Springtime for Publishers?

Springtime for Publishers?

Richard AkermanCanadian Association of Learned Journals (CALJ)May 28, 2012

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Spring

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A Fad?

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New Rules

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A New Universe

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There Are Many Copies

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Digital Just Means Numbers

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Network

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Machine Readable

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Discovery

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Rapid Growth & Rapid Change

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Nov. 20, 1961 – Rock and Roll is Dying

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Consequences

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Consequences (2)

• End of record stores (but not music)• End of video stores• End of book stores• End of film developers• End of physical money• Re-examination of any content communications

system• Enormous challenges for academic libraries• Enormous challenges for scholarly communication• Enormous challenges for universities

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What Can You Do?

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Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0

• Each of these has a different “reader”;know your audience(s)

PDF

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Be on the web and be OF the web

• Have great content• Know how to structure it behind the scenes

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Social Life

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Social Life (2)

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Social Life (3)

• Just write about what you are doing, and have conversations about it.• Remember it’s about community.

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Linked Data

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Analytics

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Analytics (2)

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Analytics (3)

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Unique Identifiers

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Raw Data

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New Channels

• Audio• Video• Graphics (Visualization)

Platform-specific

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Eppur si muove

• All of the previous items are basically about details of presenting content within the existing system• Yet a deeper revolution is afoot

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Break the System to Understand It

• What appeared to be a single integrated system actually has many individual components. Each one of them is being re-examined in the new digital ecosystem.• registration, certification, awareness, archiving and

rewarding

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Awareness: Open Access

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Open Access (2)

• http://thecostofknowledge.com/ 11,896• We The People petition 18,257• US Federal Research Public Access Act• (Harvard)

Faculty Advisory Council Memorandum on Journal Pricing• “Consider submitting articles to open-access journals, or

to ones that have reasonable, sustainable subscription costs; move prestige to open access”

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Open Access (3)

• “I realise this move to open access presents a challenge and opportunity for your industry, as you have historically received funding by charging for access to a publication. Nevertheless that funding model is surely going to have to change…. To try to preserve the old model is the wrong battle to fight.”

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Certification: Peer Review

• Pre-review• Traditional review• Post-review

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Archiving: Data Curation &Data Repositories

• Opportunity particularly for scholarly societies (and their associated publishing arms) to be the repository of record for data in their discipline, and to set the data standards

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Rewarding: Impact Factor; Alternative Metrics

• Impact Factor becoming less... Impactful• Many alternative metrics, including article-

level metrics• #altmetrics• http://article-level-metrics.plos.org/

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What Can You Do? (2)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ramkarthik/4022566308/

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Monitoring: Blogs to Read

• LSE Impact Blog• T. Scott Plutchak• Scholarly Kitchen• Science in the Open• Michael Neilsen

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Monitoring: Journals to Watch

• PLoS• PLoS ONE

• eLife• “We commit to serving authors and advancing careers in

science. At eLife, Publishing is just the beginning.”

• PeerJ• “The $99 Sustainable Model”

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Be Small

• Small is good• Agility• Experimentation

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Be Big

• Open Source• Off-the-shelf software (COTS)• “The Cloud”

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Summary

• Fundamental change due to properties of the digital environment – impacting all of our culture• Need to understand audience: both machines and

humans• Many basic steps in order to be a healthy part of

the digital ecosystem• Disruption of each aspect of scholarly communication• Monitor the ongoing experiments• Opportunities for adaptive organisations

Questions?Richard Akerman

@scilib

Copyright © 2012

Licensed in the

Creative

Commons

CC BY-NC-SA