The Next Paradigm in Scholarly Communication

Introduction
Scholarly communication (SC) is at a crossroads. The onset of the digital age has brought with it the seeds of a new paradigm in scholarly communication. The journal article has been the main vehicle that scholars have used to communicate for over 3 centuries. Technology is not only changing the paper form of the journal article, but it is fundamentally changing the way scholars communicate. There is an increase in collaboration, Interdisciplinarity and Disintermediation. However, these new trends make the evaluation of scholarship difficult.

“Scholarship is inherently a social process and it is embedded in a structure of relationships with other scholars, with scholarly societies, and with publishers and libraries.” (4) The outcome of this electronic revolution will vary depending on the unique relationships that exists between these players in the various, scientific fields. Currently, it is a time of experimentation, where there is a lot of creativity in the explorations of this new technology. However, there are several pitfalls that need to be watched. Not only is it necessary to have quality assurance in what is communicated, it is important to address the concern of reliability of the electronic format, and, guaranteeing that the form of the communication will be accessible in the future. Scholars’ trust in the new technology is paramount for new forms of communication to succeed.

Borgman published an excellent definition of SC. “By scholarly communication we meant the study of how scholars in any field (e.g. physical, biological, social, and behavioral sciences, humanities, technology) use and disseminate information through formal and informal channels. The study of scholarly communication includes the growth of scholarly information, the relationships among research areas and disciplines, the information needs and uses of individual user groups, and the relationships among formal and informal methods of communication.” (5)

There are two types of SC, informal and formal. Informal SC has historically taken the form of face to face meetings, telephone calls, private letters and the sharing of annotations on journal articles. Now, email has risen to be a key player in informal dialogue. There have also been some new developments with annotation documents (44), the e-Print arXiv at Los Alamos (18,19) and the Open Access Initiatives (OAI) in conjunction with E-prints.

“The refereed scientific article (has been) the basic unit of communication in the system; formal and informal communication led to journal publication as the expected outcome of scientific research.” (22) There have been recent investigations into exactly how effective the peer-review process is. It is generally believed to be effective, but recent research has found that it may not be as effective as most everyone thinks. (8, 18) The peer-review article has served the community of scholars well for a very long time. How the new developments in technology changes that is still to be seen. It is likely that the peer review process will still play an important role in formal scholarly communication, but it has the potential to become more effective than it currently is.

Scholars are both the creator and the users of SC. The other two key players are publishers and libraries. Publishers have typically been in charge of editing articles and sending them out to be peer reviewed. Though, in essence, this process has been to ensure the quality of articles published, there has been some indication that, “The effectiveness of journal evaluation is, however, limited by the inherent difficulty of judging new contributions at the research frontier. The concentration of high-quality articles is in part a result of the ability of referees to make quality distinctions and probably to a somewhat greater extent the result of the self-selection of authors.” (8)

Financial considerations are playing a major role in the current situation. The current problems that are being experienced with the journal article are: 1) the rising costs of scholarly journals, and 2) the delay of publishing. One answer that publishers have responded with is the creation of electronic form of their paper journals (e-journals). To reduce costs, they have begun to sell database bundling of these e-journals to libraries. These are packaged deals that can have certain short term benefits, but have long term consequences which need to be addressed. The transition from paper to electronic form has also raised certain intellectual property right concerns.

The rise of Interdisciplinarity has also been furthered along with the advancement of the digital age. A good definition of Interdisciplinarity is: "An adjective describing the interaction among two or more different disciplines. This interaction may range from simple communication of ideas to the mutual integration of organizing concepts, methodology, procedures, epistemology, terminology, data and organization of research and education in a fairly large field. An interdisciplinary group consists of persons trained in different fields of knowledge with different concepts, methods and data and terms organized into a common effort on a common problem with continuous intercommunication among the participants from the different disciplines. "(33)

Interdisciplinarity describes the mixing of disciplines. Usually, a problem has been identified that is better solved through two or more “separate” disciplines than by either one alone. The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Cal-(IT)2) has been designed to “foster collaboration among government, industry and academe and expected to spur advances in information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology and the Internet to help ensure California remains a high-tech powerhouse.” (36) This is an exciting example that brings together Interdisciplinarity and modern technology.

