Science Online

Science Online conference bag

Yesterday I visited Science Online London (the second day). It’s subtitle is ‘How is the web changing science?’ but it’s a general mishmash of people from various walks who share an enthusiasm for science and the web, talking about what they’re doing, and how they can share this enthusiasm.

For me, the breakout sessions were the most interesting portions, so I’ll summarise those briefly with some reflections on what I learnt from them.

Tracking researcher identity: pragmatics and ethics

The first session I attended was looking at an author ID system, ORCID. Such systems try to avoid confusion between academic authors with similar namesby assigning them a unique ID. I’m already signed up to Thomson Reuter’s ResearcherID system, to give an example. This is a more top down alternative to the bottom up approach where databases use algorithms to try to differentiate between different authors. I understand these algorithms are usually successful, but perhaps because of my limited academic output, I’ve found myself lumped in with other “K Fraser”s on more than one occasion.

ORCID aims to overcome some of the reluctance researchers have to sign up to proprietary author ID systems, and offer a central, open and transparent registry instead. The session came alive in the discussion of what such a system could do – such as create a far more nuanced record of who had contributed what to a paper than the traditional author order could capture – and the ethics behind it – should a researcher’s ID keep track of rebuttals of their work? There are a lot of positives to such a system from a librarian’s perspective (easier author search, simplified tracking down of academics’ papers for the institutional repository) so it was great to have a balanced discussion from a range of stakeholders.

What scientists want (and how to give it to them)

The second breakout session I attended was part of the ‘unconference’ (essentially some sessions which were crowdsourced from attendees the previous day). This session focused on ‘users’ (which turned out to be scientists). The most interesting bits for me were a discussion of what scientists wanted from technology (they want better publication and information gathering tools: librarians take note) and one slightly awkward but fascinating section in which a marketing specialist tried to get the scientists to identify the best way to market to them.

Obviously I had my ears open for the marketing questions, as sometimes it’s hard for the library to ‘sell’ services to academics. The main message was that scientists will come and look for information as and when they need it, and so when they do come looking, you’d better be i) easy to find and ii) prepared with a pitch and some examples of how great your services are. I’m currently mulling over ways to achieve these two things as a librarian: suggestions welcome!

The “broken publishing system”: whose responsibility is it?

The last session I attended was ostensibly a discussion of open access publishing, but centred mostly on impact factors, a way of recording how widely read journal are, at the title level. Discussions with Nancy, our library bibliometrician have already highlighted to me that judging a paper by which journal it’s in is a flawed idea, but I was surprised to hear that no one in the room – publishers included – thought they were useful or valid. Somehow impact factors have been seized as a key evaluation metric, and everyone is only interested in them to the extent that others are using them to evaluate their output!

All were agreed that something should be done to avoid this focus on impact factors, but disagreement centred on whether small acts of protest at this system (opting out, voting with your feet) or a coordinated protest (demanding an overhaul of the system at the highest levels) were needed. Again, suggestions for action welcome!

Conclusions

Overall, this was an interesting conference to attend, and I felt I learnt a lot about how scientists view the services on offer to them. Oddly, however, I think maybe I’d be more comfortable presenting at it if I attended again: a lot of the sessions were based on the assumption that the audience was composed of scientists, and I felt like more like an observer than a participant in the discussion sometimes. However, participant observation is a time-honoured way of getting to know a culture better, and I’m sure I’ll use my observations to help inform the library’s development of services over the next year: maybe with something new to contribute to the discussion of scientists online at the end.

Citing data

Possibly two posts in one day breaks a blogging convention, but here is the second thing from Innovations in Reference Management 2, while I am thinking about it!  

Plenty to think about in Kevin Ashley’s talk about citing data.    In addition to talking about how to cite it, Kevin spent some time persuading us (if we needed to be persuaded) that we needed to care about data and its use.   I thought of  (my favourite!) critical appraisal.

If you have the underlying data, it makes it easier to see where authors have been selective, or used a particular technique to make the data “prove” something or other.   It adds new dimensions to the evaluation of a paper, or a figure or table in a paper.   Kevin’s examples included a survey that said that “nine out of ten cats preferred the Open University”, but where an examination of the underlying data showed that you could only say this if you sorted the data in a particular way.     There are all the ruses outlined in books like “How to lie with statistics”, and being aware of those ruses is part of critical appraisal, but having the data adds a new dimension to this.

