Share: Science Information Life Cycle

Share

This InfoLit Bite lesson is adapted from a larger Science Information Life Cycle tutorial developed by UCI Libraries.

This lesson focuses on one of the five parts of the Science Information Life Cycle: Share.

http://www.lib.uci.edu/licenses/license-ucilibs-find-science-info-tutorial.html

The life cycle of information differs in the Sciences, Social Sciences, and Humanities. This tutorial is designed to help you understand unique characteristics of information production and dissemination in Science so that you can use library resources effectively and efficiently. The tutorial is divided into five sections.

The methods for producing science information will impact…

how it is published and communicated, which in turn affects…

what format it is published in and…

where you can find it. With the found information, you will need to know…

the rules for including it in your research so that you can produce information, and the cycle begins again.

Once a scientist has applied the scientific method to produce new data and drawn new conclusions, s/he must share this information with other scientists. Sharing new information is just as important to the overall progress of science as generating that information in the first place.

This section is designed to help you understand unique characteristics of information and knowledge dissemination in Science so that you can use library resources to find information effectively and efficiently.

What are we looking at now?

In this tutorial, you will:• Learn how scientists use scholarly

communication to share information

• Understand the peer review process

Introduction

Pre-Test

How do scientists communicate scientific information with others in their field?

⃝1 Conference presentations⃝1 Published articles⃝1 Technical reports⃝1 All of the above, and multiple other ways

On scratch paper, identify your answer. You will check your answer on the next slide.

Pre-Test

How do scientists communicate scientific information with others in their field?

⃝1 Conference presentations⃝1 Published articles⃝1 Technical reports√ All of the above, and multiple other ways

The work of a scientist is best accomplished by using the scientific method and scholarly communication.

Why share scientific information?

• Scientists share information to advance scientific knowledge.• Without this sharing, everyone would have to start from scratch and

re-invent wheels that others have already invented. Scientific progress would be slow and limited

What is scholarly communication?• The system through which research and other scholarly writings are

created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community and preserved for future use.

What is the purpose of scholarly communication?• To support the production and sharing of ideas within the scientific

community.

Why Share?

What is Open Access?

• Published scholarly work that is available for free on the public Internet. Any user can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full text of the scholarly work.

Why care about Open Access?

• “Limited access to research makes [you] settle for the information that is available rather than that which is most relevant.” –rightofresearch.org

• Open access articles are credible and reliable as long as the peer review process is in place.

Open Access

What is Peer Review?Peer review is a critical component of the scientific method in scholarly communication.

1. Scientist writes a paper and submits it to a journal.

2. Journal editor sends the paper to other scientists for anonymous review of quality and originality.

• Was the work done properly?• Does the discovery contribute something new?• Is the subject matter appropriate for this journal?• Is the paper written well enough for other scientists to

understand it?3. Editor uses the reviewers’ comments and recommendations to accept

the paper or to reject it. Most accepted papers require revisions to become a scholarly article.

The Peer Review Process

On scratch paper, identify which order the following processes go in. You will check your answers on the next slide.

The Peer Review Process

How do Scientists Communicate?

Scientists communicate with others through:• Conference presentations and proceedings

• allows for timely communication of new findings• often a limited lasting record, if any

• Published articles• creates a permanent record of the discovery• subject to peer review

• Other communications such as• Technical reports, manuals,

associations’ newsletters, case studies, image databases, listserv postings, blogs, etc.

Communication Avenues

Let’s ReviewLet’s review what you have learned:

• How scientists use scholarly communication to share information.

• Open access makes some scientific research freely available.

• An understanding of the peer review process.

Click here to take the 2 question quiz on this lesson. If you have difficulties with the hyperlink, type the following address into a new browser window:

http://irsc.libguides.com/survey.php?survey_id=12520&mode=7&load_mode=0

Quiz

Please note: All aspects of this presentation are derived from a larger tutorial created by UCI Libraries and may be accessed at http://www.lib.uci.edu/how/tutorials/FindScienceInformation/public/

The original tutorial is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Details may be found at http://www.lib.uci.edu/licenses/license-ucilibs-find-science-info-tutorial.html

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