Past, present, and future of scholarly technology and practices

A reflec'on on the past, the present and the future of scholarly

technologies and scholarly prac'ces

Meertens eHumani'es talk 23/1/2014 @atreloar

Credit where it is due

•  Drawing this aEernoon on three strands of thought: – Doctoral ac'vity (from a long 'me ago!) – Work with @hvdsomp (over last two weeks) – Thinking with @scharnhorsta (since September)

•  Thanks to last two go to @pkdoorn from DANS

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Outline

•  Personal context •  Some werkhypothesen •  Func'ons of scholarly communica'on •  Pointers to the future



Some personal background

•  Educa'on –  BA (Germanic Languages & Linguis'cs) –  MA (English Literature) –  Grad. Dip. (Compu'ng Studies) –  PhD (Scholarly Communica'on)

•  Academic career: 1983-‐1999 •  Health informa'on network career: 1988-‐1990 •  IT Opera'ons career: 1999-‐2005 •  e-‐Research infrastructure career: 2003-‐present •  More gory details

–  andrew.treloar.net/personal/ –  andrew.treloar.net/research/

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Generations of scholarly communication

•  Republic of Letters •  System of Journals •  Web of Objects

January 27, 2014 CC-‐BY-‐SA, @atreloar and @hvdsomp

1.   All knowledge is important [to someone]

•  Implica'ons: The processes, structures and systems associated with the genera'on and communica'on of knowledge are thus also important.


2. The process of genera;ng knowledge ma<ers

•  Hopefully self-‐evident?


3. Uncommunicated knowledge can have no effect

•  Implica'ons: – Primary -‐ we need a system to communicate the outputs of research

– Secondary -‐ it is desirable if this system has a broad a public as possible


4. The integrity of what is communicated is cri;cal

•  Implica'ons: All elements that lead to the genera'on of the new knowledge are thus also within scope


Genera'ons of Scholarly Communica'on

•  Google doc in progress


5. The genera;on of knowledge is becoming more dependent on data and models

•  Implica'ons: Data and models also need to be archived and communicated

•  NOTE: This varies by discipline, and thus may be easier to falsify for some disciplines


6. Scholarly communica;on thus needs to include publica;on of/access to data/models

•  Implica'ons: We need to provide ways of publishing (in the sense of making public) data and models, along with journal ar'cles and monographs (and working papers, etc)


7. Data and models should be first class communica;on objects

•  Implica'on: We need ways to refer to/cite/access data and models on their own, not just as linked en''es hanging off a publica'on

•  Notes: –  Rather than data and models just being ways to produce publica'ons, they can have value in their own rights.

–  In some cases (e.g. Human Genome database) the data itself is much more important than any single associated publica'on.


8. The rela;onship between first class objects is itself of value

•  Implica'on: We need ways of represen'ng this rela'onship that are both human and machine-‐readable

•  Notes: – Obviously OAI-‐ORE is directly relevant here – As are Verrijkte Publica'es (although these are very publica'on-‐centric)


Functions of Research Communication Rosendaal and Geurts (1997) •  Registration: Allows claims of precedence for a

scholarly finding •  Certification: Establishes validity of claim •  Awareness: Allows actors in the system to remain

aware of new claims •  Archiving: Preserves the scholarly record


System of Journals

•  Registration –  submission of manuscript

•  Certification –  peer-review (pre-publication) –  commentary (post-publication)

•  Awareness –  discovery services

•  Archiving –  libraries (print) –  publishers (electronic) –  special purpose organisations (e.g. Portico)


Pointers to the future

“the future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed” William Gibson, NPR interview


Registration: BioRxiv


Registration: ideacite


Registration: Github


Registration: WikiPathways


Registration: NeuroLex


Registration: Nanopublications


Registration: Observations

•  Decoupling registration from certification •  Timestamping, versioning •  Registration of various types of objects •  Machines as creators and contributors


Certification: PubPeer


Certification: ZooUniverse


Certification: Slideshare


Certification: Project FeederWatch


Certification: Observations

•  Peer-review decoupled from publication process •  Certification of various types of objects •  Machines validating •  Social endorsement


Awareness: NARCIS


Awareness: myExperiment


Awareness: eLabNotebook RSS


Awareness: Twitter


Awareness: CrossRef Prospect


Awareness: Observations

•  Awareness for various types of objects •  Real time awareness •  Awareness support targeted at machines •  Awareness through social media


Archiving: CLOCKSS


Archiving: DANS Easy


Archiving: perma.cc


Archiving: EU Trusted Digital Repositories


Archiving: Observations

•  Archiving for various types of objects •  Distributed archives •  Archival consortia •  Audit for trustworthiness


Characterising the future


Fixed Varying

Discrete Continuous

Hidden VisibleResearch Process

Nature of object

Process of making public

Speed of communicationDelayed Instant

Atomic CompoundAtomicity of object

Communicated objectPublication

+data proxies

Publication + linked data + linked models

Formal InformalNature of process

Conclusions

•  The world is changing, but… •  Changes in scholarly prac'ce require: – drivers for altered behaviours –  infrastructure to support/enable altered behaviours

•  Not clear what final implica'ons will be yet •  Exci'ng 'me to be a scholar!


Technology

Past, present, and future of scholarly technology and practices