Have you heard the one about Moses and the subversive knitting Weebles?
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Every now and then I come across some quite silly article titles on IngentaConnect that cause me to stop and re-consider my inbuilt expectation that science is only carried out in the pursuit of high-minded noble ideals.
Some of my favourite examples over the years include Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting, Blind Ducks in Borneo, and Weeble Wobbles: Resilience Within the Psychoanalytic Situation (this one even had follow-up articles, What Is A Weeble Anyway, And What Is A Wobble, Too? and "Wobbly Weebles" and Resilience: Some Additional Thoughts). And of course we've suddenly uncovered a wealth of them since we came to host the Annals of Improbable Research ("A Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown" is certainly one I'll be taking home for further study).
The one that has caught my attention today, though, doesn't have the most immediately entertaining of titles (Biblical Entheogens: a speculative hypothesis). But perhaps I would have found it more noteworthy if I had at some point learnt the definition of
It's particularly interesting to compare this to the Weeble examples I cited above. In that case, a controversial article was followed by letters to the editor, follow-up articles and the publication of "some additional thoughts" - the traditional progress of an academic debate.
In the Moses case, the discussion is already raging in the blogosphere just days after the article's publication (aided, I acknowledge, by an inflammatory TV appearance by the author in which he upgraded his 'hypothesis' to a 'probability'). Sure, a lot of the blog postings are Beavis-and-Butthead-style sniggery, but beyond them there's also a fair amount of reasoned, informed analysis (the Merkavah Vision and and BHA Science Group postings, for example).
It is in the reactions provoked by these controversial publications that we see the ongoing development of alternative scholarly communication channels - but they are also evidence of the "authority" problem with user-generated content. In having to sort the wheat (informed analysis) from the chaff (ranging from uninformed sniggery to non-scientific zealotry), I found myself frustrated by not knowing whose rhetoric to trust, and remembering m'colleague Leigh Dodds' paper at our PT Trends forum in December (Authoritative? What's that? And who says?).
Roll on wider adoption of the BPR3 initiative (which proposes that bloggers use icons to indicate when their posting is a serious discussion of a peer-reviewed work), or indeed of the embryonic kitemark for authoritative content that Leigh posited during his paper and which CrossRef are exploring further. As the boundaries between peer-reviewed publications and other fora for debate become less defined, I for one will appreciate a mechanism that defines whose analysis I can take seriously and who I should take with a pinch of salt.
Some of my favourite examples over the years include Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting, Blind Ducks in Borneo, and Weeble Wobbles: Resilience Within the Psychoanalytic Situation (this one even had follow-up articles, What Is A Weeble Anyway, And What Is A Wobble, Too? and "Wobbly Weebles" and Resilience: Some Additional Thoughts). And of course we've suddenly uncovered a wealth of them since we came to host the Annals of Improbable Research ("A Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown" is certainly one I'll be taking home for further study).
The one that has caught my attention today, though, doesn't have the most immediately entertaining of titles (Biblical Entheogens: a speculative hypothesis). But perhaps I would have found it more noteworthy if I had at some point learnt the definition of
entheogen (en.THEE.oh.jun) : any substance, such as a plant or drug, taken to bring on a spiritual experiencePsychoactive substances? in the Bible? Well, yes, according to this recently-published hypothesis, which claims that Moses' vision of God and the burning bush was brought on by hallucinatory drugs. And what a stir it has caused. (It even made the British Daily Mail, but I'm afraid I'm too liberal to give them any link love).
It's particularly interesting to compare this to the Weeble examples I cited above. In that case, a controversial article was followed by letters to the editor, follow-up articles and the publication of "some additional thoughts" - the traditional progress of an academic debate.
In the Moses case, the discussion is already raging in the blogosphere just days after the article's publication (aided, I acknowledge, by an inflammatory TV appearance by the author in which he upgraded his 'hypothesis' to a 'probability'). Sure, a lot of the blog postings are Beavis-and-Butthead-style sniggery, but beyond them there's also a fair amount of reasoned, informed analysis (the Merkavah Vision and and BHA Science Group postings, for example).
It is in the reactions provoked by these controversial publications that we see the ongoing development of alternative scholarly communication channels - but they are also evidence of the "authority" problem with user-generated content. In having to sort the wheat (informed analysis) from the chaff (ranging from uninformed sniggery to non-scientific zealotry), I found myself frustrated by not knowing whose rhetoric to trust, and remembering m'colleague Leigh Dodds' paper at our PT Trends forum in December (Authoritative? What's that? And who says?).
