Open and Evolving Scholarship: a call to embrace multiple versions

[Heather Morrison <hgmorris@sfu.ca>]

As scholarship evolves towards taking full advantage of the 
potential of the internet, one of the stages that involves a bit 
of learning curve is the emergence of multiple versions of a 
research piece.

There are good reasons for open sharing of multiple versions of 
research at various stages.  This begins with articulating the 
research question.  Open sharing at this stage opens up the 
possibility for early peer review.  If work is needed on the 
basic research question or overall design of the research, 
doesn't it make more sense to find out before you get started, 
rather than afterwards when the research is complete and the 
paper is done?

Benefits of open sharing of various versions of completed 
research range from the open access citation impact advantage to 
the potential for a variety of versions to serve different 
audiences.

Learning how to cite when multiple versions abound is not as 
confusing as it might at first appear.  A simple rule of thumb 
is:  cite what you read.  If there is a good reason to point to 
another version as well - for example, if you're citing a 
locked-down subscription journal article but want to alert 
readers to a free version that you know of - just add it to the 
citation.  Style guides may have some catching up to do, but this 
is not rocket science.

This is a brief version of a post on my blog, The Imaginary 
Journal of Poetic Economics: 
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2010/01/open-and-evolving-scholarship.html

Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com