- 1. The Road Ahead: Forward, But In What Direction? Michael Jubb
Director, Research Information Network Academic Publishing in
Europe ConferenceBerlin 21 January 2009
2.
- If you cry Forward, you must without fail make plain in what
direction to go
3. Whose perspective? some key stakeholders
- Researchers as creators, disseminators and users
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- Public, charitable and commercial sectors
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- National policy-making bodies
- Publishers (and secondary publishers)
- Libraries and publicly-funded service providers
- Commercial information service providers
4. The big picture: overall costs of the current system 5. Some
propositions
- The volume of research undertaken worldwide has increased, is
increasing, and will continue to increase
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- and more of it will be done collaboratively
- Researchers are both producers and consumers of research
outputs
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- but they dont necessarily share the same interests
- Governments invest in research because they believe it has a
positive impact on society and the economy
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- and they want to maximise that impact
- The costs of research, and of higher education, have increased,
are increasing, and ought to be diminished
-
- and cost-effectiveness will become an increasingly-dominant
theme
6. Challenges for the future skills services content
sustainability locus of provision user expectations and needs 7.
Content: user expectations and needs
- published and non-published
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- grey literature, reports, working papers
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- data: raw or refined? mine or yours?
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- websites, blogs, wikis, emails
- quality-assured and non-quality-assured?
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- the good-enough source and/or version?
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- pre or post-publication peer review?
8. Content: locus of provision
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- researchers and research institutions
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- personal websites, repositories etc
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- publishers and aggregators
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- direct relationship with authors and readers
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- from ownership to licensing
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- consortia as aggregators?
9. Content: costs and sustainability
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- continued growth in the volumes of research
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- constrained university budgets
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- sustainability of the publishing business under challenges
of
10. Services: user expectations and needs
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- quality assurance and enhancement
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- distribution and marketing
- researchers and others as consumers
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- search and navigation services
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- access, 24x7 and permanent
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- links and interoperability
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- text mining (published text as data)
- funders and research institutions
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- assessment and evaluation services
11. Services: locus of provision
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- competition from other providers
- search, navigation, access & preservation
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- individual libraries and consortia
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- individual publishers, aggregators etc
12. Services: sustainability
- search, navigation and access
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- invigorating competition or wasteful duplication?
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- levels of usage of services provided by publishers and
libraries
- sustainability/preservation of digital content
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- roles of publishers and libraries
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- grey literature, websites, blogs, wikis, emails.
- increasing interest in assessment and evaluation services
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- RAE/REF in the UK; ERA in Australia
13. Skills, expertise and competences:user expectations and
needs
- specialist research skills and specialist information
skills
- whats easy, and whats not
- the dangers of the information literacy approach
- enhanced needs in some areas
-
- eg business, management and communication skills;
bibliometrics
14. Skills, expertise and competences: locus of provision
- differences of view as between researchers, librarians and
publishers
- changes in views over time
- de-skilling, up-skilling and complementarity
15. Skills, expertise and competences: sustainability
- continuing need for skills development for both researchers and
information specialists
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- generic and specialist skills
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- engagement and communication
16. Some conclusions:seeing through a glass darkly
- 1. Users(creators and consumers)
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- they are (or should be) the drivers
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- but we are only beginning to understand how they use
information resources and services
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- they dont understand the digital information environment; but
they want content and services that
-
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- are quick and simple to use
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- are as comprehensive and interoperable as possible
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- provide for both quality-assured and non-quality-assured
content
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- theres an increasing demand for assessment and evaluation
services
17. Some conclusions:seeing through a glass darkly
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- growth in concentration of resources and services
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- growth in overlaps (and competition?) between differenttypesof
provider
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- researchers and research institutions
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- libraries and library consortia
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- publishers and aggregators
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- search and navigation services
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- complementarity and skill sets
18. Some conclusions:seeing through a glass darkly
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- constraints on university funding
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- but research volumes continue to increase
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- growing interest in theoverallcosts of the scholarly
communications process, and in the (cost-) efficiency of the
research process as a whole
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- growth in support from Governments and funding agencies for
gold OA policies;and from universities and research institutions
for green OA
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- growing concerns about the pace and the costs of
transition
19. Thank you Michael Jubb www.rin.ac.uk Activities, Costs and
Income Flows in Scholarly Communications
:http://www.rin.ac.uk/costs-funding-flows Mind the skills gap:
Information-handling training for
researchers:http://www.rin.ac.uk/training-research-info To share or
not to share: Publication and quality assurance of research data
outputs :http://www.rin.ac.uk/data-publication Researchers' use of
academic libraries and their services
:http://www.rin.ac.uk/researchers-use-libraries