the future of scholarly communication | uc berkeley the influence of academic values on scholarly...

The Future of Scholarly Communication | UC Berkeley

THE INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIC VALUES ON SCHOLARLY PUBLICATION AND COMMUNICATION PRACTICES

C. Judson King , Diane Harley, Principal Investigators

Center for Studies in Higher Education University of California, Berkeley

Project Website and Associated Document Links: http://cshe.berkeley.edu/research/scholarlycommunication

Full Report: http://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/docs/scholarlycomm_report.pdf

ARL, Washington DC, October 18, 2006Copyright 2006, Center for Studies in Higher Education


Research OverviewPlanning project funded by the A.W. Mellon Foundation

Researchers: C.J. King, D. Harley, S. Novell, J. Arter, S. Lawrence

• “The lack of willingness of the faculty to change” key barrier to moving to more cost-effective publishing models?

• Our research: assess the criteria by which faculty decide when and in what venues to communicate the results of scholarly research.

• How do faculty values relating to advancement and stature in their fields affect these decisions?

• Analyze what roles universities and faculty play in resolution of the perceived “crisis in scholarly communication.”


Steering Committee and Research Staff

• C. Judson King, (Principal Investigator), Director, Center for Studies in Higher Education. Provost and Senior Vice President - Academic Affairs (UC System) Emeritus. Professor of Chemical Engineering Emeritus.

• Diane Harley, Ph.D., (Co-principal Investigator), Senior Researcher, Center for Studies in Higher Education. • Ted Bergstrom, Economics, UC Santa Barbara.• Aaron S. Edlin, Economics and Law, Co-founder and Principal, Berkeley Electronic Press.• Thomas Goldstein, Journalism; Director, Program in Mass Communication. Former Dean of Schools of

Journalism at both Columbia and UC Berkeley.• Daniel Greenstein, University Librarian, Vice Provost and Executive Director, California Digital Library,

University of California.• Benjamin E. Hermalin, Banking & Finance, Haas School of Business.• Nicholas P. Jewell, Biostatistics and Statistics. Former Deputy Provost, UC Berkeley. Editor, Berkeley

Electronic Press.• Thomas C. Leonard, University Librarian, UC Berkeley. Professor of Journalism.• John Lie, Dean, International & Area Studies. Sociology.• Peter Lyman, Information. Former University Librarian, UC Berkeley.• Clifford Lynch, Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information; SIMS, UC Berkeley.• John W. (Jack) McCredie, Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and CIO Emeritus, UC

Berkeley.• Daniel L. Rubinfeld, Law and Economics. Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust, U.S.

Department of Justice.• Hal R. Varian, Information, Business, and Economics, UC Berkeley.• Lynne E. Withey, Director, University of California Press.Project Research Staff• Sarah Earl-Novell, post-doctoral scholar; Jennifer Arter, staff researcher; Shannon Lawrence, staff

researcher


Research Activities/Methods

• Identify factors that influence attractiveness, viability, and financial sustainability of different methods of scholarly communication for various participants in the publication/communication system: authors (producers), researchers (consumers), libraries, and publishers.

• Research facilitated by structured review process for appointment, promotion, and advancement at the University of California (UC).

• Budget Committee (BC) process

(Formal review at regular intervals, initiated in writing by department chair, external letters of evaluation, case reviewed by dean, specially appointed ad hoc committee for promotions, and Budget Committee.)


Methods

• 5 disciplinary case studies describing the state of scholarly communication in 5 fields: chemical engineering, anthropology, law and economics, English-language literature, and biostatistics.

• 2 additional case studies: librarians and former Budget Committee members (across the above 5 disciplines).

• Enable a more precise identification of the factors associated with academic and disciplinary value systems.

• Caveats: Sample limited to UCB; Ns biased by relatively small sample, discipline choice.

• Disciplinary traditions and culture matter. Sample includes a range of disciplines across sciences and humanities/social sciences, but not comprehensive.


Methods

• Formal interviews: 2005-06 academic year.

• Relevant stakeholders (faculty, administrators, editors, publishers and librarians), most from UC Berkeley campus.

• ~50 individuals (31 faculty; regular faculty, former/current faculty administrators, and recent ex-Budget Committee members).

• 22 were (or had recently been) editors of scholarly journals.

• 5 librarians; 2 campus-level academic administrators.


Peer Review

Peer review is the coin of the realm.

– THE value system supporting assessment of and perceived quality of research.

– The primary mechanism through which research quality is nurtured.

– The primary mechanism through which research is made both effective and efficient.

– Excellent quality filter for the proliferating mass of scholarly information available on the web.


Faculty Perceptions: Online Publishing

• New modes contribute to a proliferation of scholarly material.

• Can get almost anything published somewhere, if the author persists in trying.

• Easier to get published in newer electronic journals/they contain material of lesser and dubious quality.

• Electronic-only equated with inadequate peer review.

• Number of pages publishable not restricted by cost for e-journals, thus editors of e-journals are not pressed to be as selective.

More difficult for time-pressed faculty to sift through it all.


Written policy: Online publications should NOT be undervalued in consideration of advancement, BUT actual practice may vary.

Junior faculty • Publishing in online-only resources possible threat to achieving

tenure. • May not be counted as much, or even at all, in review.

Senior faculty • Not concerned with advancement issues. • Hindered in using new modes by their lack of ability or time. • No perceived reward for changing the status quo. • Personal desire and interest often drivers for participation.

