Networked Scholarly Communication:The Move From Journal to Article

Barry Wellman, FRSC

Jenna Jacobson

iSchool, University of Toronto

For Taylor & Francis Publishers’ Conference, March 2014, Toronto

There and Back Again The first form of scholarly communication were

written documents – letters – and get togethersLike this oneRoyal Society, 1660

19thc industrialization of scholarship formalized comm intoScholarly societiesJournals

Move now to informal direct communicationWith papers/articles—not journals—unit of

communication

The Triple RevolutionThree Phenomena Intertwined1. Social Network: Reach Beyond Tight

Groups:More Multiplicity, Partial Attention, Less

Boundaries2. Internet: Personalization, Weakened

Distance3. Mobile-ization of Info & Communication

Hyper-Personal Body Appendages: Third SkinAccessible To YouAvailable To Others

Networked Individualism 3

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Networked Individualism:Person-to-Person

Structural ChangesLinked as IndividualsLess GroupinessMore AgencyLess Place BoundMore Achieved, Less Ascribed

The Societal Turn to theNetworked Operating System

Turn Away from Bounded Groups & HierarchiesToward “Networked Individualism”

Members of multiple, diversified, loosely connected networks

Individual – not workgroup or households – point of contact

Rather than two-step flow of communicationMedia > InterpersonalMany step flow:

Interpersonal>Media>Interpersonal>Media

The New Media is The New Neighborhood

The lines between info, communication have blurred

Geographic location not as importantIn addition to neighbors, workmates, most info-

sharingTranscends spatial & social boundariesNetworked individuals can exchange & create

mediaProjecting their voices to more extended audiences

that become part of their social worlds

Networked IndividualismShift from Journal to ArticleGerms of ideas tweetedDeep thoughts (sic) put on blogsDrafts (& fragments) feverishly circulated by

email attachmentsAlso announced on list servs“Final” versions on personal websites

Despite Elsevier’s best effortsEconomic stratification

Can universities afford expensive journal sub packages?

Can scholars afford paying for Open Access?

How Can Scholars Use Social Media?Publicizing events:

Twitter #hashtags, @replies, retweets (few go viral)

Facebook events, Facebook groupsDigital and In-Person Work Together

The Sad Case of Book City in TorontoMaintenance of Weak Ties on Social Media

I have 4,260 Twitter Followers: Hardly any are True Friends

As an ICS editor, I tweet Author, Title, URL of each article

Self-Promotion of My Research“Apologies for Self-Promotion” a dirty English

phraseSerializing my Networked book on Twitter

1-2 sentences/day#Networked, p6 “People are not hooked on

gadgets, they are hooked on each other”

Skype guest lectures to those buying 20 copies

Meet-ups with interested scholars at conferences

The more you promote in-person, the more you are read in print

MIT Press 2012 358 pp $15

How Can T&F Promote Journals, Articles?

Publicize, develop T&F’s guide to tweeting researchPut Twitter handles & personal URLs on publication materialsNetwork articles with hyperlinks

Inter-publisher would be the bestTwo-tier publishing

Most of us just want key findings, take-awaysMore, short articles containing the gist (Reader’s Digest)Longer literature, quotes, tables, graphs online onlyLinks to raw data: datasets, codes, experimental designs

Foster active conference comm before, during, afterICS special issues from Assoc of Internet Researchers

Encourage self-publishing – with links and copyrightsEncourage self-comments as well as others’ comments

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Networked Individual -- Nelu Handa @ Internet Café, Toronto