Need to Know Now: Scholarly Communication Today

Prof. Monica Berger, LibraryPDAC, NYC College of Technology

Nov. 17, 2005

Program overview

Scholarly communication in general What is scholarly communication? How has it changed? Interdisciplinary,

electronic Four major tools for scholarly

communication in historical order

Program overview

1. Listservs (informal) = email-based communication

2. Ejournals & Open Access journals (formal: often peer-reviewed) different modes of access, complexity of

definition of Open Access Licensed vs. “free” ejournals Preprints/Postprints Hybrid open access journals: not all content

available

Program overview

3. Digital libraries (hybrid content, not always peer-reviewed) Collections of content, often by subject, can be

mixed media

4. Blogs (informal) Increasingly utilized by scholars, still new

What is Scholarly Communication?

Definition: generally understood to mean publication of research articles in scholarly journals (and possibly monographs) but there are many other forums for scholarly communication

Speed of Scholarly Communication

Then: 1. Books and journals, conference papers, newslettersInternet age (late 1980s -)1. All of the above plus2. Listservs for immediate electronic discussion“Email is the killer ap”(1990s - )1. All of the above plus2. Email becomes ubiquitous3. Push technology hot in mid-1990s but didn’t come to

fruition4. WWW used for content but not for fast communicationThe Hybrid age (2000 - )1. All of the above plus2. Blogs, wikis and other emerging technologies

Finding the content

Predigital age (before mid-1980s):print indexes, card catalog Early digital age (early 1990s, pre-WWW)All of the above plus electronic indexes, online catalogMiddle digital age (mid-late 1990s, pre-Google)All of the above (excluding card catalog) plus Internet

search engines (would retrieve only free WWW content)

Hybrid environment (2004- ) All of the above (excluding card catalog) plus hybrid

gateways to content both free and licensed including GooglePrint, GoogleScholar, Digital Libraries)

Cyclical nature of scholarship

The next two charts shows the scientific publication cycle and give some time lines ...

Conception of research idea, secondary research Email and other more informal development of idea, grant

proposal Conference presentation, preprint of article Possible “Gray literature” report publication Peer-reviewed article is published Research is included in monographs May disseminate to popular media/textbooks Influence other scholars, new research

http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/environment/imt220/pubcycle.jpg

http://www.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/information/bi/infolit/sciinfo.gif

Listservs/electronic discussion groups

Listservs and listproc are electronic discussion groups

Features: Web interface for some archives for most (some web) can suspend messages when on vacation daily digest some moderated not always open to all

Listservs/electronic discussion groups

List = the subscribers Server = the computer managing the email

and the commands

Listservs/electronic discussion groups

Command to SERVER (subscribe) Send message to

LISTSERV@LIST.UVM.EDU Text = SUBSCRIBE SERIALIST MONICA

BERGER Message to LIST (people):

Send message to SERIALIST@LIST.UVM.EDU

Search on “biology”

Licensed Ejournals ($)

Our library has 28,000 online periodicals Aggregate databases, e.g. Ebsco = subject to flux in

terms of titles Ejournal collections tend to be stable, have deep

archival back files Project Muse JSTOR American Chemical Society Ejournals Duke University Press Browse or search New Issue/Table of Contents alerting for specific

journals

Full access/always free

History dissertations published as ebooks; not free

Finding, managing, creating blogs

Finding blogs Google Blogsearch recommended to identify blogsManaging blogs Blogarithm generates “blogmail” when blogs are updated (not

very efficient) Bloglines: one-stop reading + searching, subscribing to blogs,

can get content by keyword (maybe a better solution) RSS (Really Simple Syndication): format for syndicating news

and personal weblogs: content pushed to a RSS reader. Can get content by keywords. Many RSS readers. I have used Pluck, software I downloaded from CNET

Creating a blog Blogger most popular

Bibliography

Available separately on the library’s website

http://library.citytech.cuny.edu/scholarly/Bibliography.pdf