Abstract
Since 2005, the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE), with generous funding from the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has been conducting research to understand the needs and
practices of faculty for in-progress scholarly communication (i.e., forms of communication
employed as research is being executed) as well as archival publication. This report brings
together the responses of 160 interviewees across 45, mostly elite, research institutions in seven
selected academic fields: archaeology, astrophysics, biology, economics, history, music, and
political science. The overview document summarizes the main practices we explored across all
seven disciplines: tenure and promotion, dissemination, sharing, collaboration, resource creation
and consumption, and public engagement. We published the report online in such a way that
readers can search various topics within and across case studies.∗ Our premise has always been
that disciplinary conventions matter and that social realities (and individual personality) will
dictate how new practices, including those under the rubric of Web 2.0 or cyberinfrastructure,
are adopted by scholars. That is, the academic values embodied in disciplinary cultures, as well
as the interests of individual players, have to be considered when envisioning new schemata for
the communication of scholarship at its various stages.
We identified five key topics, addressed in detail in the case studies, that require real attention:
(1) The development of more nuanced tenure and promotion practices that do not rely
exclusively on the imprimatur of the publication or easily gamed citation metrics,
(2) A reexamination of the locus, mechanisms, timing, and meaning of peer review,
(3) Competitive, high-quality, and affordable journals and monograph publishing platforms
(with strong editorial boards, peer review, and sustainable business models),
(4) New models of publication that can accommodate arguments of varied length, rich
media, and embedded links to data; plus institutional assistance to manage permissions
of copyrighted material, and
(5) Support for managing and preserving new research methods and products, including
components of natural language processing, visualization, complex distributed
databases, and GIS, among many others.
Although robust infrastructures are needed locally and beyond, the sheer diversity of scholars’
needs across the disciplines and the rapid evolution of the technologies themselves means that
one-size-fits-all solutions will almost always fall short. As faculty continue to innovate and pursue new avenues in their research, both the technical and human infrastructure will have to evolve with the ever-shifting needs of scholars. This infrastructure will, by necessity, be built within the context of disciplinary conventions, reward systems, and the practice of peer review, all of which undergird the growth and evolution of superlative academic endeavors.
Description
Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines [eScholarship]
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