Roll on wider adoption of the BPR3 initiative (which proposes that bloggers use icons to indicate when their posting is a serious discussion of a peer-reviewed work), or indeed of the embryonic kitemark for authoritative content that Leigh posited during his paper and which CrossRef are exploring further. As the boundaries between peer-reviewed publications and other fora for debate become less defined, I for one will appreciate a mechanism that defines whose analysis I can take seriously and who I should take with a pinch of salt.
Labels: "peer review", blogging, bpr3, publishing technology, scholarly journal, user-generated content
posted by Charlie Rapple at 4:12 pm
Publishing Technology Trends: authoritative? What's that? And who says?
Friday, January 11, 2008
Remember December?
We held the first event in our new Publishing Technology Trends seminar series. The venue was Shakespeare's Globe theatre, on the banks of the river Thames in London. The session we held there was designed to communicate the latest developments in information industry technology to selected publishing industry executives. I made copious notes, which I will share with you in a series of postings over the next few days. First up is a review of the session by our own Chief Technology Officer, Leigh Dodds, entitled "Authoritative? What's that? And who says?"
Sated by lunch or fascinated by the topic? For whatever reason, you could have heard a pin drop among our audience as Leigh Dodds reviewed the ways in which we ascribe authority to content, explored the potential for crossover between traditional peer review and emerging Web 2.0 systems, and considered whether we can make processes more visible to end users.
The massive amounts of information available both through conventional publishing channels and on the web make it difficult for users to find reliable information. Particularly disturbing for publishers is that users are, ultimately, more concerned with finding an answer to their question than with issues of authority. Furthermore, users often have a very different understanding of authority to publishers; consider, on the one hand, the widely-accepted Google model wherein subjective measures of popularity and relevance are a proxy for authority, and on the other, publishers’ expectation that authority denotes submission to, and acceptance by, a formal process.
Despite the well-documented cases of abuse in the last year, editorial control – and particularly peer review – remains the most effective way to filter research output ensuring that published content is the most relevant, interesting and authoritative in its field. However, this formal publishing process is subject to pressures including the costs of filtering ultimately unsuitable content (average turnaways are 80%); the time it can take for content to undergo the process; and the constant need for the new material which attracts most usage.
Web 2 publishing certainly reduces the time-to-market as the majority of processes take place post-publication. User-generated sites such as Wikipedia certainly benefit from the speed and simplicity with which pages can be created, reviewed and edited - but even Wikipedia itself does not describe the content delivered through such "creative anarchy" as authoritative. Its creator attempted to deal with some of its infamous problems in the business model for second-attempt Citizendium - which only allows editing by registered users, incorporates marks of "quality" and is managed by subject editors. The success of sites such as Postgenomic suggests that the "wisdom of crowds" approach is even more effective within a subject silo, while their ability and tendency to include related material (conference programmes and reports, blog postings) brings them closer to traditional publishing.
Nature Publishing Group attempted to combine the traditional and emerging approaches with its open peer review trial. Although ultimately unsuccessful, the project was noted for its transparency - options included making identities of authors and reviewers public, publishing reviewer comments and even allowing end users to contribute. However, this transparency may have contributed to the project's lack of popularity, as academics will naturally be wary of publicly criticising one another's work. The lack of integration with other workflows was another factor preventing this concept from catching on at Nature, but one interesting observation was that posting content online earlier in the publication process did encourage authors to make it more presentable; a transfer of responsibility for some part of the copyediting process from publisher to author.
Leigh proposed taking forward the "open" concept in terms of openly demonstrating to users that content has been reviewed in some way, for example with a kitemark for peer review. As with Creative Commons licences, this would need to combine human-readable logos with machine-readable embedded metadata. Kitemarked content could therefore by searchable (as Creative Commons content currently is). A current example which displays promise is the BPR3 scheme, which enables bloggers to mark postings containing scholarly subject matter (in order to separate them from personal postings); BPR3 is being reviewed by CrossRef, which may carry out prototype work (in which Ingenta would participate).
Leigh has bookmarked further reading material at http://del.icio.us/ldodds/charleston-2007-11; please do share your comments below.
We held the first event in our new Publishing Technology Trends seminar series. The venue was Shakespeare's Globe theatre, on the banks of the river Thames in London. The session we held there was designed to communicate the latest developments in information industry technology to selected publishing industry executives. I made copious notes, which I will share with you in a series of postings over the next few days. First up is a review of the session by our own Chief Technology Officer, Leigh Dodds, entitled "Authoritative? What's that? And who says?"