Faculty Perceptions: Online Publishing


Faculty Perceptions: Crisis/Cost Issues/Open Access

• UCB insulated from any crisis in scholarly publishing.

• Prestige of institution, quality of faculty work, enable faculty to publish in most prestigious journals or presses.

• Faculty do not generally concern themselves with the burden of cost to the institution.

• Minimal, if any, understanding of open-access models.

• Somewhat familiar with the “open” concept.

• Generally receptive to the idea of making knowledge available for the “public good.”


Faculty Perceptions: Crisis/Cost Issues/Open Access

Some faculty have:

Positive Perceptions

• Understand that high cost of journals is problematic.

• View open-access models as possible alternatives to commercial presses.

• Refuse to publish in particular journals because of high cost and pricing mechanisms.

• Senior faculty may be more comfortable with sharing material at the early stages of work (e.g., preprint servers).

Negative Perceptions

• Open-access models had little or no means of quality control, such as peer review.

• Scholarly work placed in open-access media could be “stolen.”


Faculty Perceptions: Author-pays Publishing Models

Generally not aware of author-pays models.

Once explained, responses universally negative.

Paying to publish one’s work equated with:• self-promotion • in conflict with the peer review process, vanity presses• self-advertising and compromising academic integrity • cost of author-pays could possibly serve to discriminate

against countries, institutions, and faculty with fewer financial resources

• exacerbate differences between the sciences and the humanities/charges from grants


Faculty Perceptions: Enhanced Capabilities of Electronic Communication

• Ability to reach a larger audience

• Ease of access by readers

• More rapid publication even when peer reviewed

• Ability to search within and across texts

• Opportunity to make use of hyperlinks

• Enable innovation in scholarly work

• Democratizing effect on scholars outside of North America

• Ability to have enough information (e.g., software code, back-end data, text archives, etc.)


Budget Committee Perceptions

• Heavy reliance on peer review to aid it in evaluation of scholarly work.

• Worry that lack of peer review is associated with newer forms of publication.

• Advancement process should be supportive of non-traditional publishing models, provided that peer review is strongly embedded.

• Advancement process should be unprejudiced toward those scholars exploring new modes of publication.

• But: Faculty say they are often unwilling to take risks by using newer publishing technologies—they presume these may not be recognized by the BC as reputable and/or prestigious.


Budget Committee Perceptions

• BC has so far rarely needed to address the issue of publication venue.

• Few new forms of publication have been represented in the cases that come through the committee.

• Former BC members: the Committee would be open to new forms provided that they meet the same standards for peer review and quality as traditional forms.


Librarians

• Better understanding of available resources and the politics among publishers.

• Often more technologically savvy than faculty counterparts.

• Strongly perceive a crisis in scholarly communication. • Open-access and/or author‑pays models viable alternatives to the

problem of unsustainable journal costs.

• Online resources advantageous, e.g., ease of access, speedy dissemination, etc.

• Online technologies enable them to connect faculty and students with better information.


Librarians

• Concerns with economic sustainability of newer models and role of the library in that financial equation.

• “Version” problem for placing scholarly material in repositories.

• Increasing reliance by both students and faculty on search engines such as Google and Yahoo a major concern.


In-progress communication VSfully peer-reviewed archival publication

Dichotomous situation:

• Electronic forms of print (and other) publications consumed heavily by some.

• Perceptions and realities of the reward system = strong adherence to conventional, high-stature print publications as record for reporting research and having it evaluated institutionally.

• Promotion depends almost exclusively upon final, fully peer-reviewed archival publication.

• Making a reputation more dependent on “in-progress” communication.


In-progress communication VSfully peer-reviewed archival publication

In-progress communication: more fluid and oriented toward partial results, meetings and information exchanges with other researchers during the course of the research:

(1) gaining the critical thoughts of others while research is in progress, (2) staking a claim to one’s activity and accomplishments, and (3) sparking thoughts and new ideas as a product of discussions.

In-progress: not fixed so deeply in values and tradition as for final, archival publication. More experimentation.

They serve different purposes and needs. Both are important.


Conclusions

• More innovation does and will occur first in in-progress communication than in final archival publication.

• Future Scenarios? Useful and effective innovations in in‑progress communication will eventually serve as drivers for improvements in final archival publication.

• Worthwhile to gain deeper insights into the needs, motives, and new capabilities of within in‑progress communication as well as for final, archival publication.

• Importance of disciplinary differences—one size will not fit all.


Institutional Support of Scholarly Practice

• At UCB, currently few, if any, mechanisms or structures that support storing, archiving, and sharing the significant research products of faculty, such as databases, collections of literature, etc., that are created en route to ultimate archival publication.


THE INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIC VALUES ON SCHOLARLY PUBLICATION AND

COMMUNICATION PRACTICES

C. Judson King , Diane Harley, Principal Investigators

Center for Studies in Higher Education University of California, Berkeley

Project Website and Associated Document Links: http://cshe.berkeley.edu/research/scholarlycommunication

Full Report: http://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/docs/scholarlycomm_report.pdf

Contact: dianeh (at) berkeley (dot) eduCopyright 2006, Center for Studies in Higher Education

the future of scholarly communication | uc berkeley the influence of academic values on scholarly...

Documents

berkeley electronic

berkeley project website

uc santa barbara

results of scholarly

university librarian

university of california

communication practices

scholarly publication