This blog is a blend of the facts, ideas and visions from two E-research Australasia presentations about scientific publishing and dissemination of research data and results. The ideas and examples come from two science domains: astronomy and computational biology. At the end there are some quick observations and thoughts about recent trends in educational dissemination.
Sources:
Ideas from Phil’s Bourne’s presentation
Catalysts for change in scientific dissemination:
- Open access publishing.
- Growing generation of “digital scientists”.
- New easy tools for producing sound, video and other media.
A vision of scientific dissemination:
- Publishing process will be seamlessly integrated with authoring.
- The integration between the publication and the data upon which the publication is based will be seamless.
- The notion of publications and publishing will be associated with podcasts and video, not only texts.
- Professional networking will be similar to the social networking around published results (papers, podcasts, etc.)
A real example from computational biology:
- The publication of papers in the Public Library of Science, which includes 8 leading biology journals, is integrated with Protein Data Bank. I.e., the paper is not published unless the related dataset is deposited to the PDB.
- Publishing is based in Creative Commons Licence and all materials are available for free to all. Protein Data Bank is free for all. Now the PDB is over 30 years old; and more than 7000 new datasets were submitted in the last year (2006).
- The process of data deposition to the PDB is similar to the process of academic publishing: submission, syntax checking and review by annotators, corrections, etc.
- Recently started to use BioLit tool that integrates: the database of journal texts; authoring tools for publishing; and integrates data and publication dynamically (e.g., figures and tables in the paper are generated dynamically directly from the dataset).
- Started to use podcasts aligned with papers for dissemination and scientific community collaboration around published papers/podcasts. (See SciVEE website for an elegant description of the underlying publishing model.)
Ideas from Alex’s Szalay’s presentation
Changes and trends in scientific publishing:
- Technical wiki pages and science oriented blogs are appearing.
- Scientists gradually assume more responsibility for data curation and research dissemination.
- There is need for a business model that encourages data sharing and outreach (e.g., academic recognition).
- There is need for tools with simple interfaces for easy dissemination.
- Astronomies test a new ‘Journal for Data’ approach. The aim is to create an online supplement for the datasets related to the main existing US research journals.
- Longitudinal data curation is the key for success.
Observations and thoughts
Trends in educational research dissemination
- New “what works” type agencies that collect “gold standard” educational research have emerged, e.g.: clearinghouses (US); networks (FI); councils (CA); knowledge libraries (UK); etc.
- Research dissemination noticeably moved away from universities and journals to private contractors and brokerage agencies that conduct systematic research reviews and disseminate their reports.
- Emerged different kinds of databases of educational research literature and results (cf. ERIC, SITES-M2), nevertheless not raw data.
- Some large educational datasets became available. However, they usually come from a single research project and/or source (e.g. CA).
- Research results became more accessible for public in the form of research reviews (sometimes specially “adapted” for different audiences (e.g. EPPI model), but predominantly in traditional print media.
- Technologies have an important role in this process. Typically for access to research databases (results rather than data) and dissemination of results (printable materials rather than video, podcasts, interactive models, etc.).
In general, this is an important shift and progress towards more transparent and accessible educational research dissemination model. In the light of scientific research dissemination, however, educational research reports and particularly journal papers still look like static “black boxes”.
Two business models?
Educational business model is quite different from emerging approaches in scientific dissemination. E.g.:
- Generalisation (access to synthesised results) vs. depth (access to raw data).
- Robust tested evidence vs. immediate access to early results.
- “Broadcasting” of results vs. collaboration around results.
- Static publishing vs. dynamic publishing.
- Traditional media vs. multimedia, IM, Podcasts.
Are these two approaches complementary? If so, could they be combined?