Scientific Communication Before and After Networked Science

Recent decades have seen extensive changes in how researchers in the sciences work. Online platforms enabled by Web 2.0 technologies (collectively known as “open” or “networked” science) have created multiple new channels for informal communications, revolutionizing the ways in which scientists collaborate and share results. Meanwhile, digitization and open access publishing have brought fundamental change to modes of publication and distribution for scientific journals. Yet the primary vehicle for the formal publication of results, the scientific article, has been much slower to alter in format. This paper will examine the functions that peer-reviewed journals have served within the scientific community since the founding of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, and the reasons for the remarkable stability and persistence over time of the journal system. It will also chart the development of the rhetoric of scientific discourse from its early author-centered approach to later object- and method-centered formats, leading to the highly structured research articles of the twentieth century. The evidence suggests that informal communication has been quick to adapt to the networked environment of contemporary research and is growing in importance for working scientists. The journal article, meanwhile, remains the format of choice for purposes of the professional record, much as books were when journals first appeared

Motivating Technical Writing through Study of the Environment

Today’s engineers must be more than just technically competent. To be successful in our increasingly global economy in which teamwork and interdisciplinary interaction are the norm, engineers must have excellent communication skills. In recognition of industry needs, the San José State University College of Engineering redesigned its technical communication course to ensure that students graduate with writing and speaking skills that will transfer readily to their career needs and the global arena. The course aims to motivate students through exploring topics that are meaningful to them and using communication formats that they will see in the workplace. Combing technical communication with study of the environment broadens the course to meet multiple ABET outcomes. This paper describes the course goals, organization, management, selected assignments, and assessment. Assessment data indicate that at the end of the semester students, on average, have gained between 0.8 and 1.1 points on a 12-point evaluation rubric, and have gained an appreciation of the unique characteristics of and need for technical writing

Genesis of Altmetrics or Article-level Metrics for Measuring Efficacy of Scholarly Communications: Current Perspectives

The article-level metrics (ALMs) or altmetrics becomes a new trendsetter in recent times for measuring the impact of scientific publications and their social outreach to intended audiences. The popular social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin and social bookmarks such as Mendeley and CiteULike are nowadays widely used for communicating research to larger transnational audiences. In 2012, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment got signed by the scientific and researchers communities across the world. This declaration has given preference to the ALM or altmetrics over traditional but faulty journal impact factor (JIF)-based assessment of career scientists. JIF does not consider impact or influence beyond citations count as this count reflected only through Thomson Reuters' Web of Science database. Furthermore, JIF provides indicator related to the journal, but not related to a published paper. Thus, altmetrics now becomes an alternative metrics for performance assessment of individual scientists and their contributed scholarly publications. This paper provides a glimpse of genesis of altmetrics in measuring efficacy of scholarly communications and highlights available altmetric tools and social platforms linking altmetric tools, which are widely used in deriving altmetric scores of scholarly publications. The paper thus argues for institutions and policy makers to pay more attention to altmetrics based indicators for evaluation purpose but cautions that proper safeguards and validations are needed before their adoption

Conversations with chemists: information seeking behavior of chemistry faculty in the electronic age.

This manuscript is a final draft of the article as submitted to the Haworth journal Science and Technology Libraries in December 2002. Due to editorial error, Haworth published an earlier draft of this paper instead of the final draft. They declined to rectify this error in the online version of the journal. The reader is advised that the author considers this version to be the definitive final draft that should have been published but was not. Scholars wishing to cite this work should preferably cite this final preprint, rather than the published article.Six faculty members in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin were interviewed one-on-one to gather information about their information-seeking behavior, favored resources, and opinions about the transition from a print to an electronic information environment. In most cases, these chemistry faculty members have eagerly embraced the enhanced access to chemical information made possible by the steady addition of electronic journals and networked database systems. The most-cited benefits include significant time-saving and convenience as well as access to more journals than ever. As a result, use of the physical library and its printed collections by faculty is declining. Chemistry faculty interviewed expressed a strong self-reliance in their information-seeking skills, and showed sophistication in their choice of tools.UT Librarie

