Social Scholarship on the Rise
As an academic librarian, I've been trying to get a handle on the emerging parameters of social scholarship. This is the practice of scholarship in which the use of social tools is an integral part of the research and publishing process. The process gains a number of characteristics, including openness, conversation, collaboration, access, sharing and transparent revision.
In this entry, I'm going to paint an idealized picture of this process, gathering together both observations and speculations. I'm not suggesting that any one individual would do all of these things. I'm just looking at the options - or better yet, the opportunities. This list is by no means comprehensive, but rather a starting point toward considering practices of scholarship that reflect a 2.0 social mindset and make use of 2.0 social tools. These ideas range from the not-new to the just-emerging.
- A social scholar contributes to the conversation about her research topic by discussing her findings and ruminations on her blog and by inviting comments. By doing this, she moves some of her research activities into the public arena.
- A social scholar initiates or joins an online community devoted to her topic, using any of a number of social software services or tools.
- During the source gathering phase of her research, a social scholar shares important citations by depositing and tagging them on academic-oriented bookmarking sites such as Connotea and CiteULike.
- By placing items in social bookmarking sites, a social scholar takes an interest in and contributes to the phenomenon of soft peer review. This type of peer review derives metrics from content on social sites and user interactions with this content.
- During the research process - and depending on the topic - a social scholar consults both traditional and non-traditional sources. The latter might include blogs, RSS feeds, social bookmarking sites, podcasts and other multimedia, document repositories, dot-com full-text search portals, online discussion communities, data derived from mashups, etc.
- A social scholar writes her articles, essays or book chapters on a restricted wiki that can be reviewed and discussed by a selected audience. This is especially helpful with group-authored publications.
- A social scholar deposits her works-in-progress in a pre-print repository in order to take advantage of useful comments from peers.
- Post publication, a social scholar provides open access to her works by depositing them in a post-print repository, institutional repository, personal Web site, etc.
- A social scholar negotiates with her publisher for strong copyright ownership of her publications.
- Whenever possible, a social scholar publishes in open access journals.
- A social scholar negotiates with her publisher for sponsored publishing platforms that extend and enhance the "finished" nature of her publications. Options might include a post-publication blog or wiki that features reports on follow-up activities and research, and lets readers give comments on individual paragraphs or sections. If the publisher can't accommodate this request, a social scholar finds alternate platform hosts. These activities can lead to future publications.
- A social scholar is an early adapter of publishing peer-reviewed born-digital works in wiki-type formats that allow for ongoing revisions that track the evolution of the publication.
- A social scholar supports the efforts of libraries to preserve the artifacts of her research process.
- A social scholar lobbies scholarly publishers to incorporate useful 2.0 tools into their portals.
These are just a few ideas. But taken all together, I think they give an idea of what social scholarship might be.
Comments
I really like your concept of social scholarship, although some of the details will vary by discipline. I'm surprised I haven't seen this cited elsewhere; it's a very valuable idea, and it could catch on.
Posted by: Jim Milles | May 1, 2007 11:25 AM
Jim, Thank you. I hope that the concept of social scholarship does catch on. I think it can provide an integrated view of the application of social computing in the scholarly realm. The possibilities are amazing, if more of these practices take off. I'm at the early stages of evangelizing this idea, but I can't do it alone!
Posted by: Laura Cohen | May 1, 2007 12:04 PM
You might be interested in something I wrote discussing related issues.
Cheers.
Posted by: Ulises | May 12, 2007 11:36 AM
Ulises, Thanks so much for alerting me to your fascinating entry.
My favorite comments include Research does not stop at the end of a book, a class, a semester or a degree, but is the process of constantly refining ideas and arguments based on new knowledge (in this sense, the blog is closer to a portfolio that tracks the development of the author's work). And, Blogging allows for constant revisions to one's arguments, which develop as a result of new perspectives on the literature. My blog actually maps the evolution of my understanding of concepts and theories in my field, which should allow others to evaluate my progress.
I couldn't agree more. Evolution is the key. A blog that tracks the evolution of a scholar's work more realistically reflects the nature of scholarship than "completed" publications that define accepted scholarly practice now.
As for social peer review, you may want to take a look at Dario Taraborelli's blog entry on soft peer review.
Posted by: Laura Cohen | May 13, 2007 10:55 AM
FYI: I'm borrowing some of your list (with credit, of course) for a presentation to a statewide faculty colloquium.
Posted by: Dorothea Salo | May 22, 2007 10:31 AM
Dorothea, Sounds good to me. Thank you. Best of luck with the colloquium.
Posted by: Laura Cohen | May 22, 2007 10:40 AM
I just found your blog site. It's a godsend for me. I think a lot of academic librarians are trying to find the time to learn how to use a Wiki to put their subject guides up. I have been in the sandbox at Wikipedia. I also joined Ning for Library 2.0 a social network. It's been a real help.
Posted by: Mary Durk | May 24, 2007 07:39 PM
I like the Social Scholarship too. What a great idea.
Posted by: Mary Durk | May 24, 2007 07:42 PM
Hello!
I'm a swiss girl, preparing up to last step of my studies in Geneva to become a librarian, archivist and documentalist altogether.
So tomorrow, my friends and I will present and defend the final diploma's report we've been working on since last April.
As its title is " The library without librarian: self-management as a communication's tool at [... name of an institution...]", and our pedagogic adviser related it spontaneously to the notion of web 2.0, we made some more research.
Then we found the manifesto 2.0; we will use it as a support in our argumentation, as the concept seems to represent kind of the theoretical guide we missed from the beginning of the process.
Though we red this document two weeks ago, we realized we'd been working on our project in an intuitive manner, bound to this concept's essence.
This was the purpose of this mail: only to say "Let's be part of it!"
Greetings from Lausanne, Switzerland
Posted by: Sandrine Clément | December 5, 2007 03:43 AM
Sandrine, Thank you so much for your comment.
Your story is a very interesting one. There are people in the profession who dislike any of the "2.0" labels. However, you have made the point that the conceptual underpinnings of 2.0 are useful to research and to strategizing about the future of libraries. The concepts can also help us to join together, just as you say. I agree entirely with this insight!
Posted by: Laura Cohen | December 5, 2007 11:29 AM
Wow, this is a nice article Laura. Anyway, your post is in the 2nd place when i try googling this keyword "scholarshis social bookmarking".
This post is a concept, but what we have made so far probably an implementation on what you taught. Though it is still not perfect or complete.
Go on, try our site http://scholarscamp.com. This is a scholarships social bookmarking site. Read about us here (http://scholarscamp.com/blog/the-new-way-to-find-scholarship-on-the-net/)
So far, we have evaluate 7 benefit of our site (http://scholarscamp.com/blog/%ef%bb%bf7-benefit-of-scholarship-social-bookmarking/).
Help us to find the next benefit of our product based on your thought. If only you don't mine.
I hope you could sign in and try it your self.
thank You
Posted by: Wim Permana | February 15, 2008 12:03 PM