Disintermediation in its simplest form is the removal of the intermediary. In regards to SC, this could either be thought of as removing the librarian or the publisher. Since scholars are the source and destination for SC, anyone between them is the intermediary. “Given that producers and consumers can now directly contact each other, only those intermediaries that add significant value are likely to survive. Libraries will need to place greater emphasis on the value they can add to the knowledge process.” (23)

Historical Perspective
The last paradigm began with the aid of the printing press and the rise of the scholarly journal in the 17th Century. That is when SC went from the informal communication between scholars by sending letters, to the addition of compiling those letters into journals to disseminate throughout the particular scholarly field. The letter form quickly was replaced by the more formal construct of the article. “The scholarly journal has served as the primary medium of scholarly communication among scientists and scholars for more than three centuries, and has remained essentially unchanged in form and function since its inception.” (20)

Kuhn explains that “Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute.” (26) The new paradigm doesn’t solve all of the problems, but it answers key issues better than its predecessor. For approximately 3 ½ centuries, scholar’s formal means of communicating was through the journal article. Their disciplines were fairly well defined, and (in comparison to today) slow to change. The two paradigms I will be addressing are:

Old Paradigm: The paper journal article as the main vehicle for formal scholarly communication.

New Paradigm: The use of electronic media will not only replace the paper article, but also to challenge the article itself as the basic means of SC.

Literary Review
I conducted a literary review of the following topics: Interdisciplinarity, Disintermediation, collaboration, and evaluation of scholarly communication (all in reference to digital, electronic, or internet.) It was hard to stop researching, there is so much going on that falls under the breadth of this subject. This is an exciting time for SC, it truly is at a crossroads. The following review is what I feel are the articles which best define the current situation and best address either one topic or several. In essence, though, this paper is a summary of all the articles listed in the References.

There were many good articles concerning the general rise of electronic publishing and how that effects SC. (34, 27, 21, 4) Several articles give an excellent perspective on how the different scholarly fields play a role in the varied acceptance of new technology and SC. (25, 42, 46) They call into question the attitude that it is only a matter of time before scholars accept the new technology and also they argue that, due to the heterogeneity of communications practices among fields, there won’t be a homogenous technology that is used by all scholars.

Technology has given scholars the ability to collaborate not only across disciplinary boundaries, but international boundaries as well, allowing scholars all over the world the ability to communicate and create new knowledge. (1, 35)

There is much concern over the rising costs of serials and the bundling of serial databases. (13, 15, 22, 29, 31, 41, 45) Liu was quantitatively able to demonstrate “that library volumes and serial subscriptions contribute significantly to prestige of all academic programs.” He argues that “simply replacing ownership of print collections with electronic access services can abrupt (the) process (of SC), damage healthy scholarly communication, decrease the research productivity of scholars, and eventually erode the quality of academic programs.” (28) There is an inherent difference between how scholars and publishers view SC. Scholars see it as a gift exchange (2, 4, 16), while for publishers it is a commodity.

Though there is much excitement and hope for electronic journals, looking into the impact that e-journals have so far had on SC, Harter showed that as of 1996, they had very little impact (to already established, paper journals.) He used the ISI indexes to do an empirical study. (20) Several other studies also indicated that e-journals were not having a large impact (24, 37), and they saw “no immediate threat of electronic journals pushing aside traditional print formats.” (37) However, there are instances that give hope to the continual rise in popularity of electronic alternatives such as arXiv. (6)

Current State of Scholarly Communication

The Digital Age
It is important to remember that it is not technology only that is changing SC, it is also the societal forces behind SC that are forcing the changes (see Lynch in 37.)

