Digital scholarship: Exploration of strategies and skills for knowledge creation and dissemination

Cristobal  Cobo  Oxford  Internet  Ins2tute,    Oxford  University,  England  

 Concepcion  Naval,    

University  of  Navarra,  Spain     1  

2  (Planned Obsolescence, Fitzpatrick., 2011)

Two relevant dimensions: knowledge generation (wikis,

e-science, online education, distributed R&D, open

innovation, open science, peer-based production, UGC)

+ new models of knowledge distribution (e-journals,

open repositories, open licenses, dataweb archive). 3  

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••Today's initiatives in cyber- infrastructure, e-

Science, e-Humanities or e-Learning emerged

from a period combining technological advances

and economic-institutional redefinitions (Borgman, 2007)

4  

•Exponential transformation of information is

remarkable from the quantitative perspective,

but also there fragmentation of mechanisms to

create, access and distribute information. 5  

••New modes of scholarship of collaborative,

trans-disciplinary and computationally

engaged research, teaching and publication. (Burdick, et al, 2012).

6  

•••Digital scholarship communities collaborate in

dynamic, flexible/open-ended networks, exchanging

in innovation, creativity/co-authoring.

(i.e open Science Federation)

7  

•Radical decentralization: Open values, ideology

and potential of technologies born of peer-to-

peer networking and wiki-ways. (Benkler, 2006)

(i.e. BioMed Central, Public Library of Science)

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drivers

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•EU Commission + ESRC: Accelerate open access..

OA journals + databases facilitating mechanism of

open peer revision + visibility/impact (avoid duplication).

1.   Technology: Coordination mechanisms ‒ exchange and codify tacit knowledge, simplifying its

translation into more interchangeable resources

(i.e. DOAJ, PeerJ, Rubriq)

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(Heimeriks & Vasileiadou, 2008).

•Books > dialogical tool not simply

“finished*published” but open to dynamics +

iterations (i.e. versioning, crowd-source, peer

reviewed, remix). Burdick (et al., 2012)

2. Co-creation: Networking +Coordination +Cooperation

+Collaboration. (Rheingold, 2012)

The higher the level of negotiation the more

complex the set of skills required.

(i.e. Flat World Knowledge, Creative Crowdwriting)

11  

•Do-it-yourself publishing: Blogs, photos + videos (Nielsen, 2011).

Less clear distinction between popular and more specialized scholarship (Burdick, 2012).

3. Dissemination: New open-access policies (open

repositories/journals) almost anyone anywhere.

“If it doesn’t spread, it’s dead” (Jenkins et al., 2010).

4’R: reuse, revise, remix and redistribute. (Wiley, 2010).  

(i.e. CreateSpace or Blurb)

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•~20 mill. papers +50years:

Cross-disciplinary teams dominate solo authors

and frequently more cited than individuals (Wuchty, 2007)

•4. Co-Authorship/beta: From solitary genius toward the

virtually boundless community of digital scholars (Burdick, et al, 2012)).

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Will universities institutionalize approaches (learning and

research) grounded in collaboration instead of celebrity

and competition?

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•a) traditional practices of peer-review. To

assure the quality of knowledge creation /

dissemination .

b) Mode 2, post-normal science + technoscience (Burdick, et al, 2012).

Critique: Need to recognize distinction between DIY

scholarship and high scholarship.

••

(i.e Wikipedia)

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•More appropriate institutional recognition are needed

(i.e. A tenure evaluation system that recognizes the

value of more flexible mechanisms of knowledge

creation and new publication formats).

Is not easy to determine to what extent traditional

and new practices of scholarship will coexist.

(i.e. Reinventing Discovery, Nielsem) 2011)

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•The Stick or the carrot: academic mechanisms of

recognition (in many cases) are limited to metrics

such as ‘h-index' affecting to possibilities to

facilitate peers based collaboration (Hirsch, 2005)

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Due to these elements of exclusiveness/

individualism, knowledge-sharing in academic

organizations are often inefficient (Seonghee and Boryung, 2008)

The highly competitive environment (dysfunctional)

enhance lack of partnership (Kanwar, Kodhandaraman, and Umar, 2010).

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(Adler and Harzing, 2009)

‘The shift in knowledge landscape is disturbing to

people familiar with the earlier paradigm’. (Chesbrough, 2006)

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Appropriating these tools/practices requires a new set

of skills (i.e. Curation, editing, modelling) to work

across an information ecosystem full of new

intermediaries. 20  

New cultural practices: institutional flexibility (i.e.

diversifying tenure track, re- understand concepts

such as academic visibility or digital influence).

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@cristobalcobo  hJp://2ny.cc/ppts  

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