SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION ISSUES

A NEWSLETTER FOR THE UIUC COMMUNITY

Issue No. 22

July 5, 2002

Paula Kaufman, University Librarian

Editor

Editor’s note:  Two important reports are about to be released to their respective communities.  Because discussions of each are likely to engender much controversy, I have devoted this issue to lengthier-than-usual discussions of both.  Regular form of reporting will resume with the next issue, scheduled for publication in early August.

MLA REPORT ON THE FUTURE OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING

The president of the Modern Language Association, Stephen Greenblatt, recently sent a letter to all MLA members encouraging them to discuss within their departments issues in scholarly communication that are affecting the ability of junior faculty in the humanities to meet rising expectations for tenure.  Greenblatt identifies a number of issues: inadequate support for both library and university press budgets, library decrease in purchases of monographs as a result of skyrocketing STM journal prices, severe financial losses by presses as a result of lost library sales and a general decline in the book market, and the resultant cutback by university presses in the publication of works in some areas of language and literature.  He concludes that the careers of young scholars are in jeopardy and he asks departments to consider whether books and more of them are the only way to judge scholarly achievement.  The letter is based on a report by the MLA Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of Scholarly Publishing and asks MLA members for suggestions on actions MLA and modern language and literature departments might take to help ease the situation.  From Greenblatt’s letter:

Some junior faculty members who will be reviewed for tenure in this academic year are anxiously waiting to hear from various university presses.  These faculty members find themselves in a maddening double bind.  They face a challenge — under inflexible time constraints and with very high stakes — that many of them may be unable to meeting successfully, no matter how strong or serious their scholarly achievement, because academic presses simply cannot afford to publish their books.  The situation is difficult for those in English and even more difficult for those in foreign languages.

We are concerned because people who have spent years of professional training — our students, our colleagues — are at risk.  Their careers are in jeopardy, and higher education stands to lose, or at least severely to damage, a generation of young scholars.  And, I repeat, the central issue is systemic….

The report makes a number of recommendations, some of which I’ve excerpted below:

For Departments:

• Alter expectations with regard to all levels of publishing.
• Work vigorously against the tendency toward increasing expectations with regard to quantity of publications in tenure and promotion decisions.
• Develop a broader understanding of what is important for their field and the contribution they make to the educational mission of their institution.  Articulate their position with regard to specific categories of scholarly publications, including editions and translations in addition to more traditional specialized monographs.
• Recognize that this is a period of transition with regard to electronic publication and web archives.  Work with appropriate committees and administrators to develop guidelines about how these will be evaluated.
• Recognize that subventions are an increasingly common factor in scholarly publishing and support their faculty accordingly.
• Have university administrations make their new guidelines clear to outside evaluators.

For University Libraries:

• Continue to build collections with the clear understanding that print publications, especially books, are still paramount for the humanities.
• Recognize that the mission of universities is endangered if funding goes primarily to the sciences, leaving little for the humanities.
• Budget sufficient money for electronic humanities databases.

For Publishers:

• University presses should resist pressures to commercialize their operations and ensure that they maintain their mission to publish scholarly work.
• Communicate to their authors realistic time lines with respect to the review, editing, and production processes.

For University Administrations:

• Be aware of the radical changes in scholarly publishing and the particular pressures that obtain in the languages and literatures.  Meet with departments to review existing criteria for scholarly publishing and decide if they are appropriate to the institution.
• Be mindful that library acquisitions are essential for the health of the humanities.
• Recognize that university presses are essential for the scholarly mission of the university and that this mission is jeopardized to the extent that they are expected to function as commercial ventures.
• Establish subvention funds to help with publication costs, with special emphasis on subsidies for faculty members attempting to place their first book.
• Evaluate thoughtfully scholarship that appears in overseas presses, as well as scholarship in languages other than English.  They should be mindful of the variety of publication practices and procedures for evaluation of submissions for manuscripts.

Although the report has not yet been distributed widely, you can obtain a paper copy by contacting my office at 3-0790 or e-mailing ksreynol@uiuc.edu.

REVOLUTIONIZING SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING THROUGH CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE

The National Science Foundation Blue-Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure released the first draft of its report on April 19, 2002.  The panel envisions a new age in scientific and engineering research, driven by progress in computing and communications technology.  It expects that the amounts of calculation and the extent of information that can be stored and used will explode at a rate that should shake up assumptions throughout the research community.  In a few years, it predicts, the contents of the historic scientific literature will fit on a rack of disks, and a computer that fits in a small office will provide more computing than all the supercomputing centers together today.  In the future, the panel expects researchers to:

• Combine raw data and new models from many sources, and to utilize the most up-to-date tools to analyze, visualize, and simulate complex interrelations.
• Collect and make generally available far more information, leading to a qualitative change in the way research is done and the type of science that will result.
• To work across traditional boundaries: for environmental scientists to take advantage of climate models, for physicists to make direct use of astronomical observations, for social scientists to analyze interactive behavior of scientists as well as others.
• To simulate more complex and exciting systems.
• To access the entire published record of science online and for future publications to be much richer (hypertext, video, photographic images).
• To visualize the results of complex data sets in new and exciting ways, and to create techniques for understanding and acting on the observations.
• To work routinely with colleagues at distant institutions, even ones that are not traditionally considered Research universities, and with junior scientists and students as genuine peers, despite differences in age, experience, race or physical ability.

The panel thinks that these will not be realized unless NSF makes a major move at this time.  If it doesn’t,

• Researchers in different fields and at different sites will adopt different formats and representations of key information, which will make it forever difficult or impossible to combine or reconcile.
• If there is no decision to curate and store indefinitely raw and intermediate research results as well as the polished and reduced publications, irreplaceable data will be lost.
• Effective use of cyberinfrastructure can break down artificial field boundaries, while differing tools and structures can isolate scientific communities for years.
• Groups are already building their own application and middleware software without awareness of comparable needs elsewhere, both within the NSF and across all of science.  Time and talent will be wasted that could have led to much better computing and much better science.
• Very rapid changes are coming in computing and application architectures; lack of consideration of work in other sciences and in the commercial world could render projects obsolete before they deliver.

The panel will recommend a new large initiative, the most fundamental goal of which will be to empower radical new ways of conducting science and engineering through the applications of information technology.  Read the draft of which is sure to be an important and influential report at https://worktools.si.umich.edu/workspaces/datkins/001.nsf