Pamela Baxter
IRLS 589
Assignment 3: Final Project

I give permission for my final project to be made available through the LIS Learning Showcase web server.

A Combined Look at Four Current Trends: WWW, Interdisciplinarity, Collaboration, and Disintermediation and Their Affect on Evaluating the Products and Processes of Scholarly Communication..

Abstract

This paper will attempt to address both positive and negative affects of current trends in Scholarly Communication as we continue to advance into the Electronic Technology Era.  At heart is the rising cost of print journals, still the key vehicle for the publication of scholarly communications, and the ability of universities to maintain journal collections.  Inherent in the advancement of scholarly communications into the Epublishing Era is the ability for universities to be able to evaluate scholarship for the purpose of hiring, retaining, firing, promoting, and rewarding scholarly staff.  Interdisciplinarity, Collaboration and Disintermediation will be briefly defined and discussed in relationship to the effect they have on Scholarly Communication.

Introduction

In an attempt to have first hand experience and knowledge of the process of producing a scholarly paper for the Internet or Web most of the research for this paper was done on the World Wide Web.  Information that will be included in this paper has come from various locations across international lines.  It almost seemed as if more research has been produced on these terms and concerns outside the United States than within it borders.  In the process of conducting the research it was found that there is a plethora of information available in connection with scholarly communication and the World Wide Web, some on Collaboration, but not much was found by the researcher on Interdisciplinarity and Disintermediation.  Indeed there is a quite a bit of information about Interdisciplinarity and Disintermediation as topics concerning the Library Sciences but not as to how they affect scholarly communications.

World Wide Web and Scholarly Communications

The reoccurring theme in the research conducted for this paper was that of the rising cost of Scholarly Journals and the decreases in library budgets that have brought about a dilemma in the area of scholarly communications.  Many libraries are seeking other funding or options to be able to maintain journal collections for scholarly use.  Though costs and declining budgets may be the major issue facing scholarly communications there may be other disadvantages to print publications.  One is the length of time of journal publication.  The shortest period of time for most journal publication is monthly with others falling into the bi-monthly or quarterly time frame.  Epublishing can be almost spontaneously on the Web.  Another obstacle for Scholarly Communications in print is that they can not be searched directly thus there is a large market for abstracting and indexing services, citation indexing provides for one of the main sources of evaluation of scholars at universities for hiring, firing, retention and promotion.  On the other hand articles or papers written directly for the Internet, sometimes referred to, as Epublishing are hyper-linked, linked directly to sources, and can be searched directly. (Treloar 1995)  Information in print form is static.  Finally, print publications are costly to produce, distribute and store. (Odlyzko 1995)

Three of the major reasons for Web publishing: the speed at which information can be disseminated; reduced costs; and, larger potential audience.  In 1997 there were already 2, 000 Journals and Newsletters available on the Web. (Zakis 1997)  An optimistic view is that this new technology will transform scholarly publication for the better by allowing people to quickly seek out information, respond to others, publish electronically at a low cost, and ultimately speed the typically long cycle of publishing a peer-reviewed article. (Langston 1996)  Scholars like regular Web or Internet consumers conducting research want information free and quick the Internet certainly can provide this function.  Scholars also want as wide an audience as possible and the Internet also supplies this in numbers infinite.  One of the more valuable aspects of Web publishing is that it makes it possible for authors to provide access to extension material that supplements or compliments the primary publication.  This linking to other information makes it possible to envisage a range of extension to traditional scholarly publishing including: access to primary data sources allowing for checks of data analysis; links to earlier versions of publications allowing tracking of the development of the article over time; and, pre-publication access to related ongoing research reports.  Another attraction to online or Epublishing is the use of multimedia documents.  Scholarly communications on the web are not static and can dramatically expand the view of what is possible.  A Web document can include color images, links to video clips and sound files. (Treloar 1995)

This is not to say that publishing to the web though quicker and usually cheaper is not without glitches.  Scholars publishing to the web will need to have multimedia skills.  They will need to know about production and formatting.  They will also need how to notify the public of new information, how to grant access to the information and how to use common computer language that all browsers can access the work all of which involve time and effort and sometimes the need to learn new skills.  Problems that the Internet Scholar conducting research may encounter are servers that may have moved or no longer even exist and broken URL’s linked to additional sources that lose vital information.  

