1.
Open Science & Open Research - New Paradigms in Scholarly Communication Cornelius Puschmann University of Düsseldorf [email_address] 25 June 2008

2.
Issues

3.
Where are we? <ul><li>The Web has given a huge and growing global community access to a wealth of knowledge </li></ul><ul><li>The bulk of this knowledge is not created by academics, whose main job is “knowledge creation”, but by “amateurs” who donate their spare time </li></ul><ul><li>Much of what academics create is locked away in specialized journals and publications </li></ul><ul><li>Paradox: those who could contribute most lag behind furthest </li></ul><ul><li>What are the reasons and where is change taking place? </li></ul>

4.
Non-reasons <ul><li>Proprietary, valuable information? (patents etc) in most cases no </li></ul><ul><li>Lost publishing revenue? (selling books) generally no, very few publications make the author money </li></ul><ul><li>Plagiarism? possible, but the risk exists with any form of publishing </li></ul>

5.
Is it really “publishing”? <ul><li>our interpretation of the Web is shaped by metaphors associated with paper, printing and publishing </li></ul><ul><li>e.g. “web sites / pages / forms ”, “ email ”, </li></ul><ul><li>but Web 2.0 is increasingly detaching itself from these sources </li></ul>

6.
Why academia is resistant to opening up <ul><li>parts of academia are still highly invested in paper </li></ul><ul><li>information overload </li></ul><ul><li>“Is change a good thing?” </li></ul><ul><li>“Why would I want people to find me?” </li></ul><ul><li>“It's open access if I have access, right?” </li></ul>

7.
Reaction to perceived information overload <ul><li>many researchers use paper-age methods to work with digital information </li></ul><ul><li>browsing instead of searching </li></ul><ul><li>“putting things on the Web” instead of “research happening on the Web” </li></ul><ul><li>finality vs. versioning </li></ul><ul><li>controlling quality and making available are conflated </li></ul>

8.
“Is change a good thing?” <ul><li>researchers tend to be traditionalists </li></ul><ul><li>peer-review, quality control etc central paradigms </li></ul><ul><li>lack of control, order and selection on the Web seen with skepticism by some </li></ul><ul><li>goal is generally to preserve tried and trusted procedures and port them to the Web (but does that work?) </li></ul>

9.
“Why would I want people to find me?” <ul><li>small, highly specialized and tightly knit research communities </li></ul><ul><li>inward-looking </li></ul><ul><li>assumption that nobody outside the field cares </li></ul><ul><li>lack of interdisciplinary focus </li></ul>

10.
“It's open access if I have access, right?” <ul><li>most academics have easy access to scholarly journals through their libraries </li></ul><ul><li>the libraries cover the subscription costs </li></ul><ul><li>many perceive this as “open access” </li></ul><ul><li>academics aren't directly affected by the costs associated with commercial publishing since they don't have to pay for it </li></ul><ul><li>younger researchers often can't risk challenging traditions - “publish or perish” </li></ul>

11.
Change

12.
Digital Humanities <ul><li>new approach to Humanities (literary studies, musicology) using computational approaches and presentation techniques </li></ul><ul><li>new tools and methods have the potential to shine a new light on “old data” </li></ul><ul><li>http://www.projectbamboo.org/ </li></ul>

13.
WALS <ul><li>www.wals.info </li></ul><ul><li>interactive atlas of the world's languages and their typological features (syntax, lexicon, phonology) </li></ul><ul><li>originally on paper and CD-ROM </li></ul><ul><li>now interactive, uses Google Maps </li></ul><ul><li>feature set and maps can be used for other projects (remixing) </li></ul>

14.
OpenWetWare <ul><li>www.openwetware.org </li></ul><ul><li>collaborative wiki for research labs in biology/biological engineering </li></ul><ul><li>started by grad students in 2004 </li></ul><ul><li>originally used by two labs, now international project </li></ul>

15.
ThoughtMesh <ul><li>www.thoughtmesh.net </li></ul><ul><li>system for collaboratively tagging and linking scientific texts </li></ul><ul><li>content of parts can be assessed without reading everything </li></ul><ul><li>opens the door for “vertical papers”, i.e. finding, reading and citing small chunks of information instead of horizontally digesting the entire article </li></ul>

16.
SciVee <ul><li>www.scivee.tv </li></ul><ul><li>basically YouTube for scholarly content </li></ul><ul><li>“pubcast” accompanies/supplements a written paper </li></ul><ul><li>one clip for a paper on motor neurons in the spinal cord of mice has garnered 225.000 views since December 2007 </li></ul><ul><li>especially attractive for content that can be described visually </li></ul>

17.
Encyclopedia of Life <ul><li>www.eol.org </li></ul><ul><li>Wikipedia for the world's species </li></ul><ul><li>developed (mostly) by experts using scientific taxonomy </li></ul><ul><li>attempt to concentrate all knowledge on living organisms on Earth in one resource </li></ul><ul><li>will include video, audio, photos and illustrations </li></ul>

18.
Current approach to research and publishing + records uses = public not public <ul><li>“human-readable” only </li></ul><ul><li>static </li></ul><ul><li>primarily textual </li></ul>

19.
“Web-enabled” approach to research and publishing + records uses = public <ul><li>semantically annotated </li></ul><ul><li>dynamic and interactive </li></ul><ul><li>different modes of presentation (audio, video) </li></ul>

20.
Integrating and interlinking academic content

21.
Using blogs in teaching

22.
“Web-enabling” content from scholarly journals

23.
E-journal editor's blog

24.
Thanks for listening!