April 1, 2012 - The Chronicle of Higher Education - By Randolph W. Hall
David Cutler for The Chronicle
Today almost all research papers are born digital. Words, images, data, models—all of the things that research creates—have been liberated from paper to the more malleable and dynamic world of bits and bytes. Yet when it comes to reviewing, publishing, and distributing research, the academy runs the risk of discouraging digital scholarship through structures that inhibit innovation and fail to reward innovators.
The evolution of digital scholarship is astounding. My Ph.D. thesis, which explored how information could be used to improve personal navigation across networks, included experiments tracking how human subjects reach unfamiliar destinations, as well as computer algorithms for optimizing routes. That research would be very different today. I could search for and acknowledge not just journal-published papers but also works in progress. I would most likely access detailed data sets produced by GPS devices carried by individuals or installed on vehicles that track every movement, rather than rely on my hand-recorded observations. I could tell the story of my experiments through moving images, not just prose and photos, as well as provide tools that could be used immediately on real data. And I could share my work, and receive feedback, well before my thesis was completed.
In 1982, research results were published almost exclusively in print. Peer review served a system in which postpublication discussion would have been costly and impractical, and in which papers were organized in libraries by traditional discipline categories.
Today the situation has improved. For instance, arXiv (pronounced "archive"), operated by Cornell University, offers an extensive digital library of works in the sciences and mathematics. Individuals post their publications without formal peer review, speeding the pace at which research is disseminated to, and discovered by, others. Peer review may still occur, but often only after the research becomes well known.
Another model is open review, in which readers publicly review posted work, as in a recent experiment by the editors of Shakespeare Quarterly. Taking that approach one step further, research can be made available to others for modification and integration, along the lines of the Creative Commons.
But to take root and flourish, these new approaches require support and encouragement for their proponents. Instead, the structures of universities often fail to reward and champion digital innovators, particularly in guidelines for promotion and authorship that privilege traditional scholarship.
If we do not create mechanisms that reward faculty and students who form digital-research communities, then innovation may bypass universities entirely, putting us at risk of falling behind institutes, private companies, and even individuals.
Full story at The Chronicle.
The evolution of digital scholarship is astounding. My Ph.D. thesis, which explored how information could be used to improve personal navigation across networks, included experiments tracking how human subjects reach unfamiliar destinations, as well as computer algorithms for optimizing routes. That research would be very different today. I could search for and acknowledge not just journal-published papers but also works in progress. I would most likely access detailed data sets produced by GPS devices carried by individuals or installed on vehicles that track every movement, rather than rely on my hand-recorded observations. I could tell the story of my experiments through moving images, not just prose and photos, as well as provide tools that could be used immediately on real data. And I could share my work, and receive feedback, well before my thesis was completed.
In 1982, research results were published almost exclusively in print. Peer review served a system in which postpublication discussion would have been costly and impractical, and in which papers were organized in libraries by traditional discipline categories.
Today the situation has improved. For instance, arXiv (pronounced "archive"), operated by Cornell University, offers an extensive digital library of works in the sciences and mathematics. Individuals post their publications without formal peer review, speeding the pace at which research is disseminated to, and discovered by, others. Peer review may still occur, but often only after the research becomes well known.
Another model is open review, in which readers publicly review posted work, as in a recent experiment by the editors of Shakespeare Quarterly. Taking that approach one step further, research can be made available to others for modification and integration, along the lines of the Creative Commons.
But to take root and flourish, these new approaches require support and encouragement for their proponents. Instead, the structures of universities often fail to reward and champion digital innovators, particularly in guidelines for promotion and authorship that privilege traditional scholarship.
If we do not create mechanisms that reward faculty and students who form digital-research communities, then innovation may bypass universities entirely, putting us at risk of falling behind institutes, private companies, and even individuals.
Full story at The Chronicle.
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