There seems to be three main negative aspects of scholarly publishing to the Web.  First is the long accepted tradition of print publishing.  Second the use, by universities, of scholarly communications as a means of evaluating a scholars impact on their field of study in the number and quality of their publications for the purposes of hiring, raises, promotions, and tenure granting.  Third the lack of prestige of electronic means of publishing, even if referred. (Langston 1996)  The quality of a given publication is often measured in terms of the reputation of a journal that accepts and publishes scholarly works. (Noreault 1996)  Many scholars and academic administrators have become uneasy over some of the electronic publishing practices that exist today.  The question becomes how does one evaluate this forum of scholarly communications?   Do young scholars who post their dissertations or other papers on web sites have these publications added to their records?  Are disciplinary electronic manuscripts as substantial as print manuscripts if posted to a website and how can they be integrated into disciplinary publications and be evaluated?  Do paper-based working papers that are shifted to electronic form, known as e-scripts, get evaluated as substantially as their paper precursors or should they be viewed as new ephemera?  How should articles written for purely-electronic (pure-e) magazines, such as D-Lib Magazine, peer-reviewed and widely read by those interested in digital libraries, be evaluated and added to the scholar’s record?  The list continues and could possibly be endless. (Kling/Spector 2002)

On the other hand Web publishing may be a way for scholars to restore scholar centricity, and allow for scholarly communications to be controlled by scholars and their institutions.  In addition Web publishing may conceivably induce institutions to revisit the current model in which they forego or ignore statuary ownership of scholarly output.  A new model that could still yield to the interests of the scholar might require automatic granting of non-exclusive licenses for using intellectual property within an institution, within a group of institutions or within the national or international scholarly community.  Thus the value of Peer-Review would become one of the mechanisms for both quality and quantity control. (Towards a New 1995)  Some believe the next phase of automation or Web publishing will address the need readers and authors have for peer reviewed scholarship and a further automation of publishing tasks.  If the proper tools are developed it will enable the mediation of the evaluation function, which is so important to authors so that work can be improved, scholars can receive formal recognition of the quality of their work, and readers will have automated filtering aids for identifying high quality scholarship. (Noreault 1996)  In 1991 another framework was proposed to access the strength of print publishing within the field of scholarly communications.  The Kling/McKim framework explicitly defines three criteria: trustworthiness, publicity, and accessibility.  The new discussion became how to apply this framework to E-scripts.  The first activity in gauging the strength of a publication became to identify its character.  So the representation of the manuscript must be identified, i.e., a dissertation, a working draft, an E-journal article, working paper or a technical review in a series, etc.  Now it becomes possible to apply the Kling/McKim framework to it to evaluate it relative to the same character of a paper-based manuscript. (Kling/Spector 2002)  Authors of several of the articles consulted examined aspects of electronic communication and noted that in general electronic communication, scholarly communication; scholarly interaction has been facilitated. Scholars talk informally talk through various Web methods, among them electronic mail and listserv discussion, (Langston 1996)  a definite plus for the science and publication of Web scholarly communication.

Though citation analysis, the counting of how many times an article is cited in some defined body of literature (usually journals), might prove more difficult on the Web it might once again become one of the leading criteria of the worth of Web scholarly communication.  After all if one is familiar with Eugene Garfield and the beginnings of citation analysis one should know that having the idea, the will and finding the way to pursue the goal is half the battle.      