Kevin also gave some instances of where data might be valuable on its own, without any accompanying papers.  A researcher might be interested in the data, and not the story being told about it by one particular person or group:

• Researchers in one area might be able to use data gathered by others for other purposes;
• Having access to all the separate data sets relating to, say, the distribution of individual species, might lead to work on biodiversity on a larger scale;
• Having access to all the separate data sets on a subject could lead to being able to identify where the gaps are.

Rust, DRM and the British Library

With my document Supply hat on I was interested to read Peter Murray Rust’s post the other day on DRM (Digital Rights Management) and the British Library; and I’ll admit I found myself nodding in agreement with some of his comments. That said while the system previously adopted using the Adobe Digital Edition platform has had a few niggles over the years, on the whole for our users it has worked ok. I am pleased to say that the BL is moving away from this to the FileOpen platform which by all accounts is much more trouble free; and we’ll be hopefully moving to this in coming months (once I’ve tested it thoroughly and prepared the appropriate publicity and training).

From: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mundane_joy/3000673193/

On the other hand reading the latter half of Peter’s post, I would disagree with quite a few of his comments aimed at librarians.  Academic libraries have to be cautious with copyright as publishers are notoriously litigious over their IPR  being redistributed, and organisations like the CLA keep an oversight that we don’t step out of line.  But why are the publishers able to swing such a mighty hammer over article copyright?  Only because many, many academics continue to perpetuate the gifting approach to publishing – giving away their rights in an article to publishers for publication.  Once these rights are given away, legally we librarians have to abide by the rules or risk penalties.

How can the situation be changed?  Only by academics themselves taking closer account of their publication habits, since they’re the one’s the publisher’s truly listen to.  It’s the same old open access message – think before you ascribe all rights to a publisher, consider using the SPARC addendum to retain rights to deposit in your open access repository, learn what your funder requires of you, and lobby publishers with whom you have a relation to develop or maintain fairer policies to the distribution of scholarly research funded out of the public purse.

Only in this way can the shackles of the BL’s license agreement with publishers be loosened, and only then will we see a reduction in the severity DRM terms of use.

The ball is, very much, in the academics’ court.

Open access bibliography

Most scholars concerned with open access are aware of Charles Bailey’s bibliography of open access.  I’ve also been collecting a more modest list of papers and sites that I’ve read in the last few years, and that underpin a lot of the work that we do here at Leicester.  I brought this collection together as part of the handout for the postponed academic staff session on open access and scholarly communication.  Rather than let it sit festering on my hard-drive until I deliver the session in March, I’ve made it available on the LRA’s Web pages.  And will be updating it from time to time as I read new papers or sites of interest.

A challenge – what are the three best articles about open access ?

What are the three best articles on open access? 

Not the ones that I might like but the key ones that I should/could/might get my academics to read. 

Not necessarily ones that will have them convinced or arch-evangalising left right and centre, but ones that really give a rich overview of the topic.  Ones that even bring some academic rigour to the discipline, some facts and figures as much as hearts and minds.  Ones, like the THE, that take a look at all the stakeholders and try to offer a dispassionate overview (or as dispassionate as it is possible to get!).

They don’t have to be peer reviewed, they can be reports, they can be briefings, they can be conference papers – they just have to be accessible and credible.

And here’s the trick – they have to be available, in full-text in an open access repository!  Suggestions welcomed and indeed warmly invited – but no more than three per commenter!!!

Open Access Week: JISC OA resources

JISC has rolled out a very useful page and set of resources today in support of open access week.

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/openaccess

In clear, plain english the page details the case for open access as well as the role JISC has been playing in supporting and developing the infra-structure in the UK to make it happen.  As well as the general overview of the benefits of OA there’s also a selection of resources for researchers, institutions and publishers; detailing why OA matters for them.  It includes a link to a wide range of resources and reports giving the scholarly background information that so many academics crave.  I’ll certainly be reading through some of these over the coming weeks.

The section for publishers is aimed mostly at those whom are embracing open access publishing – be it as a pure OA journal or a more traditional one offering a pay-up-front option (a fee to make an article available as open access where normally it would be available to subscribers only).

Interestingly the site also offers a section on the business case for open access, something that I know is close to the hearts of many senior institutional administrators.  I think this economic case is one I’d certainly like to know more about myself, as some of the discussions and 1-2-1 meetings I have with academics and staff at all levels move away from the philosophical “Open access is good for the research environment” and into the realm of “But what does it mean for the university as a business”.

The site also offers all the reports on a single page at the end, and while I know I’m never going to have a chance to read them all myself – they are certainly a worthy resource.  I can see that this site will be helping me shape the workshop I’m running in December for new academic staff, as well as those I offer to PhD students.

