Making Web2.0 for science

James Stewart, JRC-IPTS, European Commission, SevillaISSTI, University of Edinburgh

James Stewart1,3, Rob Procter2, Meik Poschen2, Robin Williams (Forthcoming) The role of academic publishers in shaping the development of Web 2.0 services for scholarly communications, New Media and Society

What is Web 2.0?1. “Web 2.0 encompasses a variety of different

meanings that include a) an increased emphasis on user-generated content,b) data and content sharing and collaborative effort,

together with the use of various kinds of social software,c) new ways of interacting with web-based applications,

and d) the use of the web as a platform for generating, re-

purposing and consuming content.” (Franklin and van Harmelen, 2007)

2. Web 2.0 is a set of concrete examples and categories3. Ways of developing: experimental, perpetual-beta4. New media, information and knowledge forms

Web 2.0 is not a given: it is a work in progress‘Web2.0’ in scholarship is emerging though socio-

technical change processes in which the value, form and use of scholarly knowledge is being negotiated and changed, and the roles of key intermediaries tested– Explored with multi-method study of producers, users and

intermediaries

‘Web2.0’ created by people investing, experimenting and creating ideas: a finite number of small teams lead this work, influenced by access to resources and a host of other constraints, and driven by visions of the potential of the technology.– Explored by examining the work of 2 teams, based in two

conventional intermediaries of scholarly communication: academic publishing houses, PLOS and NPG (Macmillan)

Empirical insights• Publishers are playing a role as user, developer, and

intermediary in creating Web2.0 for scholars - but the story has only begun.

The Story• Publishers driven by vision – better science though Web2.0• User rejection of closed thin experimental reproductions of

exemplar ‘social’ consumer Web2.0. led to• Deeper exploration of potential to integrate data-mining

with human interpretative activities (writing searching, reading, annotation)

• Knitting the ‘article’ closer into a broader network of new objects of scholarly communication

• Revaluing the publisher role in a re-framed but conservative scholarly communication processes- the business of discovery

Approach• A social shaping approach

– Social technical change through interactions of multiple stakeholder

(MacKenzie and Wajcman; Williams and Edge; Bijker;)

• Social learning approach– Long process of experimentation, learning, failure and

reinvention of common socio-technical frames, where tentative technical configurations and user and stakeholder representations are tested and ‘solidified’ through cycles of development and domestication of technology

(Sørensen; Williams, Stewart, Slack.; Hyysalo )

• Innovation Intermediary approach– Beyond users and producers: Hybrids that stimulate, facilitate, configure

and broker the social shaping and social learning processes(Howells, Stewart and Hyysalo )

Questions

• How are scholarly publishers contributing to the development of Web2.0?– How are they doing this, within the context of

broader dynamics in scholarly communication?– What are the results of this work?

• What can we learn more generally about how we are inventing “Web2.0”

Study context• “Adoption and Use of Web 2.0 in Scholarly

Communications” funded by RIN 2009• Representative survey of UK scholarly community to

discover basic use and awareness.• 50+ in-depth interviews on scholarly communications

and Web 2.0.• Case studies of promoters, developers and users of

specific Web 2.0 services

• Exploring adoption and non-adoption, domestication, adoption features (barriers, drivers etc) and impact on behaviour of broad range of ‘ Web2.0’ services

Survey results

• Web2.0 just beginning; 10% active users• Enthusiasm for change and tools to support

interdisciplinary work• Conservatism related to use of articles, status of

articles and understanding of new tools• Discovery though search most popular• Only use new tools when it is put in front of their noses• Failure of adhoc new systems dependent on other

people’s use, and with any sort of learning curve.

• Deep disciplinary differences • New scholarly communication forms.

Publisher cases• Documentary and technological evidence (papers, blogs, websites

webtools, journals etc)• 1 hr semi structured interviews with members of teams exploring

– Motivations– the organisational interests and constraints,– 'practice-bound' visions (Hyysalo, 2006) – Activities in technological, business, publishing and political arenas– representations of potential users and themselves– interactions with stakeholders and end-users.

