1. Innovations in Scholarly
Communication and the Rise of Web
2.0 Scholarship
Michelle Willmers
Scholarly Communication in Africa Programme
CC-BY-SA

2. Defining Scholarly Communication
in the internet era (Thorin, 2003)
- Conducting research, developing ideas and informal communications.
- Preparing, shaping and communicating what will become formal
research outputs.
- Disseminating formal outputs.
- Managing personal careers, and research teams and programmes.
- Communicating scholarly ideas to broader communities.

3. Traditional Scholarly Communication
Literature reviews
Student Conceptual frameworks
Bibliographies
Proposals
Conceptualisation
Notes Interview transcripts
Lectures Translation
Data sets
Data Collection
Presentations Engagement Data Analysis
Images
Reports Audio recordings
Interviews
Community Findings
Books
Conference papers
Journal articles Technical papers
Scholar
Image CC-BY-SA Laura Czerniewicz

4. Traditional Scholarship
• Relatively contained disciplinary context.
• Relatively clear scholarly community.
• Relatively clear boundaries.
• Particular points of engagement.

5. Some things have stayed the same
…
- Need for academic rigour > quality assurance/peer review.
- Need to build reputation and collaborative partnerships.
>>> Journals and monographs remain the central currency
(RIN 2010)

6. But certain things are very different
…
• Collaborative focus
• Interdisciplinary push
• Granular
• Immediacy factor
• Suited to addressing socio-economic imperatives and collaborative
breakthrough
• Openness (process, findings, outputs)

7. Web 2.0 scholarship plays out in multiple
environments utilising various
tools/platforms.

8. 1. Open Access
Green Route
- Self-archiving of scholarly content prior to, in parallel with, or after
publication.
- New movement not restricting this content to journal articles –
includes ‘grey literature’ (reports, etc.)
- 2085 repositories worldwide (DOAR 2011)
Gold Route
- Primary publication in open-access journals.
- 7 070 journals (DOAJ 2011)

9. 2. Open Research
• Replicable (transparency - method)
• Reusable (results free for re-use and
appropriation)
• Replayable (tools available for appropriation)
• Immediacy (more speedily available)
• Granular in approach

10. 3. Open Data

11. 4. Free/Open Source
Software

12. 5. Alternative Licensing
Mechanisms
Creative Commons licensing of content in the public domain enables control
over:
- Commercialisation by third parties
- Right to produce derivatives
- Ensuring attribution

13. “Web 2.0 is widely seen as providing a technical
platform essential to this ‘re-evolution’ of science.”
(Waldrop 2008)
But not just about appropriation of new
technologies. Also changing how we
produce and communicate information.
“Web 2.0 services emphasise decentralised and
collective generation, assessment and organisation of
information, often with new forms of technological
intermediation.”
(Surowieki 2004)

14. Scholarship 2.0
• New ways of describing content (and looking for it). Metadata as passport
to participation.
• New ways of tracking usage.
• Aggregation crucial.
• Blogging and social networking as mechanisms for research and
collaboration.
• Outputs of social web become part of the scholarly record.
• Rise of the global networked scholar.

15. New Models of Scholarly Communication
Literature Reviews
Bibliographies
Conceptual frameworks
Proposals
Conceptualisation
Notes Interview transcripts
Lectures Translation
Data sets
Data Collection
Presentations Engagement Data Analysis
Images
Reports Audio recordings
Interviews
Findings
Books
Conference papers
Journal articles Technical papers
Image CC-BY-SA Laura Czerniewicz

16. New questions arise…
• What does this mean for peer review and quality control?
• What does this mean for how we measure and reward research (and
the notion of ‘impact’?)?

17. http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/

18. Bibliometrics mined impact on the first
scholarly Web.
altmetrics mines impact on the next one.
(Priem 2012)

20. The social web and science
58k tweets mention scientific articles (with a DOI, PMID or arxiv ID), 1 –
31 July 2011.
http://buzzdata.com/stew/tweets-linking-to-scientific-papers-jul-2011#!/overview
Highly tweeted articles 11 times more likely to be highly cited than less-
tweeted articles.
Tweets can predict highly cited articles within the first 3 days of article
publication. Social media activity either increases citations or reflects the
underlying qualities of the article that also predict citations
(Eysenbach 2011)

23. Hype Cycle of educational Technologies (2010)
(Bozalek et al. 2012)

25. Contours of adoption
“Frequency of use of the kinds of web 2.0 tools associated with
producing, sharing and commenting on scholarly content is
positively associated with older age groups, at least up to age
65, and more senior positions. The propensity for frequent use
is highest among the 35–44 age group and lowest among those
under 25.” (RIN 2010)
“Those who work in collaboration with different institutions
are significantly more likely to be frequent or occasional users
of web 2.0 services associated with producing, sharing or
commenting on scholarly content.” (RIN 2010)

26. Exploring utility of web 2.0
• Social filtering mechanism to cope with deluge of new
information
• Keeping in touch with colleagues and fostering
collaboration
• Helping to manage projects
• Aid to dissemination

27. References
Bozalek V, N’gambi D & Gachago D (in press) Emerging Technologies in South African HEIs: Institutional
enables and constraints
Eysenbach G (2011) Can Tweets Predict Citations? Metrics of Social Impact Based on Twitter and Correlation
with Traditional Metrics of Scientific Impact. Journal of Medical Internet Research 13(4). Available at:
http://www.jmir.org/2011/4/e123
Priem J (2012) Toward a Second Revolution: altmetrics, total-impact, and the decoupled journal.
Presented at Purdue University, 14 February 2012. Available at:
https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddfg787c_362f465q2g5
RIN (Research Information Network) (2010) If you build it, will they come? How researchers perceive and use
web 2.0. Available at: http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research/use-and-
relevance-web-20-researchers
Surowieki J (2004) The wisdom of crowds. Why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom
shapes business, economies, societies and nations. New York: Doubleday
Thorin SE (2003) Global changes in scholarly communication. In SC Hsianghoo, PWT Poon and C McNaught
(eds) eLearning and Digital Publishing. Dordrecht: Springer. Available at
http://www.springerlink.com/content/w873x131171x2421/
Waldrop M (2008) Science 2.0: Great new tool, or great risk? Scientific American. Available at:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=science-2-point-0-great-new-tool-or-great-risk