Keith WebsterUniversity Librarian and Director of Learning Services

Berenika M. WebsterCentre for Information Behaviour and Evaluation of Research, University College London

Scholarly communication and electronic resources

Some questions

Scholarly communication What is the process? Who are the actors?

How is behaviour of scholars changing?How can libraries respond?

Structure

Changes in scholarshipResearch fundingE-researchScholarly communication crisisNew forms of scholarly communication and the academic response

Scholarly communication… technological and institutional means by which theories, interpretations, and findings are submitted to the scrutiny of expert disciplinary communities and then critiqued, endorsed, disseminated, synthesized and archived on behalf of broad community of teachers and learners

(Fyffe, 2001)

Informal – social/professional networks

Formal – publishing and making available

Players in the formal process

Funders establish research priorities provide resources,

Scholars do research write articles and provide quality assurance through peer review,

Publishers and learned societies accumulate copy-edit provide quality assurance through peer review produce market distribute,

Academic libraries buy archive provide access.

Drivers of changeShift in knowledge production mode

Funding structures and requirements

ICT

Crisis in scholarly publishing system

Shifts in knowledge production

Mode 1 and Mode 2“Traditional science” and reflexive researchTriple helix of overlapping interests (university, government and industry)

Modes of knowledge production

Driven by end-usersInterdisciplinary knowledgeCollaborative across sectorsTransitory research teamsAccountability (social and economic) to range of stakeholdersQuality control (academic merit, cost effectiveness, economic and social relevance)

(Gibbons [et al], 1994)

Driven by academic disciplineKnowledge framed by disciplinary normsDeeply institutionalisedAccountability to peersScientist is expertQuality control by peer review and contribution to discipline

Mode 1 Mode 2

Diverse location of research (university, hospital, industry, research institutes)Collaboration amongst teamsInterdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarityFocus on problems rather than techniquesChanging modes of communication (more informal and ICT based)Guarding of intellectual property

Emerging practice

Implications for libraries

Broad-based collectionsGreater need for information specialistInformation skills training in disciplinary landscapesRemote access – sometimes overseasLicence issues for collaborators

Funding structures and requirements 1External fundingDiverse source of funding

Government Not-for-profit Industry

Economic outcomes increase wealth creation & prosperity improve nation’s health, environment & quality of life

InnovationImproved competitiveness“Commercialisation” of researchLess “curiosity-driven” activity

Funding structures and requirements 2

Evaluation, evaluation, evaluation… intellectual merit cost-effectiveness or “value for money” economic and social relevance

Requirements of research assessment increased quantity of published outputs increased “quality” of outputs

Compliance requirements published outputs in open access storage and re-use of data sets

UK Research Assessment Exercise (1980s)New Zealand Performance Based Research Fund (2003/2006)Australia Research Quality Framework (2008)Portfolio of evidence; metrics

Research assessment exercises

Percentages of UK biomedical papers acknowledging support from five main sectors, 1989-2000

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

No funding ack. UK Govt UK PNP Industry Foreign International

% o

f al

l U

K R

OD

pap

ers

1989-92 1993-96 1997-00

Numbers of UK biomedical papers and authors per paper, 1989-2000

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

35000

1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000

Pape

rs p

er y

ear

5+

4

3

2

1

Percentage of UK biomedical papers co-authored internationally, 1989-2000

0

4

8

12

16

20

24

28

32

36

1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000

% o

f al

l U

K p

aper

s

Other addAustralia addwith US addwith EU add

Implications for libraries

Institutional focus on research may reduce funding to support teachingPressure on researchers may require libraries to become more student focussedEmergence of e-learningGreater demand for research collectionsFocus on collections for immediate use rather than “just-in-case”Licence issues for overseas collaboration

ICT and e-research (1)

Democratisation of informal networks“De-formalisation” of formal networks open publishing and self-archiving open peer review blogs and discussion boards

ICT and e-research (2)Cyberinfrastructure to support e -science

Atkins, 2004

ICT and e-research (3)Decrease in the use of physical librariesAccess to wider range of materials

depth (backfiles) breadth (interdisciplinary databases; aggregator services) digital access to primary resources federated searching across various formats and

institutional collections (libraries/archives/museums) new ways of knowledge discovery (data mining) and

hyperlinking

Citation studies: low uptake of web-only materials. Questionnaires and interviews: web-only materials are important.

Implications for libraries

Changing pattern of use – what future the physical library?Need for broad ICT infrastructureNever-ending demand for e-contentNever-ending supply of e-contentData curation and repositoriesInformation literacyBudget pressures

Crisis in scholarly publishing system (1)

Numbers of titles are soaring publish or perish research assessment

Death of scholarly monograph? new breed of journals e-publishing only universities/funders subsidise costs for some

titles

Inflation rates for books and journal are soaringLibraries cannot keep up

Decrease in purchasing power (1)

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Buying power

Decrease in purchasing power (2)

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Buying power

Function ofavail info

Crisis in scholarly publishing system (2)

Scholars have lost control of the formal communication system learned societies sell off titles peer review process secretive and biased;

unable to detect fraud

Commercial publishers have taken over scholarly information as commodity scholars freely giving away their research

outputs; libraries buying it from publishers; funders pay twice

Crisis in scholarly publishing system (3)

Problems with publishing in a traditional model

space constraints and high rejection rates from premium journals

slow to produce fewer monographs published no money to pay page charges no appropriate outlet for

multidisciplinary research

Crisis in scholarly publishing system (4)

Electronic publications Faster turn-around of submission/revision/publication

Models As a supplement to traditional print journal (with full content or

part content in e-format); subscription based (majority of commercial publications)

Electronic only publication; subscription based Open access

Digital versions of print journals “free to air” (e.g. BMJ) Open access e-only journals (PubMedCentral) Who pays?

