328 acord web_seminar2010

Editor's Notes

• #2: Team effort Funded by the ever-supportive Mellon foundation In depth, qualitative study targeted at answering burning questions at future of scholarship by looking at the central motivations and values of faculty.
• #3: Talk a little about how I frame our work. Importance of methods to judge veracity of what’s being done. Rigorous, dispassionate social scientists with training in sociology, anthropology Not just marketing research. “ Young scholars” = pre-tenure Investigate all of the kinds of things that faculty are creating (primary and secondary sources) Sharing – given hype about crowdsourcing/Web 2.0/social media Also asked: What new, transformational, developments in your field are on the horizon? What do you need that you don’t have? What are young scholars doing?
• #6: Digital may have changed our practices, but young scholars may still have conservative values. This is based on: Self-selection into the field : (how many come from academic families, do particular disciplines provide a life style that suits/fuels their personality? Students go into history because they want to write a book, etc.) Socialization in graduate school (concerns with “jumping through the same hoops as their predecessors” and reward systems). We found no evidence to suggest that “tech-savvy” young graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, or assistant professors are bypassing traditional publishing practices. Young scholars do not appear to be submitting new forms of archival publication into their dossiers. In fact, as arguably the most vulnerable populations in the scholarly community, they hew to the norms of their chosen discipline. To do otherwise may be a “career risk”. In contrast, they are “hyperprofessionalized” because of increased competition for tenure-track positions at competitive institutions (due to the overproduction of Ph.D.s in many fields). Graduate students are very clear on where they need to publish to get tenure (they’re often explicitly told these things by faculty), and can rattle off the top journal names easily ( Cell paper is worth 10 points) . The advice given to pre-tenure scholars was quite consistent across all fields: focus on publishing in the right venues and avoid spending too much time on public engagement, committee work, writing op-ed pieces, developing websites, blogging, and other non-traditional forms of electronic dissemination (including courseware). The overproduction of Ph.D. problem has led to a glut of publications. It’s now “too easy to publish”, so traditional peer review remains important. Many worry that lack of peer review is associated with newer, untested forms of publication, such as electronic or OA journals. Number of pages publishable not restricted by cost for e-journals, thus editors of e-journals are not pressed to be as selective. No takeup of Web 2.0 tools (already known). Young scholars also have a fear of poaching or putting “half baked ideas” out into the ether in a way that could damage their early reputations. This is particularly the case in fields with commercial potential, low thresholds for sharing, and fast-moving currents, like biology and chemistry. Sharing work in these areas without receiving due credit may impact the ability to get future funding. Some mentors may “ban” their students from using tools like nature Network. They may use these venues for staying up to date, but not for sharing work. Young scholars generally don’t waste time releasing working papers because they have to first establish a reputation in PR venues. Exception: the arXiv and astrophysics. Young scholars on arXiv prefer the comments they get through that. Due to long journal turnaround time in the field, plus the idea that results are largely “accurate”, plus the lack of commercial funding and relatively small size of subfields, like astrophysics Exception: There is some indication that faculty in newer and less-established departments in the humanities and social sciences may be more amenable to risk-taking in publication practices since their particular institutions support such efforts to carve out the identity of niche departments. For instance, the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, or Maurizio Forte’s work in 3D archaeological modeling at UC Merced. Molecular and cell biology, for instance, may be unlikely to move to an arXiv model because grant funding in the field is highly competitive, there is tremendous commercial potential, there is a fast turnaround time to publication (with multiple outlets available), and scholars already face an overload of information (which likely would be exacerbated under a working paper/preprint system). Indeed, this is probably the case for all fields that are fast-moving, well-funded, highly competitive, and have commercial potential; chemistry would be such a field as well.
