SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION IN THE WORLD OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES: CONDITIONS AND PERSPECTIVES REGARDING THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS (original) (raw)

The Future of Scholarly Publishing: Open Access and the Economics of Digitisation

2017

The formal scientific communication system is currently undergoing significant change. This is due to four developments: the digitisation of formal science communication; the economisation of academic publishing as profit drives many academic publishers and other providers of information; an increase in the self-observation of science by means of publication, citation and utility-based indicators; and the medialisation of science as its observation by the mass media intensifies. Previously, these developments have only been dealt with individually in the literature and by science-policy actors. The Future of Scholarly Publishing documents the materials and results of an interdisciplinary working group commissioned by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) to analyse the future of scholarly publishing and to make recommendations on how to respond to the challenges posed by these developments.As per the working groups intention, the focus was mainly on the sc...

The Status of Scientific Publication in the Information Age

The principal argument of this paper is that existing practices of scientific publishing ill-fit information-oriented sciences which are fundamentally concerned with complexity, constraint, uncertainty and contingency. It is argued that better exploitation of the full gamut of technological possibilities for scientific communication could support a much richer coordination of understanding between scientists. The barriers to achieving this lie with mechanisms of scarcity production in education, which are fundamentally driven by outdated publication practices. The argument builds on the social ontology of Searle, suggesting that scientific publishing declares " status functions " which simultaneously declare scarcity at many levels of education-in the process feeding economic mechanisms within education which have become pathological. In response, I argue that a richer ecology of types of communication by scholars exploiting and experimenting with new technologies can not only mitigate the pathology of publication, but can create better conditions for the advancement of learning and coordination of scientific understanding.

Current Dynamics of Scholarly Publishing

Scholarly publishing is an essential vehicle for actively participating in the scientific debate and for sustaining the invisible colleges of the modern research environment, which extend far beyond the borders of individual research institutions. However, its current dynamics have deeply transformed the scientific life and conditioned in new ways the economics of academic knowledge production. They have also challenged the perceived common sense view of scientific research. Method: Analytical approach to set out a comprehensive framework on the current debate on scholarly publishing and to shed light on the peculiar organization and the working of this peculiar productive sector. Result: The way in which scientific knowledge is produced and transmitted has been dramatically affected by the series of recent major technosocietal transformations. Although the effects are many, in particular the current overlap and interplay between two distinct and somewhat opposite stances—scientific and economic—tend to blur the overall understanding of what scholarly publishing is and produces distortion on its working which in turn affect the scientific activities. The outcome is thus a series of intended and unintended effects on the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge. Conclusion: The article suggests that a substantial transformation characterizes science today that seems more like a thrusting, entrepreneurial business than a contemplative, disinterested endeavor. In this essay, we provide a general overview of the pivotal role of the scholarly publishing in fostering this change and its pros and cons connected to the idiosyncratic interplay between social norms and market stances.

The scientific article in the age of digitization

2006

1-1.txt for the inaugural edition. 4 Henshaw 2001. 5 An important source for the history of early e-journals is a survey by Hitchcock et al. (1996), who at the end of 1995 identified over 100 'online' journals in the domain of science, technology and medicine (STM), of which 35 were 'electronic only'. Another early overview is given by Roes (1994), who identified 39 refereed scientific electronic journals, adding the note that 'compared to the over 130.000 printed journals the phenomenon of the electronic journal seems to be insignificant.' 'in the midst of a radical transformation spurred by advances in computer technology ... the next century may well witness the extinction of the original scientific 'paper' appearing on paper. ... And the long-term effect of electronic preparation and publication of manuscripts may be as profound as when the scientific article evolved from scholarly letter writing and books in the seventeenth century'. 11 The idea of an electronic revolution in scientific communication is related to ideas about the 'liberation from print' and the explosive effects of electronic text. Lanham argues that electronic text will 'disempower the force 9 For a comprehensive review of predictions and speculations regrading the future of academic libraries see Sapp and Gilmour 2002, 2003. 10 Lu et al. 2002. 11 Harmon and Gross 2003, session 5, in marked contrast with the author's more cautious and critical outlook in Gross et al. 2002, p. 231-234: '... whether in the form of ink on paper or pixels on a computer screen, the scientific article will remain the medium of choice for establishing new knowledge claims ...'. ' ... each discipline has very deep rooted reasons for the way it is constructed and the way scholarly activity is undertaken. Fundamental change will only come when the scholars are satisfied it will be in the interests of the discipline. The form of change will be determined from within the discipline rather than from outside sources ...' 22 So while there are many claims for a 'revolutionary' role of the electronic journal, empirical studies seem to indicate a more limited role predicated on conservative mechanisms and traditional cultures of practice within scientific communities. 'However, the communication systems of science (and other social systems) are much older than the computer age, and have, through centuries, developed important characteristics such as source criticism, principles of rhetoric, standards for publishing, and so on. All this represents production, dissemination, and use of information, which is the declared object of research in information science. The understanding of this social system is a precondition for establishing computer-based systems to make the system more efficient.