The digital age has seen the creation of many new forms of communication. From the ubiquitous emails that scholars now can send to each other, to the more obscure use of technology like multivalent documents that enable the sharing of annotations. (44) There have been several true successes, such as Ginsparg’s pre-print server at Los Alamos. SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resource Coalition) has been instrumental in putting pressure on the commercial aggregate databases by helping to start hi-impact, low-cost alternatives to commercial publishing. (16, 45)

The electronic journal (e-journal) means different things to different people. Some traditional paper journals are now publishing electronic forms. These journals have a wide range of mimicking their paper counterpart, from closely resembling it, to having added value to the abilities of electronic media. Some e-journals have no paper counterpart. Some are peer reviewed and some are not. For an e-journal to have the chance of impacting SC, it would appear that some form of peer review will need to take place.

There is also a move to remove the journal form as the vehicle for the scholarly article. The DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is a protocol that can allow a search to go directly to an article. (46) By depositing articles directly into databases (that hopefully can be universally accessed) the need for a journal is diminished. Ginsparg has been widely noted for starting arXiv. This began as a repository server for pre-prints in physics, but has now incorporated many other fields. (25) One of the reasons for the success of arXiv is that the field of physics had already a paper tradition of pre-prints. The fields of astronomy and physics seem to have accepted e-prints as a valid form of communication. (6) Even without a journal to contain the article, there is still much agreement that some form of referring needs to stay in place. (18)

Digital libraries are supporting the community aspect of SC. Digital Libraries are “entities constructed by and for a community, and as entities that support information needs and uses of those communities…They support the cycle of creating, searching and using information, all of which are done by scholars.” (4) One of the key features of digital libraries is their role of being a portal to information (they do not necessarily have all the information in servers on site.) The California Digital Library system has been working on making this portal to ‘fit’ all the unique databases it subscribes to so there is a seamless flow for the user. (13)

Disintermediation
The idea that scholars will soon be able to post articles to a web server and be able to have access to all other scholars, without an intermediary does not appear to be possible in the foreseeable future. It is possible that the paper journal may cease to be a major component in the way scholars communicate, but there will need to be an intermediary to add value for SC occur. SC needs to be archived in a way so scholars can trust their work will be accessible in the future. Academic libraries seem to be a good solution to take on this task. (4, 21) There will also still be a need for peer review (or a way to ensure quality of material). Whether this happens before or after publishing is still a question. (18, 43)

Interdisciplinarity
Disciplines have long been the key structure of scholarship. They gave clear boundaries and a sense of community within which scholars developed unique traits and social rules for communicating. Technology has made it easier to cross discipline boundaries and is currently causing a lot of research at the intersections between disciplines. (35, 7)

"New information technologies broaden the potential user base for all scholarly material that exists in an Internet-accessible form. They therefore, potentially at least, make it possible for scholarly communication to take place between people who would not otherwise have come into contact with each other, and enable community to be founded on novel intellectual grounds." (27)

This is not without difficulties. “Although finding and gathering activities have long been associated with the information-seeking behavior of academic researchers, in interdisciplinary work the tasks are complicated by the need to venture into multiple, and often unfamiliar, territories.” (35)

Interdisciplinarity causes difficulties in the evaluation of scholarship. If a scholar is doing work that isn’t part of any traditional scholarly community, who is then best to judge that work? Even if it is deemed valuable, it is difficult for the scholar to receive as much credit as they may deserve. If the research can easily fall into two or more different fields, which journal would be the best to publish it in so that it can be found by all fields? One potential advantage of electronic publishing is the ability to search across fields. (35) This will possibly aid the findability of an article that is transdisciplinary.

Collaboration
Collaboration in SC has changed dramatically since the 17th century when the practice of authorship in journal articles really began to be the standard. Authorship meant who took full responsibility for the article, both its merits and its weakness (except for aspects that were given citations.) Some very interesting research looks into how collaboration has evolved, and in some fields, has become so great (over 100 different people collaborating on one article) that the notion of who is responsible for the work has been lost. (12)

Collaboration is hard, it takes a lot of time, there is a lot of technical/logistical details to overcome and it has less of an immediate reward for the scholar. So, why has there been an increase in collaboration? Partly, it is due to the technological advances which can bring people together virtually. These advances have truly opened the way for Interdisciplinarity. Oftentimes it is easier to be at the cutting edge of new knowledge when you are at the intersection between disciplines. There is much personal satisfaction that comes from breaking new ground, which is very satisfying to many scholars. (7)