Interdisciplinarity

Interdisciplinarity is best defined or seen as the bringing together of distinctive components of two or more disciplines. Interdisciplinarity typically applies to four realms in academic discourse: knowledge, research, education, and theory.  To clarify more, one needs reach to the roots of interdisciplinarity.  A discipline can be defined as a self-contained and isolated domain of human experience or subject matter. (Nissani 1997)  Dr. Anita Coleman, from the University of Arizona, has a more in depth criteria definition.  She uses seven levels to characterize the nature of a given discipline and to distinguish it from others:
1. The “material field” (term used by Piaget) of a discipline consists of the set of (commonsense) objects. For example an entomologist studies insects, a paleontologist studies dinosaurs, etc.  At this level there is overlapping so it is therefore very superficial.
2. The “subject matter.”  The circumscribed subsets of observables of the material field.  A more refined concept.
3. The “level of theoretical integration.”  Often the most crucial level of a discipline.  Here we find two forms of disciplines: empirical and theoretical.  Math is an example of a theoretical discipline.  An empirical discipline tries to construct the “reality” of the subject matter using theoretical terms in order to try to understand, explain, and predict phenomena and events of the overwhelmingly complex reality involving the subject matter.  
4. The “methods” of a discipline.  There are two purposes to disciplinary methods: a) to get the observables of its subject matter and b) to transform observables into data more specific to the problem being investigated.  
5. The “analytical tools.”  The formal statistics, strategies of logic, mathematical reasoning, computer models and simulations, and information theories of or provided by the methods of a subject.
6. “Applications of a discipline in fields of practice.” The differences in the practical and vocational applicability of a discipline.  Many of these disciplines are “eclectic” and not considered true science or that the have “scientific lag” because of their emphasis on application and well-established vocational fields.
7. “Historical contingencies.” Every discipline is the product of historical development.  Every discipline is therefore in a transitional state.

In the university degree program sometimes a need arises that forces or demands that two different disciplines merge to meet the need that has arisen.  For example, in library programs a new need has come to the forefront in recent years.  As society becomes more dependent on the Internet a librarian today must be able to perform more computer like related duties.  Among those duties he or she must be able to create and maintain databases and conduct quality Internet searches. As many libraries consider adding programs such as 24/7 Reference, for a tour click here: http://www.247ref.org/, a librarian will have to be available, at any hour of the day or night, for “real time” referencing.  These needs are requiring that new Librarians have more extensive computer skills and knowledge. This has led to the merging of two disciplines, Library Sciences and Computer Sciences, so that tomorrows librarians will be able to meet the demands of their patrons.  The question though is how; interdisciplinarity effects the field of scholarly communications.  In researching this, there were only a few mentions that can be summarized similarly to the effects of that of publishing to the Web.  The basic difference lies in where credit might lie for the purpose of scholarly acknowledgement.  Which discipline did the work and can take credit for it?  The same dilemma lies in the following topic of collaboration.  One positive note, it is believed by some that interdisciplinarians may help to breach communication gaps in the modern academy and they may also play a role in the defense of academic freedom. ((Nissani 1997)


Collaboration

The scholarly use of collaboration is implicit within the usual definition of the word.  There is an overt shifting away from traditional individual scientific activity towards a more collective process.  The vital factors towards this trend are 1) science policy makers, 2) overspecialization, and 3) growth of “big” science [such as Space Sciences and Oceanography (where whole labs equaling people and equipment are needed to do the research). (Coleman 2004)   Today the rate of collaboration in scientific activity has grown and is the key element in the development of research in certain areas.  The analysis and description of different types of collaboration is a very difficult task as even scientific collaboration is a social process.  The major difficulty is the qualification of the contribution of each collaborator to the final outcome.  Often the nature and magnitude of each collaborator changes during the course of the project.  Who decides which contribution was more valuable than another, what was a formal contribution or an informal cooperation, how credit is assigned?  Another problem lies in the lack of normalization of author, center, and even country names. Among the solutions proposed have been: 1) giving total credit to the first author listed; 2) assigning full credit to each author listed; or, 3) giving equal fraction of the credit to each author listed.  Currently the major tool used to assign credit in a scientific project has been the use of bibliometrics, specifically Eugene Garfield’s Science Citation Index.  The topics most frequently examined through SCI are quantitative analysis of collaboration, collaboration evolution over time, collaboration effects on scientific activity, and the national and international networks collaboration has formed.  Through bibliometrics many positive aspects of collaboration have come forth such as increases in productivity, visibility and quality of research. (Bordons/Gomez 2000) 

Disintermediation

Disintermediation is defined as removing the “middle-man.”  Essentially a business term but in LIS, library Information Sciences, it refers to the removal of the librarian in corporations and libraries to replace them with other tools such as the Internet or a database.  In the case of scholarly communications Disintermediation falls under the same auspices of interdisciplinarity, currently there is not much information available to determine the effects this will have on scholarly communications except to say that most of the concerns expressed under the topic of publishing on the Web apply.  If the scholar bypasses the use of traditional print journals, the middle man, to post his or her article on the Web how is it evaluated by the university to meet the needs of the scholar for promotion or tenure.

