The digital, social, open, networked scholar

Daniela Gachago, FundaniCape Peninsula University of Technology

@dgachago17

Digital scholar

Digital scholarship can encompass both scholarly communication and publication using digital media and research on digital media. (Abby, 2011).

Social scholar

Networked Participatory Scholarship: scholars’ use of participatory technologies and online social networks to share, reflect upon, critique, improve, validate, and further their scholarship (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2011)

Social scholarship, combining traditional scholarship with more informal social Internet practices, is characterized by openness, conversation, collaboration, access, sharing and transparent revision. (Greenhow et al 2009)

Open scholar

“the Open Scholar is someone who makes their intellectual projects and processes digitally visible and who invites and encourages ongoing criticism of their work and secondary uses of any or all parts of it–at any stage of its development” (Burton 2009)

www.sherpa.co.uk

Alternative ways of measuring impact…

…a new lens on peer review processes, potentially ushering in an important “soft peer review” based on how much an author’s work is cited, tagged, or reviewed online... (Taraborelli 2008)

Veletsianos 2012

The connected scholar…

We are seeing the development of a “personal brand” and “academic rock stars” amongst academics as new technologies allow them to establish a new and wider audience.

(Cowling 2013)

What does this mean for Africa?

Africa’s current contribution to world science is approx 1.3 percent. (WOS)

International journals have an acknowledged bias in favour of English and researchers in the developed world

Digital scholarship and Open Access provides researchers in the developing world with a unique opportunity to collaborate and increase the impact and visibility of their research

Alperin 2013

• Levels of take-up among academics are relatively low.• Internal data indicates that there are regional differences in adoption of web

2.0 tools among southern researchers both in terms of use and reasons why adoption has not occurred.

• There does appear to be a gender divide when looking at frequency and purpose of use of web 2.0 tools and women may have particular needs that should be addressed to encourage adoption e.g. lack of time and concerns over security online.

• There are three broad reasons for lack of adoption: lack of awareness, being prevented from using them or choosing not to use them. Specific barriers include: poor infrastructure or lack of equipment, usability, time, perceived value or credibility of tools, and lack of institutional incentives.

Reality on the ground…

Brown 2012

Czernievicz 2013

Harnessing the power of social media …

Develop a clear (web based) strategy for yourself and your research:

1. Retool your online profile2. Share and upload all your research output onto open

platforms incl unpublished papers, presentations etc3. Refine your publication strategy with impact in mind

and inc OA (Green & Gold)4. Disseminate, engage and collaborate

(Cowling 2013)

Alperin, J. 2013. Are ALMs/altmetrics propagating global inequality? Presentation given at the ALM Workshop in San Francisco, October 10-12, 2013. Available at: https://speakerdeck.com/jalperin/altmetrics-propagating-global-inequality

Burton, G. 2009. The open scholar. Blog entry in academic evolution. Retrieved on 12.08.10 from. http://www.academicevolution.com/2009/08/the-open-scholar.html.

Brown, C. 2012. Are southern academics virtually connected ? Report for GDNet connect South.

Cowling, N. 2013. Open research and the digital scholar. Keynote at the CPUT Teaching with Technology day. Available at http://www.slideshare.net/noellecowling/noelle-cput-keynote

Czerniewicz, L. 2013. Power and politics in a changing scholarly communication landscape T HE CHANGING DIGITALLY - MEDIATED. In Proceedings of the IATUL conferences. Available at: http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/iatul/2013/papers/23.

Greenhow, C., Robelia, B. & Hughes, J.E. 2009. Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship in a Digital Age: Web 2.0 and Classroom Research: What Path Should We Take Now? Educational Researcher, 38(4): 246–259. Available at: http://edr.sagepub.com/cgi/doi/10.3102/0013189X09336671.

Veletsianos, G. 2012. Higher education scholars’ participation and practices on Twitter. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 28(4): 336–349. Available at: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2011.00449.x

Veletsianos, G. & Kimmons, R. 2011. Networked Participatory Scholarship: Emergent techno-cultural pressures toward open and digital scholarship in online networks. Computers & Education, 58(2): 766–774. Available at: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0360131511002454

References