Self-archiving institutional or subject repositories pre-print archives poor knowledge of copyright slow uptake by researchers

Implications for libraries

Budget pressuresBalance between print and electronicBalance between journal and bookPromotion of open accessFuture sustainability of open access

Academic behaviour: disciplinary differences

Science, technology and medicine •Rapidly changing user needs•Digital everything – especially big data sets•Electronic journals – bundling•New scholarly comms models emerging – especially open access

Social Sciences•Diverse users including theoreticians and practitioners •Research needs vary from big data sets to traditional monographs•Collection has patchy strengths but has been less prominent historically•Resource discovery challenges

Arts and Humanities•Not just traditional academic researchers•Increasing interdisciplinarity and collaboration•Fewer foreign-language literate researchers•Changing user needs in digital age – some disciplines ‘going digital’ more quickly than others

Sources of information

JISC, 2005

Medical and biological sciences

Physical sciences

and engineering

Social sciences

Languages and area studies

Arts and humanities

Pre-prints 5.8% 1.4% 1.0%

Post-prints 6.3% .9% 3.9%

Journal articles 90.7% 71.6% 69.3% 28.0% 27.2%

Conference proceedings

5.8% .5% 1.0%

Books .6% 1.4% 9.2% 50.0% 35.9%

Datasets 4.3% 3.4% 7.8% 2.0% 2.9%

Technical reports 1.0%

Govt or NGO reports

1.2% 2.3%

Legal sources .5%

Other textual 3.7% 10.0% 14.6%

Non-textual .6% .5% 2.0% 8.7%

Other 2.5% 4.8% 4.1% 8.0% 4.9%

Informal mechanisms of locating information

Asking a colleague

Emailing a colleague or peer

Reading email

newsletters

Posting an enquiry to an email

list

Reading blogs

Medical and biological sciences

80.2% 87.0% 17.9% 11.7% 4.3%

Physical sciences and engineering

81.9% 81.9% 21.9% 12.4% 4.3%

Social sciences

76.0% 78.2% 35.6% 15.1% 7.1%

Languages and area studies

74.0% 80.0% 16.0% 12.0% 2.0%

Arts and humanities

76.7% 79.6% 31.1% 21.4% 6.8%

JISC, 2005

Resource discovery tools

Medical and biological sciences

Physical sciences and engineering

Social sciences

Languages and area studies

Arts and humanities

Other 13.0% 5.7% 6.7% 8.0% 3.9% Subject-specific abstracts and indexes

18.5% 20.6% 22.4% 6.0% 13.6%

Subject-specific online gateways

22.8% 3.3% 6.7% 2.0% 2.9%

General bibliographic resources

9.9% 11.5% 15.2% 46.0% 29.1%

Citation databases

21.0% 21.5% 9.9% 4.0% 3.9%

Search engines 14.8% 36.4% 35.9% 24.0% 36.9% Work of reference

0% 1.0% 3.1% 10.0% 9.7%

JISC, 2005

Availability of resources

A lot of what I want is in Baghdad… (Cuneiform studies)

Archives are widely scattered. Library holdings of journals and printed sources are patchy even in London. It all means much travelling and time wasted. (Naval and maritime history)

The list of journals taken by our University Library is reduced each year; this is certainly not peculiar to my particular interests (Economics)

Availability of e-content (arts and humanities)

Yes Some No

Journals 55.5 25.4 10.1

Books 6.4 14.4 78.2

Manuscripts 4.5 19.3 76.1

Archives 3.6 0 96.4

Editions and sources 46.2 19.2 34.6

Maps 32.0 24.0 44.0

Newspapers 50.0 27.8 22.2

Rare books 16.7 44.4 38.9

Government documents

5.0 31.2 18.2

New opportunities opened up by e-resources

I am beginning to explore using 3-D modelling of buildings and computer replications of lighting effects. (Byzantine art history)

Interactive survey data, newspaper archives world wide. (Sociology, Anthropology)

Digital versions of government documents allow one to perform your own analysis on them (e.g. coding voluminous documents for subsequent quantitative analysis. (Public policy and administration).

Electronic data sources are essentially new in their richness and scale. (Economic and social history)

The A2A site has opened up a wealth of searchable catalogues for archives a cross the country. This has made locating interesting material much more convenient. (Early modern history)

Neuro-imaging databases such as the one at Dartmouth in US. (Psychology)

What do academics want ?More electronic content from desktopContinuing/long-term accessMaintaining authenticity and integrity of e-resourcesElectronic access to primary materialsMore backfiles (e.g. popularity of JSTOR)Reliable IT Explain the maze (I&A; full-text; aggregator; OPAC; etc.)Seamless access/transitionsCustomisation “In-time” service

Informal communication networks

Libraries cannot (and should not) ignoreWhat is our role?Blogs, wikis, emailWeb 2.0 and social networking

Implications for librariesLiaisonPublishers of contentSupport for Cyberinfrastructure

Online access to complete back-archives of literature.

Stewardship and curation services for enormous collections of scientific data.

Digital repositories for diverse digital objects as instructional material and works in progress.

Digitized special collections.

More continuous (vs. batch) and open forms of scholarly communication.

Individual and community customization information services.

Licensing and accessCostPublisher practices: bundling

Some issues for librarians

Users want e-everythingBut still want print as back-upHow do we provide technology to navigate e-landscape?How do we cope with budget pressures?

THANK YOU

CONCERTElsevierDr Berenika WebsterUniversity of QueenslandAll of you for listening

QUESTIONS?