholarship and the various ways in which we identify with the project of building knowledge, that drive us forward. If we are to take advantage of change, we need to understand what it is that must stay the same.

1. Will we still recognize ourselves?
Identity and Community in a Transforming Information Environment
@cameronneylon
cn@cameronneylon.net
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0068-716X

2. What is changing?

3. Now, about that filter...
Managing scientific information overload in on the web
NFAIS Meeting 28 February 2010, Philadelphia

4. Me: A brief history

5. Finished highschool 1990...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/elsie/105716382 CC-BY

6. “You need to spend half a
day a week in the library
reading the new journals”
My project supervisor, 1994
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevecadman/486261295 CC-BY-SA

7. Over the course of my PhD...

8. ...day to day search went from...

9. http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevecadman/486261295 CC-BY-SA

10. http://web.archive.org/web/19990208214440/http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

11. ...everyone I know is
subscribed to TOC alerts

12. ...and no-one I know
is reading them...

13. Information overload...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dylanroscover/3450505729 CC-BY-SA

16. http://www.flickr.com/photos/luc/2515255357
Based on the
network I built

17. …an open network

19. As a concept…open is reactionary; it
gains meaning largely through a
consideration of what it is not.
Tkacz (2012)

20. Two assertions…

21. 1. Knowledge Grows

22. de Solla Price, Big Science, Little Science (1963)
Nlm.nih.gov
Schofer and Meyer (2005), American Sociological Review 70:898

23. de Solla Price, Big Science, Little Science (1963)
Nlm.nih.gov
Schofer and Meyer (2005), American Sociological Review 70:898

24. de Solla Price, Big Science, Little Science (1963)
Nlm.nih.gov
Schofer and Meyer (2005), American Sociological Review 70:898

25. 2. Knowledge is made by groups

26. ESOTERIC
EXOTERIC
Ludwig Fleck (1981 [1935])
Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact

29. *

30. *

31. Knowledge is a product of translation

32. General knowledge is produced at the
boundaries of group in contact/conflict

33. 1. Knowledge Grows

34. 2. Knowledge is made by groups

37. Groups do not scale…

40. Adapted from an original
Created by Richard Slade
from the Noun Project

46. Adapted from an original
Created by Richard Slade
from the Noun Project

47. …and yet it grows…

48. 1
10
100
1000
10000
100000
1000000
10000000
1800 1850 1900 1950 2000
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed

49. Culture & institutions support scaling…

50. …but also have limits to scale

51. Growth
Intrinsic Limit
Endogenous Innovation
Growth
Intrinsic Limit
Adoption

52. Innovations/Institutions
are endogenous

53. There will always be a next crisis…

54. Distribution/Logistics Limitations
1950 1975 2000

55. IndustrialisationDistribution/Logistics Limitations
1950 1975 2000

56. IndustrialisationDistribution/Logistics Limitations
1950 1975 2000
What counts as scholarly? Peer Review

57. Many of the discussions of the future at
CERN and the LHC era end with the
question – “Yes, but how will we ever keep
track of such a large project?”

58. Many of the discussions of the future at
CERN and the LHC era end with the
question – “Yes, but how will we ever keep
track of such a large project?”
https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html

59. IndustrialisationDistribution/Logistics Limitations
1950 1975 2000
What counts as scholarly? Peer Review
The Web
?
Discoverability/Siloing
Trust

60. 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005 2015
IndustrialisationDistribution/Logistics Limitations
1950 1975 2000
What counts as scholarly? Peer Review
The Web
?
Discoverability/Siloing
Trust

61. …and yet it grows…

62. “Open” as the engine of scaling

63. What is “scholarly” culture?

64. He who receives an idea from me, receives
instruction himself without lessening
mine; as he who lights his taper at mine,
receives light without darkening me.
Thomas Jefferson

65. [ideas are as if] benevolently designed by
nature, when she made them, like fire,
expansible over all space, without
lessening their density in any point;
Thomas Jefferson

66. . . . I dare speak confidently and
positively of very few things, except of
matters of fact.
Robert Boyle

67. “Of my being somewhat prolix […] I thought
it necessary to deliver things circumstantially,
that the Person I addressed them to might,
without mistake, and with as little trouble as
is possible, be able to repeat such unusual
Experiments”
Robert Boyle

68. [I will answer Linus’ objections] partly,
because the Learned Author, whoever he be
having forborne provoking Language in his
Objections, allowes me in answering them to
comply with my Inclinations & Custom of
exercising Civility, even where I most dissent
in point of Judgement.”
Robert Boyle

69. [I] speak so doubtingly, and use so often,
perhaps, it seems, it is not improbable,
and such other expressions, as argue a
diffidence of the truth of the opinions I
incline to, and that I should be so shy of
laying down principles
Robert Boyle

70. Universalism, Communalism,
Organised Skepticism, Disinterestedness
Merton

71. “Science” is an old culture that has
survived over a long period

72. (Gradual, limited, imperfect)
openness is an old aspiration

73. *

74. Diversity is a first order principle
for knowledge creation

75. …which means that translators are key

76. *

77. …but so is community/identity…

78. …and therefore exclusion

79. IndustrialisationDistribution/Logistics Limitations
1950 1975 2000
What counts as scholarly? Peer Review
The Web
?
Discoverability/Siloing
Trust
Opening Up

80. IndustrialisationDistribution/Logistics Limitations
1950 1975 2000
What counts as scholarly? Peer Review
The Web
?
Discoverability/Siloing
Trust
Opening Up
Closing Down

81. IndustrialisationDistribution/Logistics Limitations
1950 1975 2000
What counts as scholarly? Peer Review
The Web
?
Discoverability/Siloing
Trust
Opening Up
Closing Down
Opening Up
Closing Down

82. Institutions for Productive Conflict

83. Institutions for Productive Boundaries

84. A culture of openness…

85. …supporting communities of identity

86. [They are]…precisely inventing through
the intermediary of instruments and the
artifice of the laboratory, the
displacement of points of view that is so
indispensable to public life.
Latour, Politics of Nature

87. How can one take new beings into
account if one cannot radically change
the position of one’s gaze?
Latour, Politics of Nature

89. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mgifford/3558463424 CC-BY-SA

90. ...tools to summarise, filter,
and integrate diverse
sources of information...

91. ...abstracts, summaries,
indexes of people and the
tools to help me use them to
build the network I want...

92. …a network I can trust

93. …a network we all trust.

94. Who might be well
placed to do that?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardmoross/3947406286 CC-BY

95. @cameronneylon
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0068-716X