Making Web2.0 Researchable Web2.0 and Scholarly Communication innovation and use

1
Making Web2.0 ResearchableWeb2.0 and Scholarly
Communicationinnovation and use

• James Stewart

2
(No Transcript)
3
Scholarly Communication

• Conducting research, developing ideas and
  informal communications.
• Preparing, shaping and communicating what will
  become formal research results.
• The dissemination of formal products.
• Managing personal careers, and research teams and
  research programmes
• Teaching and communicating scholarly ideas to
  broader communities.(based on Thorin (2003) )

4
What is Web2.0?
5
Characterised by example

• Technical and content forms
• E.g. blog, wiki, social networking tool, social
  bookmarking, peer to peer filesharing, etc
• Particular Branded Service or Resource
• Facebook
• Skype
• OpenWetWare
• Sharepoint
• Wikipedia

6
Web2.0

• Way of describing certain post-dot.com bust
  businesses
• Technological definition Web 2.0 encompasses a
  variety of different meanings that include an
  increased emphasis on user-generated content,
  data and content sharing and collaborative
  effort, together with the use of various kinds of
  social software, new ways of interacting with
  web-based applications, and the use of the web as
  a platform for generating, re-purposing and
  consuming content. (Anderson 2007)
• The way technology is being driven by
  individuals and communities seeking to manage the
  explosion of information, and the move to
  networked society

7
Qualities of Web2.0

• Openness
• Usability
• Light structures
• User creation and contribution
• Massive data
• Power of the crowd
• Network effects
• Problem None unique to Web2.0

8
How to describe a Web2.0

• Tool
• System
• Service
• Community
• Organisation
• Collection
• etc

9
Approaches to Web2.0

• Technology
• Business model
• Organisational approach
• Individual and social practices for information
  use and interactions
• Structure of knowledge
• Expectations

10
Academic archaeology

• Many of communicative and information practices
  characteristic of Web2.0 are characteristic of
  scholarly communication.
• However, some of these forms are rather ossified!
• Many earlier internet tools used in Web2.0 way
• Many more well established trajectories of
  socio-technical change. What does Web2.0 add?

11
e.g. Collaboratories

• Shared instruments
• Community Data Systems
• Open Community Contribution Systems
• Virtual Community of Practice
• Virtual Learning Community
• Distributed Research Centre
• Community Infrastructure project
• Bos et al. (2007)

• Issues of
• Tacit knowledge
• Independence of scholars
• Information Standards
• Institutional and national barriers
• Sustainability

12
Working model

• services for discovering and maintaining
  relationships
• services for sharing research objects and
  components
• services for sharing, annotating and commentating
  on publications and presentations
• services for documenting and sharing experiences.

13
How do you use Web2.0?

• How might you define it?
• Is it useful or distracting?
• Is the idea of qualities useable?
• Does Internet Web2.0 now?

14
Framework Social Shaping of Technology

• Technologies emerge from complex processes of
  invention, implementation, failure and success
• Many different social and technical players and
  objects effect outcome
• Sources of innovation included user communities
  as well as producer groups
• Non-linear process involving changes in
  practices, knowledge, structures and
  relationships

15
Framework Social Learning in Innovation

• Changing relationships between players in
  innovation as they interact and learn in the
  processes of invention and implementation.
• Importance of visions and theory in promoting and
  aligning expectations
• Importance of intermediaries in bringing together
  innovations from different communities
• Emergence of new intermediaries

16
Factors shaping Web2.0 in SC

• Ownership and control of scholarly products, both
  by scholars and institutions such as universities
  and publishers
• Institutional, individual and cultural factors
  shaping collaboration
• Technical implantation of support for
  Standardisation, IPR and security
• Epistemological issues arising in creating and
  implementing computer-based communication tools.

17
Principal issues governing the Dynamics of
socio-technical change

• Disciplinary differences
• Scholarly knowledge production
• Structure, economics, maturity and culture.
• Institutional differences
• Non-academic influences individual and broader
  social appropriation of Web2.0 practices and
  ideas
• Many different innovation pathways

18
Academic Approaches

• Science Studies
• Sociology of Knowledge
• Information Science/ Library Studies
• Organisational Science (IT implementation)
• Technology Studies
• Innovation Studies
• Economics

19
Visions and Empirical change

• Open Access
• Open Science
• Library 2.0
• Collaboratories and CSCW
• Data-driven scholarship
• Globalisation

20
Disciplinary Differences

• Empirically
• Use of different types of formal outputs
• Speed of knowledge production
• Disciplinary cultures
• Collective working and competitiveness
• Uses of online systems such as preprint servers
• Theoretically
• Cultures of knowledge production
• Type of knowledge produced
• Types of primary materials/sources
• Maturity of discipline esp. development of
  knowledge standards
• Interdependence of scholars
• Interdsciplinarity

21
Disciplinary Differences

• Musicology
• Music
• High Energy Physics
• Theoretical Physics
• Economics
• Cultural studies

22
Institutional differences

• Institution Status
• Access to publish high ranking journals
• Institutional resources and management
• Other activities teaching, commericalisation
• Local network effects critical mass

23
Individuals and groups

• Experience with use of existing technologies
• Experience with technical change
• Age and Career stage
• Reward structures and motivations
• Gender
• Ability to influence technological change
• Community and institutional support
• Collaborations and work practices
• innovativeness

24
Preliminary questions and issues

• Does the openness and emergence of
  information and knowledge standards favour
  emerging and interdisciplinary research, or is
  Web2.0 primarily taken up in areas with well
  established, but older IT infrastructures
• Does Age, as a proxy for career stage play a role
  in adoption of Web2.0, and it is biased to youth
  and early career, or older and more established
  researchers
• Gender is traditionally a factor in technology
  adoption, and is clearly an factor in
  disciplinary participation. Are there any unusual
  patterns in Web2.0 adoption

25
RIN Web2.0 Study

• Objectives
• Who is using what, where?
• What is shaping that use?
• The implications for Scholarly Communications.

26
RIN Web2.0 Study

• Methods
• Quantitative and representative survey of UK
  scholarly community to discover basic use and
  awareness
• 50 in dept interviews on scholarly communications
  and Web2.0
• 5 case studies of promoters, developers and users
  of specific web2.0 services

27
Issues

• Many different sorts of scholarly communication
• e.g. information searching, publishing formal
  outputs, coordinating
• Web2.0 such a vague term, and not well known
• Use of much Web2.0 maybe very limited
• BUT
• Web2.0 not a step change
• Ask about personal changes in pratices and
  institutional change
• The experiences and efforts of innovation
  intermediaries to stimulate change

28
What do you want to know?