Navigating the turbulence of change

After Robert Gorter, Daviess Menefee (Director, Library Relations for Elsevier) shared his insights on “Navigating the turbulence of change: Web 2.0 and STM publishing”.

Daviess started his talk by showing us that well known and amazing video by Michael Wensch: The Machine is Us/ing Us.

Journals were a significant improvement in scientific communication, enabling:

• registration – by publishing their research, a scientist can now prove “I was first”.
• validation – peer review
• distribution
• archive

For users the move from print to online has meant:

• improved distribution
• desktop access
• separation of content from functionality
• new functionality, such as linking and searching
• new business models
• e-submission, e-peer review

For publishers:

• e-submission/peer review systems
• SGML/XML based production, often outsourced to low cost countries
• branded platforms for e-publishing, e.g. ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, High Wire Press
• digitised backfiles
• direct sales forces in addition to agents

Web 2.0 comes in different forms, with methods for presenting user-driven information, such as blogs and wikis. Also mentioned applications for connecting, e.g. social networking, social bookmarking. An example of a mashup he cited was Gnoos. Daviess noted that on Gnoos, blogs and media sites are treated equally.

Drivers for publishers to take note of Web 2.0: new generation.

• Reported that according to Scopus user tests, 50% of students do not know what peer review is. (Scopus is one of Elsevier’s major products, a multidisciplinary database that provides citation data.)

• Blogging widely accepted among the young, even if they don’t necessarily understand it. Cited January 2005 Pew State of Blogging statistics.

Another driver: Published or not published?

• the user’s primary goal is to find facts, answers and ideas. The focus is not on whether something is published or non-published.

• users are interested in all types of content types:
  • grey literature (he included theses and dissertations)
  • information on people
  • peer reviewed material and pre-prints
  • working papers, conference papers, technical papers [definitely! I receive a lot of requests for such material]
  • news and discussions
  • practical information, maps, images
• Citations of web references in published articles are increasing, ie people are using increasing amounts of information published on the web in their research

The world’s largest search platforms have adjusted to new behaviour (reliance on the web and search engines), e.g. Google Scholar now provides citation counts

Another driver: Authority gets new meaning

Showed shots of Technorati and Bloggerati, “a smaller cuter Aussie version of digg.com“. Popularity, findability means things are often more visible than stuff by “authorities”.

Yet another driver: Search engines have created new value around content.

• Advertising on Google and Yahoo – huge revenues for these companies.
• Search, Aggregations and Distribution Services (SADS) market has grown twice as fast as the rest of the information market. “20% over 2003 to $31.8billion in 2004”

Thus, we have major changes in registration, certification, dissemination, and archiving of research communication.

Trends in registration:

• latest, up-to-date content is of high value
• from the author’s point of view, information needs to be published as quickly as possible
• researchers eager to search findings early – growth in amount of pre-print material available
• publishers should note sites like Flickr and GoogleBase which allow people to make information publically available very quickly and easily. Mentioned the NLA’s Picture Australia initiative on Flickr as a great example.

Trends in certification:

• Review and validation through the self-organising web.
• Mentioned sites such as LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, SciFOAF, eBay. Sites which crawl the web to extract info about people. EBay as a site where others rate your service/sale.
• Review and rating sites such as Digg, NewsVine, Evalubase (a network of IT professionals evaluating IT solutions), Amazon, TripAdvisor.
• Daviess then mentioned Perth’s very own PerthNorg and Minti as great examples of the self-organising web. (I was cheering in my seat! I hope he tells all of Australia about these sites)

Trends in dissemination:

• new value in providing effective search and dissemination services (attracting users for advertising)
• relevance ranking and social networking (Connotea, Digg) allow people to “talk” about their work and research
• another example Daviess mentioned was mtomic, “the world’s first marketplace for trading digital content and collectibles”.

Trends in archiving:

Old content given new value, because all now findable and searchable.

Examples: Google Book Search, Internet Archive, WebCite.

Thoughts in the STM publishing world currently:

Traditional View

• Large majority of authors continue to feel that peer review is important
• authors continue to get prestige from high quality brands, e.g. Science, Nature, Cell
• If something is not validated traditionally, can it be trusted?
• Why share your research without getting the credit for it?
• Blogs are usually about people’s opinions. How much science is based on opinions?

Web 2.0

• Growth is spectacular
• Current open peer review experiments don’t get much traction
• Science communication might be slow to change but there is no reason why it is not subject to the general change patterns (that are affecting everything else)
• Dissemination (versus validation or derived reputation of publishing)
• New generation of scientists have no appreciation for journals
• Subscription model to be replaced by search derived business model

Daviess pointed to a post by strategy consultant Ross Dawson which quoted “professional services guru David Maister”, on publishing his next book: “publishers don’t actually add any value. Yes, they can edit a manuscript and get a book typeset, but both of those things are freely available as stand-alone services to anyone.”

What can STM publishers do to counter such views?

• Go back to basics – focus on author needs, user needs, scientist needs
• Extend content scope beyond published articles
• Extend validation
• Apply brands
• Deep indexing and data mining
• Foster scientific discovery

He used a term I had not heard before for the environment scientists and researchers work in now: collaboratories. Researchers now have so many tools to call upon:

• collaborative authoring
• knowledge bases
• digital repositories
• harvesters

If any in the audience had any doubt that we are living in interesting times, I think Daviess’s talk dispelled any such doubts. He was interesting and good to listen to, despite having just flown in to Perth the night before.