Report from Center for Studies in Higher Education

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Of possible interest:

Now Online:

Interim Report

Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication:  An 
In-depth Study of Faculty Needs and Ways of Meeting Them 
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/publications.php?id=300

Principal Investigator Diane Harley, Ph.D., Senior Researcher 
Research Associates: Sarah Earl-Novell, Ph.D., Sophia Krzys 
Acord, Shannon Lawrence, Principal Investigator C. Judson King, 
Professor, Provost Emeritus and Director

ABSTRACT:

The Center for Studies in Higher Education, with generous funding 
from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is conducting research to 
understand the needs and desires of faculty for in-progress 
scholarly communication (i.e., forms of communication employed as 
research is being executed) as well as archival publication. In 
the interest of developing a deeper understanding of how and why 
scholars do what they do to advance their fields, as well as 
their careers, our approach focuses on fine-grained analyses of 
faculty values and behaviors throughout the scholarly 
communication lifecycle, including sharing, collaborating, 
publishing, and engaging with the public. Well into our second 
year, we have posted a draft interim report describing some of 
our early results and impressions based on the responses of more 
than 150 interviewees in the fields of astrophysics, archaeology, 
biology, economics, history, music, and political science.

Our work to date has confirmed the important impact of 
disciplinary culture and tradition on many scholarly 
communication habits. These traditions may override the perceived 
"opportunities" afforded by new technologies, including those 
falling into the Web 2.0 category. As we have listened to our 
diverse informants, as well as followed closely the 
prognostications about the likely future of scholarly 
communication, we note that it is absolutely imperative to be 
precise about terms. That includes being clear about what is 
meant by "open access" publishing (i.e., using preprint or 
postprint servers for work published in prestigious outlets, 
versus publishing in new, untested open access journals, or the 
more casual individual posting of working papers, blogs, and 
other non-peer-reviewed work). Our work suggests that enthusiasm 
for technology development and adoption should not be conflated 
with the hard reality of tenure and promotion requirements 
(including the needs and goals of final archival publication) in 
highly competitive professional environments.

For more information about the research project see the Future of 
Scholarly Communication website: ( 
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/research/scholarlycommunication/ )

Joe Esposito