Doug Clow
Arcadia Seminar, Wolfson College
1 December 2009
Quick Quiz
a) I could knock you up an n-tier authentication service architecture from scratch this evening
b) I know about Shibboleth (or, I probably ought to)
c) Isn’t that the new word for Athens?
d) I have no idea what any of these things are
e) … and I don’t care.
… but you must remember that the last 250 years have been exceptional.
Commercial companies have played a vital role in scholarly publishing over the last 250 years
• Big changes• Conflict
• Incentive incongruence• Model of scholarly publishing• New forms• What really counts?
What is scholarly publishing?
• What scholars publish!• A distinctive sort of
conversation by researchers• Quality – peer review
big changes
Copyright © 2005 Intel Corporation
Moore’s Law
Internet hostnames
More scholars
More publications per scholar
scholarly information explosion
More scholars
More publications
More and better filters
There is no such thing as information overload, only filter failure (Clay Shirky)
• eJournals (all e collections)• electronic document delivery• CiteSeer, Zotero, Mendeley• Google Scholar• Federated search• TicTOCs (RSS)
no-one will thank you for implementing Shibboleth
incentive incongruence
• Marginal cost of publishing is now nearly zero
eJournals double-digit inflation year-on-year
Bundling
Permissions
Subscribe October
Invoice January
“It has recently come to my attention that from 2000 to 2005, our Australia office published a series of sponsored article compilation publications, on behalf of pharmaceutical clients, that were made to look like journals and lacked the proper disclosures. This was an unacceptable practice, and we regret that it took place.”
Michael Hansen, CEO of Elsevier's Health Sciences Division, 7 May 2009
Open Access
Gold: no barriers
Green: self-archive 90%
Per-article costs
£5300 Writing
£2900 Publisher
£1400 Peer review
(source: JISC 2009)
a simple model of scholarly publishing
Scaled for cost – traditional model (rough!)
Scaled for cost – new technology
Who pays? Top-rank mass market journal
Who pays? Low circulation journal
Who pays? JIME
• Commercial publishers (= Libraries)
• Universities• Learned societies• Research funders• Other funders
It’s not that big a deal
for most scholars
new forms
Today programme (6.5m)BBC News Online (14m)Regional BBC news Tx
@stephenfry (0.36m followers)
2400 visitors 52,500 visitors
A tale of two websites
• Twitter, IM• Blogs, podcasts (iTunesU),
SlideShare, YouTube• Open Educational Resources• Conference presentations/papers• Data repositories• Journal articles• Books
Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME)
Radical open publishing – with quality
1.Author blogs submission draft
2.Editors first filter
3.Referees blog reviews
4.Author blogs revised draft
5.Editors review
6.Formal publication
Start with some casual observations & create an album of your own or stock photos
Use keys from iSpot to identify your finds
Spider
Beetle
bluebottle
Stag beetle
Mountain goat
Swan
Yes
Cotoneaster
Owl
Get your IDs checked
ID correct !
See who else has mapped your species and what they say about them
Take OU Course Neighbourhood Nature to learn more
Take OU Course Biodiversity to learn more
Become a recognized expert
What really counts?
• Metrics – REF– Citation counts, impact factors– h-index (N papers with N citations)– Data quality– Gaming the system
• Quality, impact – Peer review
• Reads / downloads• Citations / links / comments• Ratings
New ways to count what counts as good
The Britney Spears problem
peer review 2.0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VRBWLpYCPY
So what?
• Quantitative change (more, faster, easier)• Explosion of scholarly publishing• Peer review ever more important• New ways to engage beyond Academy
Photo credits:• Beautiful background photos not otherwise credited: Erica Marshall of muddyboots.org• Keyboard soup: http://www.flickr.com/people/wainwright/ • •Antonello da Messina, Saint Jerome in his Study, about 1475. Photo © The National
Gallery, London• •Car dash view: Paul Stevenson http://www.flickr.com/photos/pss/376366737/ • •Internet hosts: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html © Netcraft
Ltd 2009• •Bees: Todd Huffman http://www.flickr.com/photos/oddwick/1039909856/• •Old printing press: http://www.flickr.com/photos/avinashkunnath/3750683708/• •Modern printing press: http://www.flickr.com/photos/comedynose/4035170560/• •Espresso Book Machine image: On Demand Books (www.ondemandbooks.com)• •Tools: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dustpuppy/13457875/• •Lego Star Wars: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pasukaru76/3694989530/• •E-Learning and Disability in HE book: © Routledge 2006• •Counterfeit pound coin: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sparker/3518098622/ Steve
Parker• •Neon Green with a Lightning Bolt of Gold:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/copilot/59927100/• •Long Tail graphic: Chris Anderson http://www.longtail.com/• •Easter Eggs: Sister72 http://www.flickr.com/photos/sis/116884492/ • Various OU websites: The Open University http://www.open.ac.uk • •OpenCourseWare Consortium http://www.ocwconsortium.org/• •OER Logic: The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation http://www.hewlett.com• •Open Book Publishers www.openbookpublishers.com• •Clownfish: Jenny Huang http://www.flickr.com/photos/diverslog/189275882/ • •Britney Spears: http://www.flickr.com/photos/samlavi/3619564003/
Sources/comments• Houghton et al, “Economic
implications of alternative scholarly publishing models: Exploring the costs and benefits”, JISC, 2009
• Clay Shirky http://www.cjr.org/overload/interview_with_clay_shirky_par.php?page=all
• Twitter: @ciphergoth @mweller @andrew_x @jvvw @Marmara @francesbell @agneskh @KarenK @rjconnelly
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