A week after #scio12, #rwa and reinventing discovery

This week has seen a convergence of three topics.  First, I got back from the Science Online 2012 unconference a little over a week ago (1/22).  I had been meaning to write a post to wrap up the sessions I attended, but then I started to see a lot of news concerning the Research Works Act.  I have also been reading Michael Nielsen's Reinventing Discovery, and there has been a good deal of discussion about that book on the net as well, including from the famous #scio12 @BoraZ.  So, with all this open access and open science discussion swirling in my head, I figured it was a good time to put the electrons down on the blog.

1. Science Online 2012.  I tweeted a bunch of the sessions already (and blogged about one), and most of the sessions have some form of online abstract, so I don't need to go into the details.  What struck me most about the conference was the discussion between the science journalists and the scientists themselves.  Scientists are stuck in a hard place because many academic departments and/or institutions frown on bloggers/tweets and people who try communicate their research to a general audience.  Journalists have a hard time working with scientists who do not understand their craft.  These two sessions particularly caught my attention.
2. Research Works Act (RWA). While I had known about the RWA since well before the unconference (January 5th), the topic didn't catch fire with scientists until a post from Fields Medalist, Dr. Gowers wrote "Elsevier — my part in its downfall".  That sparked a huge amount of discussion and other blog posts from a variety of scientists.  Many of those posts are cataloged at Michael Nielsen's Polymath Wiki page on journal publishing reform. (I see some posts that are missing on the wiki, so I will add those later.)
3. This brings me to Michael Nielsen's book Reinventing Discovery.  I have been slowly reading the book (a library copy), and I was reading it on the way to and from the Science Online Conference.  Two copies were being given away at the conference, but alas, I didn't win a copy.  In any case, here are some good reviews of the book by Bora, John Dupuis and Martin Fenner.  Michael also talked about his book on Science Friday.  Here is the podcast last Friday, January 27th, bit.ly/wFibOk.

My reply to the "Public Access to Digital Data" RFI

Here it is.  I wish I had more time to be comprehensive, but this is what I had time to write.  Better this than nothing.

Hello Ted Wackler,

I am writing to the OSTP office concerning the “Request for Information: Public Access to Digital Data Resulting From Federally Funded Scientific Research” that is available at http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2011/11/04/2011-28621/request-for-information-public-access-to-digital-data-resulting-from-federally-funded-scientific.

I will put in my comments after the numbered sections below. 

Preservation, Discoverability, and Access 

(1) What specific Federal policies would encourage public access to and the preservation of broadly valuable digital data resulting from federally funded scientific research, to grow the U.S. economy and improve the productivity of the American scientific enterprise?

I would like to see PubMed Central (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/) include more data as well as journal articles.  With the new NSF data management plan requirements, research done with NSF funds could copy the data to an NSF repository.  I would also like to see expanded roles for NTIS and the DOE Information Bridge in holding more data from research.  I know that NTIS often sells their reports, but it would be better if the reports and data were freely available to the general public. Astronomical data could be held at the NASA ADS with greater Federal support, http://adsabs.harvard.edu/index.html

(2) What specific steps can be taken to protect the intellectual property interests of publishers, scientists, Federal agencies, and other stakeholders, with respect to any existing or proposed policies for encouraging public access to and preservation of digital data resulting from federally funded scientific research?

Where applicable, I would recommend that Federally funded research license their material with a CC by license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) or CC0 (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).  This will provide the widest reach to readers throughout the whole world.  This will also have the most benefit for scientists, federal agencies, the readers and the citizens of the United States.  It may not be as beneficial for commercial publishers, but they have plenty of other non-government sponsored material they can publish. 

(3) How could Federal agencies take into account inherent differences between scientific disciplines and different types of digital data when developing policies on the management of data?

There are many different data types.  The Global Change Master Directory provides recommendations to scientists who deposit data to the directory.  They provide guides to their metadata writers (Directory Interchange Format (DIF) Writer's Guide). See http://gcmd.nasa.gov/User/difguide/WRITEADIF.pdf and http://gcmd.nasa.gov/User/difguide/difman.html.  This guide could be used as a template to help data management writers describe datasets in other disciplines.

The Digital Curation Centre is another good resource to consult, http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/data-management-plans. This is another good resource, “National initiatives for promoting data management strategies: an overview,” http://sonexworkgroup.blogspot.com/2011/04/national-initiatives-for-promoting-data.html

(4) How could agency policies consider differences in the relative costs and benefits of long-term stewardship and dissemination of different types of data resulting from federally funded research?

It depends on who needs to use that data, and the intended audience of the research.