PEERing through the scholarly publishing gloom

PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) is a pretty major European Union funded project looking at the impact and effects of arching in repositories of academic papers and the like.  The site has been live since late February but it was only through a mailshot yesterday that I became particularly aware of them.

Glad to see that repository managers and libraries are stakeholders.  Actually, I’d have been happier to see libraries paired off as a 5th separate stakeholder as I don’t believe that library interests and those of repositories are strictly speaking coterminus.  Repository administration is often, but not always, based within a library but this can be a marriage of convenience – a functional – decision rather than a strategic one.  Perhaps this is an area PEER needs to think about carefully.

After reading through the Web site, I can see how PEER may well produce some interesting information and reports on the European repository and publishing scene.  However, as with so many of these large inatives I’ve yet to spot where the directly applicable and readily employable outputs for repository people will be.  Is PEER to act as a lobbying service on our behalf?  No.  Will PEER mediate discussions twixt the various stakeholders?  Maybe.  Will PEER change the way our repository functions?  In some way I guess.

Perhaps it is too early to pour cold water on what PEER can, may or will achieve – but I’ve seen these big EU wide initiatives before (I’m thinking of DRIVER) which have had only a minor impact within the UK HEI repository community.  Worthy work for sure, but so much at a nebulous, Ivory tower strata rather than a practitioner level.  On the other hand initiatives such as the RSP or UKCoRR have had a real beneficial role directly supporting repository workers as well as performing a research and stakeholder interface function.  IMHO we need more of these, and less of the long term study initiatives.

Actually I think that’s perhaps a little harsh on DRIVER, which I believe had a bigger role to play in the European repository scene.  Unfortunately for the project, the UK repository scene was perhaps further along with it’s networking and building supporting communities, so what it did he;lp facilitate wasn’t as noticeable.

With this in mind I’ll be interested to see how PEER will interact with the UK HEIrepository community.  There aren’t currently any major UK comparable projects (I’ll happily be corrected on this point) on this scale, so it’s a noble endeavour for sure.   I am hoping they’ll be looking to directlyinteract with repository managers like me who work at the sharp end of things; though I suspect a lot of their work may end up being at a more strategic higher level.  I could be wrong though.  They’ll be appointing an advisoryboard soon, and I imagine that might shape significantly how, where and at what level it engages with the community.

All the same, it’s a site that’s well worth a look from anyone working with repositories; and no doubt in time some very interesting information will begin to seep forth from it.

CILIP Editorial Panel Meeting*

On Friday 31st I went down to London for the second of my trips to CILIPHQ.  This time it was for the first meeting of the new Editorial Panel, which has replaced the old and more formal Editorial Board earlier this year. 

It was an interesting meeting, very much of two halves.  The morning was mostly given over to reports from the Gazetteand Updateeditorial team, with the older hands weighing in from time to time.  As a newbie I kept uncharacteristically quiet, as I was still working out the social dynamics of the 17 other people in the room.  Perhaps a few too many, but the idea is to have representation from all library sectors and apparently the old Board suffered from far too few members.  As it was after lunch we kicked off into a more chatty part of the meeting as the ice had well and truly melted, and naturally I got my oar in at every available moment.

One of the most interesting debates was around the new digital Edition of Update, which looks like it will be having additional content over and above the print addition.  In part this is to drive traffic to the site, but it also is intended as a member benefit; since the issue is only visible to logged in CILIP members.

Part of my role on the panel, as well as using my expert judgement to feedback on each issue, is to seek comments and suggestions from the wider library community. I came away with a series of questions and action points, some of which I pushed out onto Twitter during the meeting.   In case you’re not Twittered up here are the main questions:

• What are the hot issues that should be tackled?
• What themes should issues focus on? We’ve had RFID, JISC and Health of late.
• Who should be writing articles in Update?
• Did you know who was on the cover of November 2008 without looking inside?
• Does Update use too much “in-house language” and should more effort be made to demystify acronyms used?

Usefully I’ve come back with a load of extra copies of recentissues, which I’ve left in the staff room to share the CILIP news a bit further.  So in

The meeting ended with a plea for contributions to the Update blog, whichI confess I’d forgotten to look at for a few weeks – stop by if you get the chance – though worth noting that unlike the Communities part of the site the blog is actually open access - something I wholeheartedly support.  So anyone can read it, though you do need to be logged in as a member to actually comment. 

Oh and did you all spot the picture/quote from me in the latest copy of Gazette?  Personally I think I look grumpy…

*You know with a super-exciting post title like that, that this entry is just going to be crammed full of interesting stuff; don’t you?