The Issues of the old Paradigm
Kuhn states that one paradigm ends and another begins when there is a crisis with the old paradigm. It no longer can address the current situation satisfactorily. A new paradigm springs up that addresses it better. Kuhn clearly states that the new paradigm does not solve all the problems. (26) For the old paradigm of the paper journal, two key issues are not being solved: Time and money. The article is taking too long to be published, especially in areas that are developing quickly (like technology), and, the price for serial subscriptions is far outpacing the rate of inflation, causing many academic libraries to not only stop subscribing to some serials, but also, they have cut back on their purchases of monographs. (2, 4, 16, 40)

Traditional publishing usually means that it will take from many months to a couple years to get an article published. Depending on the field in which this is happening, the time lag has the potential to make an article out of date before it is even published. For fields that have rapid developments (technology, high particle physics, etc…) this makes the published article little better than a method of archiving. Indeed, in certain fields scholars who don’t hear about something until the article comes out can feel “out of the loop” (19, 6).

There is wide agreement among academics that disapprove of the current situation which makes the universities and institutions pay twice, once for the scholarly work to be done (and written) and again to buy it back from the publishers. Currently, there is a crisis in the acquisition of serials. Their costs are far exceeding the rate of inflation, forcing libraries to discontinue some publications. (2) The publishers have answered with database bundling, but this adds problems of its own. It also has not solved the long term cost problems with the situation.

There is a fundamental difference between how the scholars view their articles, and how publishers view them. Scholars create the articles and “gift” them to their community. (2, 4, 16) Publishers see the articles as a commodity, and for them, the bottom line drives their decisions. This is unsettling in a time when publishers are gaining more control through the digitization of materials and their “ownership” of the scholars’ copyrights.

One reason for the steep rise in scholarly journals is due to the increase in the number of journals. A critical factor behind this is the perceived need for scholars to publish so they can fill out their tenure portfolio. The “publish or perish” mindset has given rise to quantity versus quality. By having institutions focus on the quality of published materials, and making this clear to the scholars that work for them, there is a chance to alleviate the shear numbers of articles that are being published. One way to do this is to only look at a limited number of articles when reviewing a scholar’s portfolio. By doing this, not only will the committee actually be able to read all the articles (and therefore stress quality), but it will help reduce the perceived need to publish as much as possible. (2)

The paper journal still is one of the best forms of archiving. The rise of the e-journal, stored in a publisher’s database offsite from the library, raises concerns about future access. Electronic data needs to be refreshed from time to time, not only to keep it readable in its current form, but also to keep it in a form that is currently being used. (16, 4) Traditionally, it has been the libraries who have been in charge of archiving scholarly journals. The paper form of the journals (once bound) could easily be held for many years without the need to refresh or transfer the form.

Concerns the new Paradigm needs to address
Frazier calls the bundling of journals “the Big Deal” created by publishers. “(T)he Big Deal is an online aggregation of journals that publishers offer as a one-price, one size fits all package. In the Big Deal, libraries agree to buy electronic access to all of a commercial publisher’s journals for a price based on current payments to that publisher, plus some increment.” (15) He goes on to explain how this bundling has many short-term benefits (expanded information access for library users with a relatively low initial costs.)

However, there is also potential risk involved. Libraries have always had a role in their acquisitions. Each library is unique in their collections. By signing up for an aggregate of journals, the library gives up potential control over what journals they collect. Usually, the library only has a choice of whether or not they sign up for the bundle. This potentially weakens their collections by adding journals they don’t need or want. More importantly, if an aggregate decides to drop a journal that the library does want, and say, has been collecting for quite sometime, the library can do little about it. The control over journal acquisitions has largely gone over to the publisher. Another worry is that the responsibility for archiving has also gone to the publisher. This transfer of control from an academic institution to a commercial institution is problematic. Decisions that make sense financially do not always make sense academically.