• Follow up interviews with directors, and review of literature and documentary evidence; discussion of research findings

• Draw on broader results of Web2.0 survey

• NPG (Publishing director, 4 members of development team, editor of Nature Chemistry)

• PLOS (publishing, technology and marketing managers)

What is Scholarly Communications?A range of formal and informal communications:• In developing ideas, preparing, shaping and disseminating formal

results– Usually conceived of as roughly linear process

• Pursuing personal careers, managing research teams and research programmes;

• In teaching and communicating scholarly ideas to broader communities.

Special techniques and tools for the advancement of scholarship- e.g. scientific method, peer-review

“journal publication dominates our definition of a unit of communication” Sompel 2004

Privileged role given to the academic article, which becomes a tool in scholarly careers advancement and research business

Dynamic Structural Context• ‘Crisis’ in Publishing – publishers, peer review etc• ‘Hot’ Open Science Movement• Fight over the governance and business of scholarship

(Elsevier Boycott, Green v. Gold)

• Scholarly communication moves online:• Globalisation of Research• Emphasis on interdisciplinary and inter-institutional research• Increasing metrification of publication• Opening of Industry research (Pharma, IT)

• Mass market adoption of ‘Web2.0’ including by scholars• “New units of scholarly communication” Sompel et al 2004• Massive diversity in scholarly practice across disciplines,

countries, institutions etc. diversity in embracing new forms of communication e.g.• physics – arXiv; bio-informaticians - friendfeed

Web2.0: The ‘Radical’ Open Research position

• Web 2.0 provides the technical platform essential to the ‘re-evolution’ of Science – it allows the scholarly community to return to it roots

of open scholarship and trustworthy peer-review.• The ossified institutions of scholarly research:

universities, libraries, academic publishers, venerable scholarly societies etc have lost their purpose and benefits in the world of global electronically mediated, cross-disciplinary research.

• Challenge gatekeeper role of journals• “What are academic publishers for” (JSC 2012) – they

neither prepare manuscripts or manage review.

Examples(provocation!)• Visiting Google replaces visiting Libraries• Open-reviewed blogs replacing peer-reviewed paper

journal• Data and methods shared on open websites• Journal articles judged on own value, rather than on

ranking of journal• Articles published online with free access• Research teams distributed and electronically mediated.• Global online communities replacing old ‘disciplinary

scholarly societies• Hyperlinked discovery replaces journal and library

organised discovery.

The Cases

NPG:The innovative establishment• Successful Medium publisher,.

Top brand “Nature“• Professionally Edited journals.

Branded and White label publishing for scholarly societies

• Switch to internet early 2000s – built a publishing ‘platform’

• “Scientific communication facilitator ”

• Open access-resistant• ‘Leading promoter of Web2’ –

Timo Hannay• Recruited developer team

from new media, science blogs, chemistry

• Leadership in cross industry standardisation and dialogue

• Split off the data mining department to form a separate company “ Digital Science”

PLOS: The radical newcomer.• Set up by leading scientists• Goal of improving quality of

science though OPEN ACCESS

• Pay to publish• 7 conventional open access

journals• “crowd sourcing peer

review”• Use OTS platform• Initial political lobbying

stage• Small team of developers

• PLOS One ,radical, open ended, open access journal.

• PLOS Currents• Article Level Metrics

Academic publishers

• Suppliers are the customers• Users are both readers and authors and

effectively members of staff (reviewing, editing)• Deeply dependent on the the ‘academic

community’.• Diversity of publishers –

– University presses; multinationals– Small innovative; obstructive giants

Stage 1: “Mode of massive experimentation”

• 2007-2009 NPG and PLOS copied consumer Web2.0 “social tools”– Article Comments and rating– Wiki editing– Social network– Social bookmarking– Blogs (‘whitelist’)– Multimedia

– Little ‘new’ technology or ideas"If we’re going to fail hopefully we can fail quickly and

cheaply but try different things and see what works and see what will be useful and also see what we can make money out of and what we can't." (NPG)

“Failure”• Most Users rejected most things

– Structural value of peer-review, publications in career progress, etc

– Tensions within organisations– Antisocial academics!

