Innovations in Scholarly Communication and the Rise of Web 2.0 Scholarship

Michelle WillmersScholarly Communication in Africa ProgrammeCC-BY-SA

- Conducting research, developing ideas and informal communications.

- Preparing, shaping and communicating what will become formal research outputs.

- Disseminating formal outputs.- Managing personal careers, and research teams and

programmes.- Communicating scholarly ideas to broader communities.

Defining Scholarly Communication in the internet era (Thorin, 2003)

Traditional Scholarly Communication

Conceptualisation

Data Collection

Data Analysis

Findings

Engagement

Translation

Conceptual frameworks

Literature reviews

Bibliographies

Proposals

Data sets

Conference papers

Audio recordings

Images

Interview transcripts

Books

Reports

Journal articles

Technical papers

Notes

Presentations

Lectures

Interviews

Student

Community

Scholar

Image CC-BY-SA Laura Czerniewicz

Traditional Scholarship

• Relatively contained disciplinary context.• Relatively clear scholarly community.• Relatively clear boundaries.• Particular points of engagement.

- Need for academic rigour > quality assurance/peer review.- Need to build reputation and collaborative partnerships.

>>> Journals and monographs remain the central currency(RIN 2010)

Some things have stayed the same …

But certain things are very different …• Collaborative focus

• Interdisciplinary push

• Granular

• Immediacy factor

• Suited to addressing socio-economic imperatives and collaborative breakthrough

• Openness (process, findings, outputs)

Web 2.0 scholarship plays out in multiple environments utilising various tools/platforms.

Gold Route- Primary publication in open-access journals.- 7 070 journals (DOAJ 2011)

Green Route- Self-archiving of scholarly content prior to, in parallel with,

or after publication.- New movement not restricting this content to journal

articles – includes ‘grey literature’ (reports, etc.)- 2085 repositories worldwide (DOAR 2011)

1. Open Access

2. Open Research

• Replicable (transparency - method)

• Reusable (results free for re-use and appropriation)

• Replayable (tools available for appropriation)

• Immediacy (more speedily available)

• Granular in approach

3. Open Data

4. Free/Open Source Software

Creative Commons licensing of content in the public domain enables control over:- Commercialisation by third parties- Right to produce derivatives- Ensuring attribution

5. Alternative Licensing Mechanisms

“Web 2.0 is widely seen as providing a technical platform essential to this ‘re-evolution’ of science.”(Waldrop 2008)

But not just about appropriation of new technologies. Also changing how we produce and communicate information.

“Web 2.0 services emphasise decentralised and collective generation, assessment and organisation of information, often with new forms of technological intermediation.”(Surowieki 2004)

• New ways of describing content (and looking for it). Metadata as passport to participation.

• New ways of tracking usage.• Aggregation crucial.• Blogging and social networking as mechanisms for research

and collaboration.• Outputs of social web become part of the scholarly record.• Rise of the global networked scholar.

Scholarship 2.0

New Models of Scholarly Communication

Conceptualisation

Data Collection

Data Analysis

Findings

Engagement

Translation

Conceptual frameworks

Literature ReviewsBibliographi

esProposals

Data sets

Conference papers

Audio recordings

Images

Interview transcripts

Books

Reports

Journal articles Technical papers

Notes

Presentations

Lectures

Interviews

Image CC-BY-SA Laura Czerniewicz

New questions arise…

• What does this mean for peer review and quality control?• What does this mean for how we measure and reward

research (and the notion of ‘impact’?)?

http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/

Bibliometrics mined impact on  the first scholarly Web. altmetrics mines impact on the next one.(Priem 2012)

The social web and science

58k tweets mention scientific articles (with a DOI, PMID or arxiv ID), 1 – 31 July 2011.http://buzzdata.com/stew/tweets-linking-to-scientific-papers-jul-2011#!/overview

Highly tweeted articles 11 times more likely to be highly cited than less-tweeted articles.Tweets can predict highly cited articles within the first 3 days of article publication. Social media activity either increases citations or reflects the underlying qualities of the article that also predict citations(Eysenbach 2011)

Hype Cycle of educational Technologies (2010) (Bozalek et al. 2012)

Contours of adoption

“Frequency of use of the kinds of web 2.0 tools associated with producing, sharing and commenting on scholarly content is positively associated with older age groups, at least up to age 65, and more senior positions. The propensity for frequent use is highest among the 35–44 age group and lowest among those under 25.” (RIN 2010)

“Those who work in collaboration with different institutions are significantly more likely to be frequent or occasional users of web 2.0 services associated with producing, sharing or commenting on scholarly content.” (RIN 2010)

Exploring utility of web 2.0

• Social filtering mechanism to cope with deluge of new information

• Keeping in touch with colleagues and fostering collaboration

• Helping to manage projects• Aid to dissemination

ReferencesBozalek V, N’gambi D & Gachago D (in press) Emerging Technologies in South African HEIs: Institutional enables and constraintsEysenbach G (2011) Can Tweets Predict Citations? Metrics of Social Impact Based on Twitter and Correlation with Traditional Metrics of Scientific Impact. Journal of Medical Internet Research 13(4). Available at: http://www.jmir.org/2011/4/e123Priem J (2012) Toward a Second Revolution: altmetrics, total-impact, and the decoupled journal. Presented at Purdue University, 14 February 2012. Available at: https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddfg787c_362f465q2g5RIN (Research Information Network) (2010) If you build it, will they come? How researchers perceive and use web 2.0. Available at: http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research/use-and-relevance-web-20-researchersSurowieki J (2004) The wisdom of crowds. Why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies and nations. New York: DoubledayThorin SE (2003) Global changes in scholarly communication. In SC Hsianghoo, PWT Poon and C McNaught (eds) eLearning and Digital Publishing. Dordrecht: Springer. Available at http://www.springerlink.com/content/w873x131171x2421/Waldrop M (2008) Science 2.0: Great new tool, or great risk? Scientific American. Available at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=science-2-point-0-great-new-tool-or-great-risk