Access issues have a mixture of concerns. Even though the internet has given rise to more communication across a broader academic spectrum, access to individual articles can sometimes be harder to achieve than traditional access found in libraries. “In an online world, even more credentials are being checked and fewer resources are being made available without authorization.” (4)

Publisher’s policies on copyright are making it difficult to have access to articles. Fair use policies are becoming more and more restrictive. Since the author traditionally gives away his/her intellectual property rights to the publisher in return for wide distribution, it seems that the publishers are doing a disservice to authors, and to the community of scholars, by further restricting fair use issues. This restricts the free flow of information among the scholarly community.(2, 4,)

Another issue making it difficult to implement new technologies successfully is that there are many publishers refusing to publish any form of an article that has been "published" on the internet. There is a wide range of publisher’s policy on this subject. Some publishers are very strict, counting nearly anything as "publishing", others are more lenient. This adds confusion to an already confusing situation. Much of it is field related. (25)

Due to the experimentation that currently needs to happen at this time, there is high volatility to any current and new technologies in SC. This hampers the trust of scholars and therefore slows the acceptance of new technologies down. If a scholar is to use a server or database to publish an article, they will need assurances that not only will their articles be readable in the future (guaranteed archiving and refreshing as electronic formats change,) but whoever is in control of the accessible version will not make it unavailable if they go out of business.

Summary
Trustworthiness should be the guiding light in these changing times for SC. It should be realized that each discipline will have different sets of values, and there will not be a “one size fits all” solution. This will be challenging with the interdisciplinary aspect of SC. The commercial aspects of SC does not seem to be working, and organizations like ARL, SPARC and PEW seem to be trying to create a solution to the rising costs of scholarly journals. The future role of academic libraries could be the archivist and main portal to digital repositories.

References

1. Allard, S., (2002), Digital Libraries and Organizations for International Collaboration and Knowledge Creation, The Electronic Library 20(5):369-381

2. ARL, AAU, PHER (1998), To Publish and Perish, Policy Perspectives, 7(4)

3. Baptista, A., Rodrigues, E., Machado, A. (1999), Online Publishing as a Support for Scholarly Communication in Dynamic Knowledge Communities, Informattica

4. Borgman, C. (2000), Digital Libraries and the Continuum of Scholarly Communication. Journal of Documentation. 56(4)

5. Borgman, C. (2000), Scholarly Communication and Bibliometrics Revisited. The Web of Knowledge, Ch. 7. ASIS Monograph Series, New Jersey.

6. Brown, C. (2001), The E-volution of Preprints in the Scholarly Communication of Physicists and Astronomers, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 52(3):187-200

7. Brunn, S., O’Lear, S. (1999), Research and Communication in the “Invisible College” of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, Global Environmental Change 9:285-301

8. Cole, S., (2000), The Role of Journals in the Growth of Scientific Knowledge. The Web of Knowledge, Ch. 6. ASIS Monograph Series, New Jersey.

9. Coleman, A. (2002), Interdisciplinarity, D-Lib Magazine, 8(7/8)

10. Covi, L. (2000), Debunking the Myth of the Nintendo Generation: How Doctoral Students Introduce New Electronic Communication Practices into University Research, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(14):1284-1294

11. Cronin, B. (2001), Acknowledgement Trends in the Research Literature of Information Science, Journal of Documentation, 57(3):427-433

12. Cronin, B. (2001), Hyperauthorship: a postmodern perversion or evidence of a structural shift in scholarly communication practices? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 52(7):558-569

13. CDL (California Digital Library), Challenges in Sustaining the Licensed Commercial Journal Component of the University of California Shared Digital Collection, University of California System-wide Library Planning, Working Draft

14. Fourie, I. (1999), Should We Take Disintermediation Seriously? The Electronic Library, 17(1):9-16

15. Frazier, K. (2001), Contemplating the Costs of the “Big Deal”. D-Lib Magazine, 7(3)

16. Fyffe, R (2002), Technological Change and the Scholarly Communications Reform Movement: Reflections on Castells and Giddens, Library Resources & Technical Services 46(2):50-61

17. Gelfand, J. (2002), Interdisciplinarity across subject paths & institutions: Leading to new outcomes-the Cal-IT2 project in Detail. International Association of Technological University Libraries (IATUL) Proceedings (New Series) 12
18. Ginsparg, P. (2003), Can Peer Review Be Better Focused?