• #7: 1. Digital skills in their personal lives may not spill over to their professional activities. Need easy-to-use authoring tools + rigorous training in new methods. Moreover, some f that dig tech doesn’t constitute part of legitimate training. For instance, in archaeology, you may want to ‘feel the dirt’ rather than being stuck behind a GPS: http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/assessing-the-future-landscape-of-archaeological-communication/ New media outlets don’t necessary generate innovative scholarship. “ just illustrated projects” I think young scholars are probably more at home with computers in general than I am, because it was part of their learning at a much earlier stage. But I would say the test for me is not do you have computer wizards doing classics—the answer is yes—but instead, are there works in classics that have come up, which are excellent particularly because of their technological connections? I don’t know of one. 2. It may be after tenure that scholars have more room to innovate. I t is difficult to find experienced reviewers to review new forms of publication, so more risk-taking after tenure. But, with all of this said, some do have sophisticated skills and employ them in various stages of scholarly communication. Disciplines are becoming more computational, there is a digital “tipping point” in some fields, like archaeology. In astro, young scholars are computer savvy, writing programs, etc. Plus, in some cases, can provide technical support (biology in labs, archaeology with GIS, history and econ with data mining/mapping). The irony is that such young scholars may go into technical support positions, rather than tenure-track jobs.
• #8: Benefits of electronic literature Ease of access Ability to search within and across texts Surface old literature Ability to have enough information (e.g., software code, back-end data, text archives, etc.) Concerns with the digitization of scholarly communication. Researcher practices may precede adequate shifts in the IT infrastructure. As students rely more and more heavily on online resources for literature, there is a problem preserving the continuity of good work in a field (as students may miss work that has not yet been digitized, or is not available as widely). Senior scholars are concerned about research literacy and how selective digitization can impact young scholars who may not dig deeper than a google search, etc. No time to get to the library! “Not everything made it into PubMed” Like Dave – so many brands in cyterspace – churn As more and more work is available online in various forms, there is a concern that young scholars may not be able to independently assess the quality of work that is not unvetted. Thus, senior scholars direct their students towards outlets with associated prestige. Drowning in preprints! Young scholars do more searching now and less browsing (except for TOC alerts). But, generally, young scholars tend to go to established portals (with keyword or TOC alerts), and then supplement this with Google searches. They are becoming very narrow. It’s difficult to keep up to date!
• #11: Sciences/some social sciences – compete with commercial publishers/professional editors The American Society for Cell Biology publishes Molecular Biology of the Cell Stanford University Libraries' HighWire Press® assists in the publication of Mol. Biol. Cell Find out the niche markets to see if new publication outlets need to be created for interdisciplinary work, etc. (Anno’s point re: iSchool). Humanities – not enough journals – esp. for work in progress to test arguments that take years to come out in book form. Maybe even “long-form articles” instead of books, especially for new Ph.D.s? That way they can get on to writing the next book already! Society of 17 th century music
• #12: New outlets should offer: Faster turnaround time for young scholars. New scholar-run journals with prestigious editorial teams that can compete with commercial publishers in some fields and provide a respected publication outlet for young scholars. High quality editorial teams can influence young scholars to publish there. Affordable and accessible publication options for young scholars in fields/institutions with OA mandates. How does peer review figure into this? More checks on reliability/verifiability during peer review – sharing peer reviews, checks on biased editors, etc. Better ways to evaluate multiple authorship, interdisciplinary work.
• #13: Wesleyan – Mark Slobin Stanford – Jon Christenson CNMAT, Berkeley, music transfer protocol
• #14: + Some kind of publication series/stamp
• #15: Young scholars need: Support for managing and preserving new research methods and products including components of natural language processing, visualization, complex distributed databases, and GIS, among many others. As fields become more computational, young scholars will bear the brunt for organizing and managing complex databases. Therefore, they’re going to be looking for help with stewardship/publication. In Astro, which is federally funded, guidelines for data sharing are not mandatory…but are seen to be for the common good. - Ditto on Econ. So, need a place to share data. **If a community needs data sharing, create the place. Also, preservation issues **Need place for grey material! Jump into the computational space!!! Compete with Elsevier’s data mining thing!!!
• #16: Data messiness Proprietary business data Medical research with human subjects