(5) How can stakeholders (e.g., research communities, universities, research institutions, libraries, scientific publishers) best contribute to the implementation of data management plans?

There are many librarians who are getting to be a lot more familiar with data management plans and e-science.  I would recommend that the government work with university programs such as those listed at http://www.arl.org/rtl/eresearch/escien/nsf/nsfresources.shtml.

(6) How could funding mechanisms be improved to better address the real costs of preserving and making digital data accessible?

I am not sure.

(7) What approaches could agencies take to measure, verify, and improve compliance with Federal data stewardship and access policies for scientific research? How can the burden of compliance and verification be minimized?

Scientists need positive reinforcement for depositing and describing their data.  If they received more grant funding for cooperating in projects, or if they received greater recognition by university administrators, then that would be some positive rewards for compliance.

(8) What additional steps could agencies take to stimulate innovative use of publicly accessible research data in new and existing markets and industries to create jobs and grow the economy?

There are always more mashups that could be done with GIS data and social science data.

(9) What mechanisms could be developed to assure that those who produced the data are given appropriate attribution and credit when secondary results are reported?

Data sets could be given a permanent citation link, such as a DOI. http://www.doi.org/ I would recommend that you read some of the papers presented at this conference, http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/brdi/PGA_064019 “Developing Data Attribution and Citation Practices and Standards: An International Symposium and Workshop”

Standards for Interoperability, Re-Use and Re-Purposing

(10) What digital data standards would enable interoperability, reuse, and repurposing of digital scientific data? For example, MIAME (minimum information about a microarray experiment; see Brazma et al., 2001, Nature Genetics 29, 371) is an example of a community-driven data standards effort.

This chapter might be of use to you. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK45678/ “The Current State of Data Integration in Science” found in the book, Steps Toward Large-Scale Data Integration in the Sciences: Summary of a Workshop. National Research Council (US) Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12916

(11) What are other examples of standards development processes that were successful in producing effective standards and what characteristics of the process made these efforts successful?

I can’t find any right now.

(12) How could Federal agencies promote effective coordination on digital data standards with other nations and international communities?

Start with one country, and then start working with other countries.  I’d recommend that you take a look at the policies of the United Kingdom. Consider looking at http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/policy-and-legal/policy-tools-and-guidance and http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/crossmedia/advice/establishing-a-digital-preservation-policy/.

(13) What policies, practices, and standards are needed to support linking between publications and associated data?

I would recommend that you take a look at this article, http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0021101 for some practices that are used.

Next Generation Science Librarianship

Yesterday, I went to the "Next Generation Science Librarianship Panel Presentation." It was at the NCAR facility up in Boulder. Unfortunately, I could only stay for the first hour, but was able to hear from all three speakers:

• Dr. Jian Qin, Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University
• Jamaica Jones, Special Projects Librarian, NCAR Library
• Jack M. Maness, Assistant Professor and Director of the Engineering and Math-Physics Libraries, University of Colorado at Boulder

Some of the documents, reports and websites they mentioned were:

• http://eslib.ischool.syr.edu/(Syracuse University eScience Fellows Program)
• http://sdl.syr.edu/(Science Data Literacy (SDL) project)
• e-Science and its implications for the library community by Tony Hey, Jessie Hey
• Global Interdisciplinary Research by Daniel Atkins
• E-Science and Data Support Services: A Study of ARL Member Institutions, Aug. 2010 [PDF] by Catherine Soehner, Catherine Steeves, and Jennifer Ward
• Developing a Vital Research Library Workforce by Mark A. Puente, Director of Diversity Programs, ARL
• Using Personas to Understand the Needs and Goals of Institutional Repository Users, by Jack Maness, Tomasz Miaskiewicz, and Tamara Sumner

Happy reading!

Whole Earth Discipline mini quasi-review

I went to a book signing last week -- Tuesday, October the 20th to be exact. Stewart Brand was in town pushing his new book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto at the Tattered Cover. The presentation was associated with the Rocky Mountain Land Series. (See also their library.) I last saw Stewart Brand speak at the 2003 SLA conference in NYC.

Anyway, the presentation was really good. I learned about some new types of small nuclear reactors that are being developed. The best part of the talk for me was his discussion of the recommended reading list. I am glad that my academic library already has most of these titles, and I plan to buy the two books we don't already have.

Running for SLA Sci-Tech Division Chair, 2010-12

Here is a draft stump speech. It will probably go into the STN and the sla-st discussion list sometime in August.