Sated by lunch or fascinated by the topic? For whatever reason, you could have heard a pin drop among our audience as Leigh Dodds reviewed the ways in which we ascribe authority to content, explored the potential for crossover between traditional peer review and emerging Web 2.0 systems, and considered whether we can make processes more visible to end users.
The massive amounts of information available both through conventional publishing channels and on the web make it difficult for users to find reliable information. Particularly disturbing for publishers is that users are, ultimately, more concerned with finding an answer to their question than with issues of authority. Furthermore, users often have a very different understanding of authority to publishers; consider, on the one hand, the widely-accepted Google model wherein subjective measures of popularity and relevance are a proxy for authority, and on the other, publishers’ expectation that authority denotes submission to, and acceptance by, a formal process.
Despite the well-documented cases of abuse in the last year, editorial control – and particularly peer review – remains the most effective way to filter research output ensuring that published content is the most relevant, interesting and authoritative in its field. However, this formal publishing process is subject to pressures including the costs of filtering ultimately unsuitable content (average turnaways are 80%); the time it can take for content to undergo the process; and the constant need for the new material which attracts most usage.
Web 2 publishing certainly reduces the time-to-market as the majority of processes take place post-publication. User-generated sites such as Wikipedia certainly benefit from the speed and simplicity with which pages can be created, reviewed and edited - but even Wikipedia itself does not describe the content delivered through such "creative anarchy" as authoritative. Its creator attempted to deal with some of its infamous problems in the business model for second-attempt Citizendium - which only allows editing by registered users, incorporates marks of "quality" and is managed by subject editors. The success of sites such as Postgenomic suggests that the "wisdom of crowds" approach is even more effective within a subject silo, while their ability and tendency to include related material (conference programmes and reports, blog postings) brings them closer to traditional publishing.
Nature Publishing Group attempted to combine the traditional and emerging approaches with its open peer review trial. Although ultimately unsuccessful, the project was noted for its transparency - options included making identities of authors and reviewers public, publishing reviewer comments and even allowing end users to contribute. However, this transparency may have contributed to the project's lack of popularity, as academics will naturally be wary of publicly criticising one another's work. The lack of integration with other workflows was another factor preventing this concept from catching on at Nature, but one interesting observation was that posting content online earlier in the publication process did encourage authors to make it more presentable; a transfer of responsibility for some part of the copyediting process from publisher to author.
Leigh proposed taking forward the "open" concept in terms of openly demonstrating to users that content has been reviewed in some way, for example with a kitemark for peer review. As with Creative Commons licences, this would need to combine human-readable logos with machine-readable embedded metadata. Kitemarked content could therefore by searchable (as Creative Commons content currently is). A current example which displays promise is the BPR3 scheme, which enables bloggers to mark postings containing scholarly subject matter (in order to separate them from personal postings); BPR3 is being reviewed by CrossRef, which may carry out prototype work (in which Ingenta would participate).
Leigh has bookmarked further reading material at http://del.icio.us/ldodds/charleston-2007-11; please do share your comments below.
Labels: "editorial control", "nature publishing group", "open peer review", "peer review", "publishing technology", "web 2.0", bpr3, citizendium, crossref, ingenta, postgenomic, wikipedia
posted by Charlie Rapple at 4:11 pm
See you in Charleston?
Friday, November 02, 2007
Just a quick post for anyone who's going to be at the Charleston Conference next week: we'll be there, soaking up the information industry news and views (not to mention the southern sunshine). We'll be imparting our own share of wit and wisdom, with three of our representatives presenting during the conference. Here are the hot topics we're covering in our sessions:
"Authoritative? What's that? And who says?"
Thursday Concurrent Session 1, 4.15-5pm, Rutledge Room, Francis Marion Hotel
Our Chief Technology Officer (and AME blogger) Leigh Dodds is teaming up with Laura Cohen of the University at Albany, SUNY (and Library 2.0 blogger) to explore what defines "authoritative" in the age of user-generated content, and to assess the respective benefits of both Web 2.0 technologies and traditional publishing processes such as peer review. Anyone who has seen Leigh speak will, I am sure, vouch for the high-quality of both his presentation style and subject matter, and in this case I think he's come up with another fascinating new perspective on the changes in scholarly publishing being wrought by new technologies.
"Publisher Consolidation: Where Does It Leave Us?"
