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A blind spot? Digital infrastructures for digital publishing and for academic blogging in particular Marin Dacos – CNRS OpenEdition –Director 2013 October 14th

4. a blind spot. digital infrastructures for academic blogging

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This communication if a part of the panel Minor forms of academic communication: revamping the relationship between science and society? at the World social sciences forum http://www.wssf2013.org/fr/panel-comit%C3%A9/minor-forms-academic-communication-revamping-relationship-between-science-and-society A blind spot? Digital infrastructures for digital publishing, and for academic blogging in particular Author: Mr. Marin Dacos - OpenEdition After several centuries of development, knowledge technologies today form a highly organised ecosystem, structured around books and journals and with its own clearly identified professions, infrastructures and actors. From publishers to librarians, authors to booksellers, a book industry has emerged and encourages the circulation of ideas. With the rise of the network, these roles are slowly being redefined and new actors are rapidly emerging. The 2006 ACLS report (“Our Cultural Commonwealth: The Report of the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences”) is one of the first signs of recognition of the need for digital infrastructures. These infrastructures are not simply confined to “noble” publications i.e. books and journals. They also concern the so-called minor forms of academic communication. Yet developing such infrastructures requires much more than simply installing a server under a desk. On the contrary, digital infrastructures necessitate the creation of platforms, which in turn entail the emergence of new teams and new professions – those of digital publishing. These platforms are often developed or bought up by predatory multinationals (for example, Mendeley absorbed by Elsevier). Academic-led alternatives do exist (Zotero for bibliographies, Hypotheses for blogs), yet the academic community has failed to fully recognise the associated opportunities and risks. The academy has every interest in making sure it does not become marginalised within its own infrastructures. The alternative is to reproduce the vagaries of the extraordinarily concentrated global publishing system, which has stripped the research sector of some of its intellectual and budgetary initiative-taking capacities.

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A blind spot?Digital infrastructures for digital publishing

and for academic blogging in particular

Marin Dacos – CNRSOpenEdition –Director2013 October 14th

• A. The big conversation• B. The rise of the platforms• C. Hypotheses as a platform• D. The digital infrastructures gap

Academic blogging : the missing linkpublic

oral written

private

(conversation)

(conference) (publication)

(correspondance)

The conversation is the essence of collective thinking and research (disputatio)

Woodcut carved by Johann von Armssheim (1483). Portays a disputation between Christian and Jewish scholars (Soncino Blaetter, Berlin, 1929. Jerusalem, B. M. Ansbacher Collection). http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Disputation.jpg

A conversation : comments

2009 2010 2011 2012 20130.00

0.50

1.00

1.50

2.00

2.50

3.00

3.50

Average # of comments per post

A conversation : tweets

OpenEdition Books Calenda Revues.org Hypothèses0.00

0.02

0.04

0.06

0.08

0.10

0.12

0.14

Ratio Nb tweets by documentsept 2014

The silent conversation :fidelity of readership (sept. 2013)

Revues.org Calenda Hypotheses Hypotheses (english) Hypotheses (german)0.00

0.50

1.00

1.50

2.00

2.50

3.00

3.50

Fidelity score

Conversation again : referrers sept 2012-sept 2013 – Source : OpenEdition – Search engines are removed.

242 000 161 000 70 000

54 00022 000 500 000

* (1500 other refferers)

• A. The big conversation• B. The rise of the platforms• C. Hypotheses as a platform• D. The digital infrastructures gap

The Web is dominated by platforms

Welcome in the platforms age for publishing

Platforms

Critical mass of documentsVisibilityCritical mass of partnersScale economyCritical mass of featuresCapacity of the platform to

survive/evolve

Network effect

• A. The big conversation• B. The rise of the platforms• C. Hypotheses as a platform• D. The digital infrastructures gap

Hypotheses as a common platform

The place where we test and share « Hypothesis » before publishing

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 projection0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

Number of blogs

2010 2011 2012 2013 (projections)0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

Hypotheses - Millions of visits

People are there ! Both scholars and society

1 2 3 4 5

ApplicationTechnical creation

Catalog + ISSN Headline Headline

slider

No visibilyVery light visibility

Good visibility

High visibility

Very high visibilty

Zero value

Very light value

Good value

High value

Very high value

Adding value workflows

Language based committees

Language based documentation ressources

A platform dedicated to scholarly work

• Footnotes

• Citability

• Zotero compatible

• ISSN for each blog

• Librarything plugin

• Etc.

Community manager

Image © http://www.eemi.com/community-manager

Optimization of the user experience

Image © http://www.eemi.com/community-manager

Developping Interoperabilites:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wongjunhao/2761709029/in/faves-revuesorg/

Data center in Lyon(CC IN2P3)

Redundancy

Scalability and load balancing

• A. The big conversation• B. The rise of the platforms• C. Hypotheses as a platform• D. The digital infrastructures gap

Birth of NationalAnd continentalCyberInfrastructures

Construction cost (M€)

Socia

l Scie

nces an

d Humanities

Envir

onmental

Scien

ces

Energ

y

Biological

Materia

ls&an

d Analytical

Facili

ties

Physical

Scien

ces an

d Engin

eerin

g 0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

Source : Strategy Report on Research Infrastructures - Roadmap 2010

Construction costs (%)

1% 8%

16%

22%26%

27%

Social Sciences and Humanities

Source : Strategy Report on Research Infrastructures - Roadmap 2010

http://www.flickr.com/photos/giesenbauer/4130759704/in/faves-revuesorg/

Nevertheless, these are the new archives and libraries

http://www.flickr.com/photos/giesenbauer/4130759704/in/faves-revuesorg/

Open Access.. to classic forms of publishing – books and articles… and to new forms so-called « minor forms »Is a key to reconnect HSS to Society

We call it « Le canon à idées »

« A cannon for ideas »

[email protected]

http://openedition.org/

http://cleo.openedition.org

http://oep.hypotheses.org

http://lab.hypotheses.org