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The Perfect Storm…hits scholarly communication and the

printed word

Professor David Nicholas CIBER

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• Largely going to build my lecture on the basis of what is happening in the scholarly publishing industries of the UK and USA

• Dangerous making projections in these digital days where Internet year just 7 weeks – most of the ‘drivers’ fundamentally changing the (global) scholarly environment are not 10 years old;

• Bring a lot of baggage with us that prevents us making the intellectual leap we need to make; take comfort in saying we have heard this before, and continue to inhabit a parallel universe.

• Large part of scholarly reading now takes place in virtual world & proportion rapidly increasing, and for certain groups (scientists and Google Generation) nearly all of it is. Readers/tablets and e-books are beginning to impact on recreational reading too (my train trips)

• My paper ,’ the Perfect Storm’, based on huge, evidence-base of what people actually do in digital space and not what they say they did or wished they did. Digital footprints left in scholarly databases

Introduction: the future of the printed word in the digital age

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• Slow burn it is definitely not; storm on us, so no room for complacency

• The elements of the storm:

I. Changing nature of digital information seeking and reading behaviour

II. The Google Generation hits universities/workplaces

III. Rapid advance of smartphones and tablets

IV. March of social media (and social cool - Apple)

V. Implosion of (physical) libraries (and publishers’ business model).

• And hitting all at the same time; movements (tidal waves) and collisions (between players and platforms) are taking place on the global stage, involving billions of people

• You would be foolhardy to believe this will not change the scholarly landscape

Introduction: the elements of the storm

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Information seeking and reading in the digital environment

• Big shock! Nobody does much reading in virtual space – or certainly not what is traditionally thought to be reading

• Logs tell us:

a) Most website visits see 1-3 pages viewed & half visitors never come back – promiscuous, preferring to move on;

b) Typically, only a few minutes spent on a visit, and 15 minutes a very long time to stay;

c) If it is an article then people spend about 3 minutes on it;

d) Short articles have much bigger chance of being viewed;

e) If article is long the summary will be read or it will be downloaded & squirreled away for another day

• Focus groups/surveys tell us not much ‘deep’ reading is not undertaken later at a more convenient time and place, or in a more suitable form (on paper)? Digital osmosis.

The explanation

1. Digital transition resulted in move from vertical to horizontal information seeking/reading; leads to viewing rather than reading

2. Best described as skittering: moving rapidly along digital surface, with frequent light contacts or changes of direction. It is a coping mechanism for massive and interesting choice

3. Ability to deep dive and get snippets the gold standard; not the long read or PDF

4. Web a visual platform, like TV; go online to avoid reading

5. People multitask when online; much prefer it; more interesting

6. Conditioned to require fast information (as have accepted fast food)

7. E-books increases prevalence of ‘lite’ reading behaviour

.And then there is…the Google Generation (1993-)

• Those born digital, been conditioned since birth, are those with greatest appetite for fast information and skittering (and not reading!)

• Quickest searchers, spend least amount of time on a query and reading and evaluation of results – a fraction of the time spent by adults. By own admission, least confident about their answers.

• Not just fast food generation, but also `cut and paste’ generation.

• Young fast forwarded from a world where the focus was on knowing one big thing really well to a world where you know many things, but not very well. Web foxes.

• Them (and us) are being rewired; possibly hard-wired

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• If the computer has considerably shaped our reading behaviour, then the mobile phone looks like its going to take us into a completely new level

• Massively popular: mobile devices used more and more for accessing the Web for information and forecasted to be the platform of choice in a few years

• Cool and social. Extends the reach of websites and draw in a wider range of people to scholarly information.

• No boundaries. Search on the move, virtually anywhere and at any time – and in the social space; when you feel the need

• Restricted real-estate. Smartphone users presented with a simplified ‘lite’ interface, without some of the search functionality available to the PC user; iPad a different ball game – encourage reading

• Ask a young person about their library and they will point to their phone and you could not get further from the original concept of the library (and a book) than that!

• Clearly then web use via mobile phone & tablet offers a different user reading experience from the desk/office-bound PC so will have major impact on information use, reading and seeking behaviour.

Information on the go

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Social media

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• Huge and massive and growth

• Another social tool with big implications for scholarly communication

• Social media users much more likely to use iPads and smartphones – this compounds and accelerates change in behaviour

• Our research shows that it is already having major impact on all aspects of scholarly communication and the research process

• Challenging old concepts of trust, brand, authority and peer review. Asking a friend, might be coming back in fashion

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Perceived benefits

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• Ability to communicate quickly & effectively with diverse audiences, at remote distances.

• All about building communities, and alternative networks and outlets.

• Creating brand new data collection opportunities in some contexts but researchers are wary of the issues around validity and reliability.

• Allows social scientists and humanists to collect information from wide variety of sources and to listen to `different’ voices.

• Social media provides an alternative research space where young researchers and those from developing countries can shine (a parallel scholarly universe).

• Distrust of the anonymity of the peer review process; openness is felt to be more important than ever, and reach and connectivity becoming the new research goals.

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Big issues and reflections

• Neurologists say digital behaviour changes pattern of connections in brain – introducing new ones/dispensing with old ones; young brains rewire quickly

• Brain gets endorphin rush for finding information. So skittering could impact negatively as it chips away at capacity to concentrate & contemplate. Making us stupid. Witnessing death of reading? No, just marginalisation of deep reading, and emergence of power browsing or reading ‘lite’.

• Maybe McLuhan’s universe of linear exposition, quiet contemplation, disciplined reading and study is an ideal which we bought into and developed publishing products around. But maybe we always wanted to skitter but could not. We can now! Even in books.

• Yet publishers have never had it so good - 40% annual growth in incomes; e-book sales going to constitute 50% sales in 3 years and boosting hard copy sales; monograph sales/usage up; thing so good they are giving it away (Bloomsbury). Digital visibility the explanation. But if its rubbish…Might have a new definition of second-hand book though…

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Ah forgot about the libraries!

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• Tough and challenging times for publishers but spare a thought for librarians

• Dis-intermediated: we are all connected to big fat information pipe.

• Social media introducing another round of disintermediation

• Rise of e-books responsible for massive migration to digital world; humanities scholars, public library users and undergrads have been in slow lane of digital transition. E-books carry more people with them than e-journals ever di. Academic libraries smack in firing line.

• Gateway services, like PubMed central, replacing library website as the main source of discovery. Plus Google Scholar, Mendeley etc. create new value proposition by providing citation and other metrics so researchers can form their own views on quality

• Libraries trusted but incomplete sources of information & researchers do not trust librarians to make critical decisions on what is and what is not in walled garden on their behalf

• Publishers the new (digital) librarians…library users treading publisher space