Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
Presentation at the University of Cape Town, Aug. 5, 2011. This talk was part of the OpenUCT initiative and the Scholarly Communication in Africa Programme. It provides an overview of the changing research landscape and the particular importance of open access and other forms of open collaboration for solving some of the pressing problems of development research. The presentation argues for the importance of policy development in support of research collaboration and the development of enriched metrics for evaluating the development impact of research.
Citation preview
Global Perspective on Open Research
A bird’s eye view
Leslie ChanInternational Development StudiesBioline InternationalUniversity of Toronto Scarborough
Presentation at the Scholarly Communication in Africa Programme and OpenUCT,University of Cape TownAugust 5, 2011
• What is research and why• What is openness and why• The values of Open Research• How to enable Open Research
Arguments
• Quality filtering based on journal name is disappearing, to be replaced by new forms of “metrics” and reputation proxies
• Innovations are emerging from the “periphery” • Networks and the return to the Invisible College• Grass root actions are driving change, but policy
framework is key to acceptance and sustainability
Why research?
The World of Journal Publishing According to Thomson’s ISI Science Citation Index
Data from 2002http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=205
“An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good.”
Budapest Open Access Initiativehttp://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
Human Development and Access to Knowledge-embedded goods
Access to learning resourcesAccess to journals Access to research and outcome dataAccess to health careAccess to Medicine
PUBLICGOODS
From “Big” science to Networked science
Knowledge for local problem solving
Openness as the building block for the New Invisible College
"Like many parts of the knowledge system, the organization of scientific research is changing in fundamental ways. Self-organizing networks that span the globe are the most notable feature of science today. These networks constitute an invisible college of researchers: scientists who collaborate not because they are told to but because they want to, not because they work in the same laboratory or even in the same field but because they have complementary insight, data, or skills. Networks can take on the role of institutions in some parts of the world that do not have a long history of building scientific infrastructure."Caroline Wagner (2008), The New Invisible College: Science for Development. The Brookings Institution Press.
arXiv began its operations before the World Wide Web, search engines, online commerce and all the rest, but nonetheless anticipated many components of current 'Web 2.0' methodology… It continues to play a leading role at the forefront of new models for scientific communication."
23
Retrieved April 26, 2010 from: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=117328677437228595850.00044ec490b69019e64a3&z=2
Active Bioline Journals graphed with Google Maps.
Institutional mandatory policies 112Departmental mandatory policies 28Funder mandatory policies 47Total mandatory policies 187
http://www.openscholarship.org/jcms/c_6226/open-access-policies-for-universities-and-research-institutions
But Open Access is only the Substrate of theResearch Life Cycle
Scholarly Primitives
“…basic functions common to scholarly activity across disciplines, over time, and independent of theoretical orientation.”
John Unsworth. "Scholarly Primitives: What Methods Do Humanities Researchers Have in Common and How Might Our Tools Reflect This?" "Humanities Computing, Formal Methods, Experimental Practice" Symposium, Kings College, London, May 13, 2000. http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~jmu2m/Kings.5-00/primitives.html
“Is the scientific paper a fraud?”“I mean the scientific paper may be a fraud because it misrepresents the processes of thought that accompanied or give rise to the work that is described in the paper. That is the question and I will say right away that my answer to it is ‘yes’. The scientific paper in its orthodox form does embody a totally mistaken conception, even a travesty, of the nature of scientific though”.
Sir Peter Medawar(From a BBC talk, 1964)
http://contanatura-hemeroteca.weblog.com.pt/arquivo/medawar_paper_fraud.pdf
Boyer’s Scholarship of
Engagement
PUBLIC
Publishers
Libraries
Closed Content
Traditional Business Models
Capital Value-addedServices
Development
Subscription
Licensing
Pay-per-view
$$ Price
Permission
BRANDING
Content layer
Generative layer
Open Source Open Access
New Business Models
Authority Trust FindabilityPersonalization Immediacy
CapitalResearch
Development
Fragmented and scattered
Coherent and structured
Overlayservices
“We are slowly, as I’ve written many times before, moving to post-publication peer review where the scientific community judges what matters—not bewigged and gathered in one elegant room as in the 18th century but connected globally through the internet. It’s back to our roots.”
Richard Smith was the editor of the BMJ until 2004 and is director of the United Health Group’s chronic disease initiative. Competing interest: RS is on the board of the Public Library of Science but is not paid.
http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/
The JIF is appallingly open to manipulation; mature alt-metrics systems could be more robust, leveraging the diversity of of alt-metrics and statistical power of big data to algorithmically detect and correct for fraudulent activity. This approach already works for online advertisers, social news sites, Wikipedia, and search engines.
Scholarly Primitives and Reputation?
“…basic functions common to scholarly activity across disciplines, over time, and independent of theoretical orientation.”
John Unsworth. "Scholarly Primitives: What Methods Do Humanities Researchers Have in Common and How Might Our Tools Reflect This?" "Humanities Computing, Formal Methods, Experimental Practice" Symposium, Kings College, London, May 13, 2000. http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~jmu2m/Kings.5-00/primitives.html
Conclusions
• Should not take Openness for granted, be vigilant
• Align the values of research with appropriate incentives and recognition
• Also need to align policies that are emerging from the top with initiatives are rising from the bottom