19. Ginsparg, P. (1994), First Steps Towards Electronic Research Communication, Computers in Physics, 8(4):390

20. Harter, S. (1999), Scholarly Communications and Electronic Journals: An Impact Study, Journal of the American Society for Information Science 49(6):507-516

21. Hibbitts, B. (1999), From Law Reviews to Knowledge Networks: Legal Scholarship in the Age of Cyberspace, Serials Review 25(1):1-9

22. Hurd, J. (2000), The Transformation of Scientific Communication: A Model for 2020, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(14):1279-1283

23. Johnson, R. (1999), The challenge of the knowledge economy: Managing knowledge, in Australia’s Information Future: Innovation and Knowledge for the 21st Century, Proceedings of a workshop held 3-4 March pp 51-8

24. Kaplan, N., Nelson, M. (2000), Determining the Publication Impact of a Digital Library, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(4):324-339

25. Kling, R., McKim, G. (1999), Scholarly Communication and the Continuum of Electronic Publishing, Journal of the American Society of Information Science, 50(10):890-906

26. Kuhn, T. (1996), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd Ed, University of Chicago Press, Chicago

27. Lally, E. (2001), A researcher’s perspective on electronic scholarly communication Online Information Review. 25(2):80-87

28. Liu, L. (2000), The contribution of library collections to prestige of academic programs of universities: a quantitative analysis Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services 25:49-65

29. Manna, M., Young, J. (2002), The ELectronic Society for Social Scientists: From Journals as Documents to Journals as Knowledge Exchanges, Interlending & Document Supply, 30(4):178-182

30. McCain, K. (2000), Sharing Digitized Research-Related Information on the World Wide Web, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(14):1321-1327

31. Nabe, J. (2001), E-Journal Bundling and Its Impact on Academic Libraries: Some Early Results, Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, Spring

32. Naylor, B. (1996), Opinion Paper: Paying for Scholarly Communication: The Future as a Guide to the Past, Interlending & Document Supply, 24(2):28-29

33. OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), (1972) Interdisciplinarity: Problems of Teaching and Research in Universities. Paris: 25-26

34. O’Connor, S. (2000), Economic and Intellectual Value in Existing and New Paradigms of Electronic Scholarly Communication, Library Hi Tech, 18(1):37-45

35. Palmer, C. (1999), Structures and Strategies of Interdisciplinary Science, Journal of the American Society for Information Science 50(3):242-253

36. Pfeifer, E. (2002), Planet Internet: Interview with Larry Smarr, Technology Review. 105(2)

37. Speier, C., Palmer, J., Wren, D., Hahn, S. (1999), Faculty Perceptions of Electronic Journals as Scholarly Communication: a question of Prestige and Legitimacy, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(6):537-543

38. Sturges, P. (2001), Gatekeepers and other Intermediaries, Aslib Proceedings 53(2)

39. Treloar, A. (1999), Rethinking the Library’s Role in Publishing, Learned Publishing, 12(1):25-31

40. Waaigers, L. (1997), Opinion Paper: Towards a New System of Scholarly Communication, Interlending & Document Supply, 25(2):77-78

41. Waaigers, L. (2002), Stratum Continuum of Information: Scholarly Communication and the Role of University Libraries, New Library World, 103(1175-6):165-171

42. Walsh, J. (et. al) (2000), Connecting Minds: Computer-Mediated Communication and Scientific Work, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(14):1295-1305

43. Weller, A. (2000), Editorial Peer Review for Electronic Journals: Current Issues and Emerging Models, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(14):1328-1333

44. Wilensky, R. (2000), Digital Library Resources as a Basis for Collaborative Work, Journal fo the American Society for Information Science 51(3):228-245

45. Wittenberg, K. (2001), The Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC): a University-based Collaboration in Digital Scholarly Communication, Learned Publishing, 14(1):29-32

46. Youngen, G. (2001), The impact of electronic publishing on scholarly communication: a forum on the future—a conference report. Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services 23:211-222