Conclusion

Though this researcher could not seem to find enough information on the Internet to quote sources it is hoped that the analysis or comparison made is enough to satisfy the reader at this time.  As with most of the points made under the topic of Scholarly Communication on the Web there have been developments enough in the last few years to agree both side of the issue and hopefully this was done with some success.  It is still debatable on which side is the correct one and only future developments in technology or methods of evaluation will determine the answer.  Sufficient information was available to pose an answer on Collaboration though it seems at this stage that mostly Collaboration has had a positive effect on scholarly communication.  Possibly the lack of information on Interdisciplinarity and Disintermediation are because they are newer concepts to scholarly communication than the Web and Collaboration.  Interdisciplinarity currently seems to have more of an effect on the field of Library Science than on scholarly communications.  Disintermediation may possibly, based on some of the information seen in the process of researching the main thesis of this paper may have a terrible effect on Library Science if librarians do not take a proactive role in their own futures.  As with most things concerned with technology, and especially the World Wide Web, only the future may provide the answers to questions posed in this paper.  





















References

Treloar, Andrew. (1995). Electronic Scholarly Publishing and the World Wide Web. [Electronic Version] AusWeb95 The First Australian World Wide Web Conference. Retrieved April 10, 2004, from http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw95/publishing/treloar/

Odlyzko, Andrew M. (1995), “Tragic loss or good riddance? The impending demise of Traditional Scholarly Journals” in Electronic Confronts Academia: The Agenda for the Year 2000, Robin P. Peek and Gregory B. Newby, eds. MIT Press/ASIS monograph, MIT Press.    
http://www.uibk.ac.at/sci-org/voeb/texte/odyzko.html

Zakis, John D., & Pudlowski, Zenon J. (1997). The World Wide Web as Universal Medium for Scholarly Publication, Information Retrieval and Interchange. [Electronic Journal] Global Journal of Engineering Education Vol. 1, No. 3. Retrieved April 10, 2004 from     
http://www.eng.monash.edu.au/usicee/gjee/vollno3/papers5.htm

Langston, Lizabeth. 1996. Scholarly Communication and Electronic Publication: Implications for Research, Advancement, and Promotion.  Retrieved April 10,    2004 from http://www.library.ucsb.edu/untangle/langston.html

Noreault, Terry., & Bradley, C. Watson. (1996). Electronic Publishing: Communication in a Scholarly Environment.   [Electronic version] Proceedings of the AUUG96 & Asia Pacific World Wide Web 2nd Joint Conference Retrieved April 11, 2004, from
http://www.csu.edu.au/special/auugwww96/proceedings/norwat/norwat.html

Kling, Rob., & Spector, Lisa. (December 17, 2002). Academic Rewards for Scholarly Research Communication via Electronic Publishing.  Center for Social Informatics, SLIS, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.
http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/WP/WP02-13B.html

Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and Canadian Association of Research Libraries. (1995). Committee on Libraries and Information
Technology-CARL. Towards a New Paradigm for Scholarly Communications.
http://www.yorku.ca/univsec/senate/committees/lit/carl.htm
 
Nissani, Moti. (1997) Ten Cheers for Interdisciplinarity: The Case for Interdisciplinarity Knowledge and Research. [Electronic Journal] Social Science Journal 34 (#2): 201-216. Retrieved April 10, 2004 from http://www.is.wayne.edu/mnissani/pagepub/10cheers.htm

Coleman, Anita. (2004, Spring). Aspects of Scientific Scholarly Communications: Growth, Collaboration, Communication (formal and informal), Consensus and  Conflict. IRLS 589, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona.

Bordons, Maria., & Gomez, Isabel. (2000).  Collaboration Networks in Science.  In Blaise Cronin and Helen Barsky Atkins (Eds.), The Web of Knowledge: A  Festschrift in Honor of Eugene Garfield (pp197-).  New Jersey: Information Today, Inc.