Social Media and Traditions of Prestige | Peer to Peer Review
When will scholars finally rethink their assumptions? Barbara Fister, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN Feb 24, 2011 |
| Photo by Debora Miller |
Recently I've been mulling over the fact that most of the professional reading I do these days comes to me via FriendFeed, Twitter, old-fashioned Listservs, and even Facebook (thanks, Ebook Summit!). It's rare that I search those expensive databases we subscribe to, unless I'm looking for something that is cited elsewhere or unless I'm trying to do a comprehensive literature review. Even then, I tend to have better luck with the old-school social network, tracing cited works to locate related research.
Apparently, I'm not alone. Yesterday Bernie Sloan pointed members of the Collib-L listserv to a report by Jennifer Howard in the Chronicle of Higher Education about a survey of the use of social media tools by researchers as part of their workflow. The study is the second to be undertaken by the "Charleston Observatory," a project to gather data to answer questions raised at the annual Charleston Conference. This study was conducted by CIBER, also known as the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research, based in the Department of Information Studies at University College London.
In the first phase of the study, the investigators surveyed researchers in over 200 countries, using email contact lists maintained by five major academic publishers, to get a snapshot of how early adopters are using social media. Though the survey was based on a convenience sample, as so much library-related research is, it still has some useful information to consider, and follow-up focus groups being conducted now may fill in some of the gaps.
The social scene
What tools are most used? Micro-blogging, tagging, social bookmarking, longer-form blogging, and social networking take the lead, followed by image and video sharing and collaborative tools for scheduling, conferencing, and collaborative authoring.
Among the findings are that age is not as strongly correlated with adoption as one might expect. More researchers who are under age 35 use social network tools than older researchers, but the differences are small enough for the CIBER team to question the "digital natives" stereotype. Being involved in research with people at other institutions tends to positively influence researchers' use of social tools. Personal initiative and a desire for greater speed also influence uptake, with the study authors suggesting that competition drives researchers to seek tools that will hasten the release of their work.
But the finding that seems most significant to me is that even among the most socially-networked scholars, prestige still flows through traditional channels. This is a serious fault line running right through the social systems underlying scholarly communications. When asked about the benefits of social tools, being able to communicate across geographic borders quickly came in at the top of the list, but "attracting more citations" and "greater esteem through higher visibility" were not strong motivators. Social networks are for getting stuff done, not for doing scholarship.
Similarly, researchers turn first to the open web for their research, with library databases taking second place, but though they're happy to use social publishing platforms in the course of their work, they still expect to publish in the traditional way. They are vexed that libraries and publishers don't make it easier for them to access the literature across platforms and without barriers. They also don't think libraries need to bother with preservation or curation. Just provide all the information they want right now, as quickly and painlessly as possible. The only difference between those who use social networks and those who don't is that users are more likely to use their networks to seek access to formally-published information. If their library doesn't have an article (stupid library!) they'll get it from a friend.
@researchers - #thisisbroken
Here's the crux of the problem: researchers want publishers to endorse their work the traditional way, because that's the gold standard. They want libraries to pay for access to all the traditionally-published literature they might need, and they want us to provide it in a manner that's as easy and seamless as searching the web. Don't pester them with logins or link resolvers that add more clicks, just give them what they need, stat. They also want no barriers to their ability to share the information they rely on with all of their friends. And they don't, apparently, see what's wrong with this picture.
What will it take to get these people's attention? I'm afraid I know the answer to that question: the nuclear option, the one that gives us a nuclear winter. It's not until their libraries go broke and the libraries of the friends with whom they socially network go broke that they will notice that—oh wow, this isn't working. Then the risk is that they will talk some funding authority into simply giving them personal pools of money so they can purchase every article they need as they need it directly from the publisher and so sustain a wasteful and cumbersome system that turns our heritage of shared knowledge into a pay per view scheme. What ever happened to Michael Polanyi's self-coordinated Republic of Science that works through the voluntary and self-directed contributions of individuals toward a greater understanding? Oh, right, it got bought out by corporate interests a few decades ago.
Now that the libraries that tried to keep the sharing going are being defunded, you might have to pay attention. How inconvenient for you. It might even slow down your research.
A glimmer of hope?
There may be some promising signs. In the focus groups under way, some scholars are apparently expressing impatience with the control exerted by senior scholars and the lumbering nature of traditional paths to publication. There's a growing eagerness to produce and share information more freely and to link research findings to data. Maybe this itchiness will help early adopters to connect the dots and think "there's got to be a better way to do this," and maybe some will become interested in solutions.
David Nichols, director of the CIBER group, told the Chronicle that librarians should be concerned about this state of affairs because we may lose our status as the place that provides and manages information. Researchers, apparently, are not turning to libraries for leadership as they try out these new widely-available social tools, and their self-reliance may "leave libraries out in the cold."
Frankly, that doesn't worry me nearly as much as the idea that nothing will change. Because it's already getting awfully chilly in here.
Barbara Fister is a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN, a contributor to ACRLog, and an author of crime fiction. Her latest mystery, Through the Cracks (see review), was published last year by Minotaur Books.