Journals in the digital age: penser de nouveaux modèles de publication en sciences humaines

2020

Dans sa nouvelle Wearable books (Pidd 2016), Michael Pidd propose un monde académique dystopique où les technologies numériques de publication sont devenues un système de contrôle, de traçage et d’uniformisation de la recherche et des modèles épistémologiques sur lesquels elle est basée. Dans ce monde Pidd imagine des universitaires révolutionnaires qui, pour garantir une liberté de pensée et la possibilité d’existence de plusieurs paradigmes de recherche, décident de revenir au papier. En effet, si au début de son développement, le Web semblait la promesse d’un espace de pluralité, de différences et de liberté d’expression – n’oublions pas la déclaration d’indépendance du cyberespace de Barlow (2000) – aujourd’hui, en grande partie à cause de l’impact croissant des GAFAM, nous assistons à une uniformisation des modèles et à une concentration de pouvoir dans les mains d’une poignée d’entreprises (Morozov 2013). Dans le monde de la recherche cela se concrétise en une langue dominante...

How Scientists Retrieve Publications: An Empirical Study of How the Internet Is Overtaking Paper Media

The Journal of Electronic Publishing, 2000

The current mainstream scientific-publication process has so far been only marginally affected by the possibilities offered by the Internet, despite some pioneering attempts with free electronic-only journals and electronic preprint archives. Additional electronic versions of traditional paper journals for which one needs a subscription are not a solution. A clear trend, for young researchers in particular, is to go around subscription barriers (both for paper and electronic material) and rely almost exclusively on what they can find free on the Internet, which often includes working versions posted on the home pages of the authors. A survey of how scientists retrieve publications was conducted in February 2000, aimed at measuring to what extent the opportunities offered by the Internet are already changing the scientific information exchange and how researchers feel about this. This paper presents the results based on 236 replies to an extensive Web-based questionnaire, which was announced to around 3,000 researchers in the domains of construction information technology and construction management. The questions dealt with how researchers find, access, and read different sources; how many and what publications they read; how often and to which conferences they travel; how much they publish, and criteria for where they eventually decide to publish. Some of the questions confronted traditional and electronic publishing, with one final section dedicated to opinions about electronic publishing. According to the survey, researchers already download half of the material that they read digitally from the Web. The most popular method for retrieving an interesting publication is downloading it for free from the author's or publisher's Web site. Researchers are not particularly willing to pay for electronic scientific publications. There is much support for a scenario of electronic journals available freely in their entirety on the Web, where the costs could be covered by, for instance, professional societies or the publishing university.

The relevance and future of academic journals

A modern-day editor of academic journals experiences his or her career from a kind of crossroads, made of time, possibility and the recreation of human dilemmas that define us; some of these dilemmas are intrinsically part of the ancient but currently relevant topic of truth and the origin of knowledge (episteme). There are two examples in the recreation of these dilemmas that I want to highlight: the ethics of publication and the objectivity of knowledge. I consider the former fundamental in speaking of the future of academic journals-whether researchbased, scientific or popular in nature-because it is related with what we call the ethics of information. The latter is not a future, but always present topic, traversing our history, never invalid; on the contrary, it requires ongoing inquiry into the origin and validity of knowledge---an inquiry not only for researchers, but also for those who construct academic journals.

Pali U. K. De Silva and Candace K. Vance, Scientific Scholarly Communication: The Changing Landscape

2018

After a brief outline addressing the issue of market-oriented academic practices and their link to the requirements of the economy, De Silva and Vance give a more detailed overview of the historical evolution of scientific communication. The digital revolution has given rise to interpretations and perceptions that shake the foundations of the editorial world and intellectual activity in general. Debates are woven together around the possible disappearance of the book, the end of print civilization, free access to knowledge, the control of editorial markets, and the fragmentation of reading and thought. The “book chain” has evolved into multipolar networks. New actors (Amazon, Google, etc.) that did not exist in the printed book circuit appear. Others are disappearing or being challenged by the digital switchover. The bookstore no longer intervenes in the mediation of the digital journal; the library no longer ensures the long-term preservation of digital editorial production. Anchor...

Re-Engineering the Scientific Publishing Process for the “Internetworked” Global Academic Community

The SciX (Open, self organising repository for scientific information exchange) project is funded by the European Commission in order to demonstrate the feasibility of new alternative models of scientific publishing made possible by the Internet. The project builds upon the previous experience of some of the partners in running an electronic peer reviewed journal and in setting up an e-prints archive. The project includes both theoretical work in making a formal model of the scientific publishing process, to be used as a basis for studying the life-cycle costs of alternative business models, and a demonstrator of a functioning e-prints archive.