Friday Lively Lunch, 12.15-1.45pm, Colonial Ballroom, Francis Marion Hotel
Janet Fisher, Senior Publishing Consultant at our sibling company PCG, will moderate a discussion led by Margaret Landesman of University of Utah Libraries and Diane Scott-Lichter of The Endocrine Society. They will explore the driving forces, repercussions and potential responses to ongoing consolidation within the publishing industry. Given how publishers seem endlessly to be merging with one another, I think this too will be a pretty pertinent panel.
"Best practices: improving librarian administration interfaces"
Friday Concurrent Session 1, 2-2.50pm, Pinckney Room, Francis Marion Hotel
Ingenta's Director of Library Services Claire Winthrop will participate in a panel discussion seeking ways to reduce the learning curve required for librarians to familiarise themselves with multiple publisher and vendor interfaces, and at the same time increasing the amount of control that librarians have over their users' interaction with content. This session will see representatives of the "big three" in scholarly content hosting all together on the same speaking platform for the first time - Claire will be sharing the stage with Atypon's Chris Beckett and Dan Tonkery of EBSCO (owners of Metapress) - so there is a real opportunity for collaborative progress to be made.
"Librarians, aggregators, and publishers: Can we all live together?"
Friday Concurrent Session 3, 4.15-5pm, Room 227, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston
Janet Fisher will take to the floor for a second time, joining with Todd Spires from Bradley University and Kate Duff from University of Chicago Press to explore the benefits of journal databases and consider whether librarians' purchasing choices allow aggregated databases to co-exist happily alongside publishers' other distribution channels. This issue has been widely debated in a number of fora but often without hard facts to underline the supposition, so the research underpinning this session should make for some evidence-based discussion at last.
If you're not going to make it to the event, then hopefully Leigh Dodds will be posting regular reports on its progress on this very blog.
"Authoritative? What's that? And who says?"
Thursday Concurrent Session 1, 4.15-5pm, Rutledge Room, Francis Marion Hotel
Our Chief Technology Officer (and AME blogger) Leigh Dodds is teaming up with Laura Cohen of the University at Albany, SUNY (and Library 2.0 blogger) to explore what defines "authoritative" in the age of user-generated content, and to assess the respective benefits of both Web 2.0 technologies and traditional publishing processes such as peer review. Anyone who has seen Leigh speak will, I am sure, vouch for the high-quality of both his presentation style and subject matter, and in this case I think he's come up with another fascinating new perspective on the changes in scholarly publishing being wrought by new technologies.
"Publisher Consolidation: Where Does It Leave Us?"
Friday Lively Lunch, 12.15-1.45pm, Colonial Ballroom, Francis Marion Hotel
Janet Fisher, Senior Publishing Consultant at our sibling company PCG, will moderate a discussion led by Margaret Landesman of University of Utah Libraries and Diane Scott-Lichter of The Endocrine Society. They will explore the driving forces, repercussions and potential responses to ongoing consolidation within the publishing industry. Given how publishers seem endlessly to be merging with one another, I think this too will be a pretty pertinent panel.
"Best practices: improving librarian administration interfaces"
Friday Concurrent Session 1, 2-2.50pm, Pinckney Room, Francis Marion Hotel
Ingenta's Director of Library Services Claire Winthrop will participate in a panel discussion seeking ways to reduce the learning curve required for librarians to familiarise themselves with multiple publisher and vendor interfaces, and at the same time increasing the amount of control that librarians have over their users' interaction with content. This session will see representatives of the "big three" in scholarly content hosting all together on the same speaking platform for the first time - Claire will be sharing the stage with Atypon's Chris Beckett and Dan Tonkery of EBSCO (owners of Metapress) - so there is a real opportunity for collaborative progress to be made.
"Librarians, aggregators, and publishers: Can we all live together?"
Friday Concurrent Session 3, 4.15-5pm, Room 227, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston
Janet Fisher will take to the floor for a second time, joining with Todd Spires from Bradley University and Kate Duff from University of Chicago Press to explore the benefits of journal databases and consider whether librarians' purchasing choices allow aggregated databases to co-exist happily alongside publishers' other distribution channels. This issue has been widely debated in a number of fora but often without hard facts to underline the supposition, so the research underpinning this session should make for some evidence-based discussion at last.
If you're not going to make it to the event, then hopefully Leigh Dodds will be posting regular reports on its progress on this very blog.
Labels: "charleston conference", "librarian interfaces", "library administration", "peer review", "publisher consolidation", "web 2.0", aggregators, libraries, publishers
posted by Charlie Rapple at 11:31 am
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