• Publishers and the web journals behaving as Innovation intermediaries:

• facilitating social learning by interactions between developers, active users, the scientific community, journal editors etc

"Innovation comes from having 2 way communication channels to allow them [the users] to shape what we do.” (PLOS)

• publishers gain privileged information and data unavailable to others

Stage 2: A New Media strategy• Web2.0 activity taking place outside their platforms

– Blogs, Twitter, Friendfeed, Blogs• Media strategy: Promote to external media, link back

to article using human and automatic linking– Techniques to drive scholars and public to the articles

(promotion, multimedia)– Raises value of journal to scholars to publish (impact

factor)– Enhances discovery– Requires data-mining of unstructured data + emotion

driven hype. • New metrics : Article level Metrics. …

Stage 3: Raising value for scholar: discoverability and “linked data”

• Discovering knowledge– Old discovery: the Journal, the society, the discipline,

citations, reviewing, discipline conference– New discovery: Search, interdisciplinary, new published

objects, new metrics of use, New Social Media mentions and reviews, adhoc conferences

• New Discoverability pathways and networks– New ways to link into and out of contents of articles

• Requires Annotations in the article, link-backs, – New published elements: data and methods– New indexes: libraries e.g. classifications of chemicals– Open and extended Metadata

Messy linking

• Journal articles are not well suited to machine annotation

• Linking citations to authors and other papers hard (for legacy)

• Some disciplines have object that can be automatically linked (chemicals), most do not.

• Need Human annotation.

New publisher role: insertion into the network:

• Who can do the new media promotion?• Who can do the annotations?

– Difficult, time consuming, specialist knowledge• Authors? Limited skill and time• The ‘crowd’ of readers? They don’t, and there isn’t a crowd• Librarians…?• Datamining machine? Yes, but only some.

• Lazy/Pragmatic answer: Let the publishers (editors) run the prepublication and post publication !

Limits of the publishers

• Limited resources• Publishing businesses first,

– technology users, developers, lobbyists secondary roles• The journal ‘overflowing’: data, methods, Web etc• Metadata generated inside and outside publisher

control• Technical systems better developed outside?

– NPG -> web2.0 team split off to form ‘Digital Science’, division of Macmillan

– PLOS limit their development

"What are academic publishers for?”

• Publishing articles – but new roles added to old ones – preparing manuscript, managing review

• Focused role and responsibilities allows them to focus on deep, and multilevel innovation.

• A key innovation intermediary: their place in network, control over ‘the article’ and publishing platform give them privileged position– Put the inventions related to articles in front of users at

the point of use• BUT others could do this too if the data were released?• Pre-publication; Peer review – for another study

Reflections on methods

• Tools of STS allow us to describe more the emergence of ‘Web2.0”

• Need to explore in detail how decisions are made on forms, user interactions, affordances of information/data and systems, and usage by producers and users.

Further Research Needed1. On innovations in quality control, including both

conventional and novel scholarly outputs. 2. On how new types of metrics are being appropriated

and how they are shaping practices at the level of individual scholars and institutions of scholarship.

3. On how (if at all) new socio-technical configurations support new discovery practices and improved scholarship.

4. On how these are being shaped by major trends such as the shift to open access and globalisation of scholarship.

Extra Slides

What is a publishers role in Web2.0

• User: adopting and configuring off the shelf systems; responding to external developments by copying “active users”

• Developer: creation of new technologies, and especially new services and models

• Intermediaries: configuring technology, brokering in the network, facilitating experimentation by others

Static/Service intermediary

Innovation Activities Innovation Intermediary role

Scholarly Societies Focus, shape and legitimise research communities. Publish journals, run conference

Innovate to serve their community, and further core ideas and interests of members.

Put pressure on publishers and funders to change regimeEncourage discussion and innovation within communityCreate and configure new tools

Academic publishers Facilitate the production and distribution of peer-reviewed journals and books

Innovation to maintain market position: build the reputation of their journals and sell them

Encourage discussion and innovation within marketCreate and configure new tools with existing productsContribute to standardsHigh risk

University Structure careers, activities, IT and physical facilities etcGive researchers access to journals –

Provide training, Provide tools for SCPromote research, Set rules of local behaviour

Provide training to researchers, students, librarians and ITEncourage discussion in management and researchTest , buy, implement services, and provide supportoccasionally create original services and tools

Conference Organisers Provide face to face meetings and publish proceedings

Encourage attendance, gain contracts to run other conferences, gain sponsorship

Provide tools to enhance conference experienceProvide demonstrations to conference community.Low risk

Intermediary role