John Wilbanks, "The Fragmentation and Re-Integration of Scholarly Communication"

The UCLA Library is proud to share this presentation by John Wilbanks, VP for Science at Creative Commons, entitled "The Fragmentation and Re-Integration of Scholarly Communication."  The scientific paper has been the primary container and distribution vessel for scientific knowledge for centuries. It's a creative work subject to the same sorts of legal and technical pressures as other creative works: it's part of an industrial-creative complex built on artificial scarcity, distribution, and top-down decisions about what is going to be high impact. And it is subject to the same disruption by the internet as other industries with that attitude, like music. But unlike music, there was a set of intermediaries creating a lot of inertia that kept the network from being disruptive, including funding agencies, tenure and review systems, and general lack of incentives. But the revolution that broke apart the music industry is well under way in scholarly communication. The journal is fragmenting already into the article, but it's not going to stop there - the advent of assertion-enhanced publishing, nano-publication, data publication, and more are going to drive a rapid disintegration of traditional "container cultures" and business models for scholarly communication.  This talk examines the progress made to date by the internet in etching away at the traditional means of scientific knowledge transfer, the importance of the digital commons in a world where content is fragmented, and some future avenues for "re-integrating" fragmented scientific communication that build on open systems. The talk was recorded at the Charles E. Young Research Library on May 11th, 2011.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• open
• access
• creative
• commons
• academic
• publishing