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The value of embracing unknown unknowns
Dr Danny KingsleyRLUK Conference
British Library9 March 2016
The debate piece that started it
• Kingsley, Danny A. and Kennan, Mary Anne (2015) "Open Access: The Whipping Boy for Problems in Scholarly Publishing”, Communications of the Association for Information Systems: Vol. 37, Article 14.– Available at: http://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/vol37/iss1/
14 – AAM available:https
://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/250321
Premise of the article• Provided a background to OA’s development and current state• Examined some of the accusations leveled against OA:
– that OA publishers are predatory, – that OA is too expensive, – that self-depositing papers in OA repositories will bring about the end of scholarly
publishing. • Argument is each of these arise from problems with the scholarly publishing system
more broadly. • Proposed discussions we should be having about scholarly publishing to take
advantage of social and technological innovations and move it into the 21st century– What about Monographs? – How to Manage Article Processing Charges? – Institutional Repositories are not Perfect: How do We Make Them Better? – How do We Make Scholarly Publishing and Open Access Inclusive? – How do We Fix the Reward System?
Just to give you an idea about timing
• First approach from the journal – September 2013• Agreed to write the piece and first discussion - 10 February 2014• Submitted the first argument – 26 May 2014• Submitted amendment based on editor’s comments – 29 May 2014• Rebuttals sent to us – 18 November 2014• Deadline for rejoinder – 19 December 2014• Rejoinder sent – 16 February 2015• “Publication is with the production editor and will be out ‘anytime’” email –
6 May 2015• Copy editor’s questions sent to us - 4 June 2015• Corrected pieces (original & rejoinder) sent to editors – 26 June 2015• Date of acceptance - 4 July 2015• Date of publication - 17 August 2015
What happened next?• Not much for a LONG time• Editor asked many people to contribute. We sent in suggestions
& personally requested some people’s participation:– Funders– Library staff– Research managers– Editors– Publishers– Policy makers
• In the end four of the five people who wrote rebuttals were researchers in the Information Sciences field
Everyone has an opinion
Truly, everyone
Notice a pattern?
Huston, we have a problem
On a professional note…
• After doing their own analyses each of these researchers concluded that OA was the way forward
• But if we wait for every researcher to come to their own personal epiphany about Open Access we will NEVER get there
• Engagement has not worked• We must Enable the academic community to
disseminate their work openly
The research area of scholarly communication is not well recognised
Two things define a discipline – scholarly literature and language
Community• Academic ‘communities’ manifest in the form of journals or
learned societies• But Scholarly Communication research is traditionally
discussed in journals for:– sociology of science– communication, – librarianship – information sciences disciplines
http://jlsc-pub.org/
http://src-online.ca/index.php/src
Slowly getting there…
• There are now Offices of Scholarly Communication in universities, especially in the US & increasingly in the UK
• But no Faculties/Departments or Professorial Chairs of scholarly communication exist [that I can find]
Language• So often it is all about the
words. Confusion with:– Publish (versus
disseminate)– Green open access– Gold open access– Open access movement
• Other words that have caused problems:– Repository– Mandate
http://www.cambridge.org/ch/academic/subjects/psychology/social-psychology/learn-write-badly-how-succeed-social-sciences
What’s the problem?
“I know teaching – I went to school”
Our conclusion?• The practice of scholarly communication (as distinct from the study of it)
is shared among all academic fields, librarians, publishers, and administrators.
• Each of these bring their own levels of understanding, perspectives, and involvement in the scholarly communication system.
• Regardless of where individuals sit, however, in all instances there needs to be a base level of competence.
• The methods by which different fields and administrative areas reach this competence varies. – Kingsley, Danny A. and Kennan, Mary Anne (2015) "Open Access: The Whipping
Boy for Problems in Scholarly Communication—A Response to the Rebuttals," Communications of the Association for Information Systems: Vol. 37, Article 20.Available at: http://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/vol37/iss1/20
We all laughed in 2003…
Researchers don’t know, you know…
• Researchers are generally held to have a low awareness of publishing issues and open access opportunities and are confused over copyright issues. – Reinsfelder, T. L. (2012). Open access publishing practices in a complex
environment: Conditions, barriers, and bases of power. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 1(1), 10.
• “Education is paramount; it is more important to prepare faculty to
navigate the dynamic open access publishing environment than to attempt to create authoritative lists of ethical or unethical journals”– Beaubien, S., & Eckard, M. (2014). Addressing faculty publishing concerns
with open access journal quality indicators. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 2(2), eP1133
The Master/Apprentice system is broken
• My 2008 PhD – in depth interviews with 43 researchers. The effect of scholarly communication practices on engagement with open access: An Australian study of three disciplines http://hdl.handle.net/1885/49304 pp177 – 188
What about the library community?
• Where are YOU on scholarly communication issues?
• Four stages of competenceUnconsciously unskilled
we don't know that we don't have this skill, or that we need to learn it.
Consciously unskilledwe know that we don't have this skill.Consciously skilledwe know that we have this skill.Unconsciously skilledwe don't know that we have this skill (it just seems easy).
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newISS_96.htm
Enormous challenge• It is extremely difficult to get issues related to scholarly
communication into curricula for library training• There are almost no courses on repository management
– Simons, N. & Richardson, J., (2012). New Roles, New Responsibilities: Examining Training Needs of Repository Staff. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication. 1(2), p.eP1051. DOI: http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.1051
• Even professional training is limited – CILIP offers ‘Institutional repositories and metadata’ and ‘Digital copyright’ but nothing on publishing or open access.http://www.cilip.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/onsite_programme_list_march_2016.pdf
I have seen the future…• Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)
Scholarly Communication Toolkit– ACRL sees a need to vigorously re-orient all facets of library
services and operations to the evolving technologies and models that are affecting the scholarly communication process.
– There is wide variance in the background understanding of and engagement in scholarly communication as a critical perspective and worldview for academic librarians.
– … the idea of bringing the full cycle of scholarly communication – from discovery and creation of knowledge, to its dissemination, preservation, and reuse – into all aspects of our work is central to the continued success of academic libraries.
http://acrl.ala.org/scholcomm/
What do we need to do?• We must shift from managing the academic literature to
participating in the generation of it.• Start walking the talk & engage with the academic literature:
– Read research that is being published (in your area of librarianship)
– Write an academic article– Present work at conferences– Offer your services as a peer reviewer– Serve on an editorial board– Collaborate with your academic community on a project and write
about it
Thanks and discussion
Dr Danny KingsleyHead of Scholarly Communication, Cambridge University Libraries
@dannykay68
