The document discusses how scholarly communication has evolved from early networks like ARPAnet and Usenet to modern platforms on the internet. It argues that sharing and discovering information publicly online through sites like Stack Exchange, Delicious, and Twitter has allowed for the formation of online communities around shared interests. Mendeley is presented as a platform that facilitates sharing and discovering research documents and aggregates research data in the cloud to better understand the impact of research and make it more reproducible. The author advocates for keeping research resources open and making them more accessible and discoverable online.

1. New Directions in Scholarly Communication
William Gunn
Head of Academic Outreach
Mendeley
@mrgunn

4. The internet was designed for scholarly communication!
The purpose of ARPAnet was to share data and computing resources.
usenet and mailing lists were the pre-web networks

5. Why do people use the web?
•Connecting with a broad audience
•Sharing & discovering pictures, music, video, links, datasets, or just thoughts with a broad audience.

6. Why not just email?
If you know the expert, you can ask them directly, but if everyone does that it doesn’t work.
In exchange for being open enough to ask publicly, you’re more likely to get a response.

7. A few examples
Stack Exchange
Asking in public is different!
Questions lead to answers lead to more questions
The design of the site made it a success.
Now people use it to show off expertise & even to hire.

8. Link sharing – Delicious
Like bookmarks, but online, which meant:
Accessible from anywhere
Part of a communal pool of links, which allowed you to go from your collection, to other collections
Sharing in public is different!
People + shared interest = community
Not a community of professional link curators, but people interested in things represented by links.

9. Twitter
Started as easier way to send multi- recipient text messages
Community grew with the development of the #hashtag, a mechanism invented by twitter users to group tweets about a certain topic – instagram does the same with pictures

10. Cargo-cult Networks

11. Social networks?
What fundamental activity do they make so compellingly easy it's worth having another inbox?
Why like, share, or connect instead of reply?
They're personalized content filters
Social interactions arise as a consequence of sharing & discovering on the platform

12. Research documents
Mendeley
Sharing and discovering PDFs
Not a site for publishers or librarians, but people who have expertise or interest in research topics.

13. Connecting Scholars in the Cloud
•Research is a social activity, but the tools and the data aren’t.
•Databases have funky proprietary interfaces and incompatible licenses which inhibit discovery
•Capture the latent info in their process!

14. ...and aggregates research data in the cloud
Mendeley extracts research data…
Mendeley is not just a reference manager!
Install Mendeley Desktop
Collecting rich signals from domain experts.

15. Rich user profile data

16. Mendeley is leading by example
•Open Access – we show the importance of open access to scholars, publishers, and funders.
•Altmetrics – we’re a leading provider of altmetrics
•Reproducibility – We are working with the Center for Open Science to improve reproducibility in science via the Reproducibility Initiative.

17. Make it porous & part of the web.
The reason people to put data on the web is to find more of the same.
Communities must be open if they are to thrive.

18. New data on research impact
Get better data on what's working
Get it faster
Serve all the stakeholders in research

19. Building a reproducibility dataset
•Mendeley and Science Exchange have started the Reproducibility Initiative
•working with Figshare & PLOS to host data & replication reports
•building open datasets backing high- impact work
•extending the “executable paper” concept to biomedical research

20. Research is too slow

23. Google Analytics for research

24. We’re in this for the long haul
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertjosiah/4519389115

25. http://www.flickr.com/photos/delfo/153254882/

26. Personalized Impact

27. www.mendeley.com
william.gunn@mendeley.com @mrgunn