Joseph Kraus has been active in SLA for the last 15 years. He has volunteered for several committee spots in the Sci-Tech Division and in the Physics-Astronomy Mathematics (PAM) Division. Sci-Tech Division activities -- From 1996-2000, he was the Webmaster of the Sci-Tech Division. In 2002, he moderated the Contributed papers session. For several years after that, he reviewed the contributed papers. From June 2003 through June of 2005, he was the Secretary. In 2004, he gave a paper at the “Winner's Circle of Best Science Websites". PAM Division activities -- Over the last 15 years he moderated the PAM-wide roundtable twice, moderated the vendor roundtable and was a member of and chaired the Awards committee. He co-taught a CE class concerning science resources in 2002 and 2003. He presented a poster paper in 2006 concerning science and engineering library branch renovations. He was Chair-Elect, Chair and Past-Chair of the PAM division from June 2006 through December 2008. He was very happy to chair the PAM Division when the SLA Conference was in Denver in 2007.

There are several big issues I think the Division should address. We need to: 1) Attract and retain DST members. We also need to get more members involved in the Division. 2) Encourage greater use of the discussion list and other communication and social networking technologies. Since the division has such a wide variety of academic, corporate and other special librarians, we should encourage the sharing of innovative ideas and solutions to common problems. 3) Make sure that the June conference is intellectually and socially stimulating. 4) Address the serials crisis and open access issues.

In short, I think libraries and librarians should strive for even more sharing of ideas and knowledge. In my work, I try to share as much information and knowledge as I can with others. If you want to learn more about me, take a look at some of my social networking accounts.

http://friendfeed.com/jokrausdu
http://www.nuthingbut.net (miscellaneous thoughts on librarianship and other stuff)
http://sci-eng-penrose.blogspot.com (work blog)
http://delicious.com/jokrausdu
http://twitter.com/jokrausdu
http://www.facebook.com/jokrausdu

What is the future of academic publishing?

I have been reading A LOT lately about the demise of the newspaper business. Particularly interesting is Clay Shirky's take on the whole system -- Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable. Thanks to 2009 M&S winner, Dorothea Salo, I found found history. This post has a good analysis that compares/contrasts the demise of the newspaper market with the academic publishing market. Tom Scheinfeldt said: "In our world, parallels to newspaper publishers can be made, for instance, with journal publishers or the purveyors of subscription research databases (indeed the three are often one and the same). I’m sure you can point to lots of others, and I’d be very happy to hear them in comments. But what interests me most in Shirky’s piece are his ideas about how the advent of the unthinkable divides a community of practitioners."Just what I have been thinking. The academic journal market is sinking like the Titanic. The established publishers do not want that cash cow ship to sink. The problem is that the cost of publishing truly has decreased, even though the big publishers say it costs $2,850 or $3,000 or somesuch figure to publish an article. The $3k is the cost with the existing broken journal system! They cannot image a future that does not have the "the brand of the journal which gives the imprimatur to the research article." To generalize a tad, older established researchers do indeed care about the name of the container of their articles, since that carries much of the weight for tenure purposes. They may ask -- "What is going to replace the newspaper industry/academic journal market? It can't go away because it is such a venerable institution." Therefore, it can't go away. But, as we have learned from Clay Shirky, newspapers are going away, and it may take some time for journalists to find another way to document the news and culture of the day. Journals and publishers (and societies) will start disappearing, and authors will find other channels to publish their thoughts, experimental results and ideas. Indeed, many physicists already have since 1991.

Many students (and some researchers) do not care about the name of the journal that houses the article. They care about the article itself. This viewpoint will continue to grow as they get older. More and more patrons will find articles through Google Scholar and other databases instead of browsing the current issues of Science, Nature, JACS or whatever.

Believe or not, my library is going through a cancellation discussion for the first time in 18 years. Our faculty and students have not had to worry about cancellations in quite some time. Thus, they have been shielded from the growing STM serials crisis. The faculty and the students are not the ones who pay the bill for the information. The library pays (well, the University actually) and the patrons are the ones who enjoy the benefits of the access to all of the subscriptions. This strange economic model has been well researched by Mark J. McCabe.

I wish I had time to read all of the 87+ books - and - reports that John Dupuis posted to his blog. I've already read a bunch, but there is so much great insight to be gleaned from all of these. (I wish I had more time to read...)

I imagine a future world where scholars post their work on websites/blogs -- it gets critiqued by a variety of scholars, and the articles get rated. The scholarly articles that get the highest ratings, citations and links get brought to the top of search results. As it stands now, articles do not HAVE to live within the imprimatur of a journal brand to have an impact. They can live on a website, in an IR, at a preprint server, etc. In the future, more and more and more scholarly articles will simply live on the net as stand-alone items without being housed in a journal. This is where the scholarly article market is headed.