Analysis and Synthesis of Metadata Goals for Scientific Data

The proliferation of discipline-specific metadata schemes contributes to artificial barriers that can impede interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. The authors considered this problem by examining the domains, objectives, and architectures of nine metadata schemes used to document scientific data in the physical, life, and social sciences. They used a mixed-methods content analysis and Greenberg’s (2005) metadata objectives, principles, domains, and architectural layout (MODAL) framework, and derived 22 metadata-related goals from textual content describing each metadata scheme. Relationships are identified between the domains (e.g., scientific discipline and type of data) and the categories of scheme objectives. For each strong correlation (\u3e0.6), a Fisher’s exact test for nonparametric data was used to determine significance (p \u3c .05). Significant relationships were found between the domains and objectives of the schemes. Schemes describing observational data are more likely to have “scheme harmonization” (compatibility and interoperability with related schemes) as an objective; schemes with the objective “abstraction” (a conceptual model exists separate from the technical implementation) also have the objective “sufficiency” (the scheme defines a minimal amount of information to meet the needs of the community); and schemes with the objective “data publication” do not have the objective “element refinement.” The analysis indicates that many metadata-driven goals expressed by communities are independent of scientific discipline or the type of data, although they are constrained by historical community practices and workflows as well as the technological environment at the time of scheme creation. The analysis reveals 11 fundamental metadata goals for metadata documenting scientific data in support of sharing research data across disciplines and domains. The authors report these results and highlight the need for more metadata-related research, particularly in the context of recent funding agency policy changes

Reuse as heuristic : from transmission to nurture in learning activity design

In recent years a combination of ever more flexible and sophisticated Web technologies and an explosion in the quantity of online content has sparked learning technologists around the world to pursue the promise of the 'reusable learning object' or RLO with the idea that RLOs could be reused in different educational contexts, thereby providing greater overall flexibility and return on investment. In 2002 the ACETS Project undertook a three-year study in the UK to investigate whether RLOs worked in practice and how the pursuit of reuse affected the teacher and their teaching. Teachers working in healthcare-related subjects in Higher and Further Education were asked to create an original learning design or activity from third-party digital resources and to reflect both on the process and its outcomes. The expectation was that teachers would be the ones selecting and reusing third-party materials. This paper describes how one of the ACETS exemplifiers reinterpreted this remit, challenged the anticipated transmissive model of learning, and instead, gave their students an opportunity to create their own original learning designs and learning activities from third-party digital resources. By describing the educational enhancements, the resulting heightened levels of critical thinking, and sensitivity to patient needs, 'reuse' will be shown to be an effective heuristic for student self-direction and professional development

Markov Models of Statistical Multiplexing of Telephone Dialogue with Packet Switching

Existing methods of analysis of voice transmission by packet switching were designed mainly with respect to a Poisson stream of input packets, for which the probability of an active packet on each input port of the router is a constant value in time. This assumption is not always valid, since the formation of speech packets during a dialogue is a nonstationary process, in which case mathematical modeling becomes an effective method of analysis, through which necessary estimates of a network node being designed for packet transmission of speech may be obtained. This paper presents the result of analysis of mathematical models of Markov chain based speech packet sources vis-à-vis the peculiarities of telephone dialogue models. The derived models can be employed in the design and development of methods of statistical multiplexing of packet switching network nodes

How and why physicists and chemists use blogs

This study examined how and why chemists and physicists blog. Two qualitative methods were used: content analysis of blog and “about” pages and in-depth responsive interviews with chemists and physicists who maintain blogs. Analysis of the data yielded several cross-cutting themes that provide a window into how physicists and chemists use their blogs and what value they receive from maintaining a blog and participating in a blogging community. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for supporting scientists’ work

DRIVER Technology Watch Report

This report is part of the Discovery Workpackage (WP4) and is the third report out of four deliverables. The objective of this report is to give an overview of the latest technical developments in the world of digital repositories, digital libraries and beyond, in order to serve as theoretical and practical input for the technical DRIVER developments, especially those focused on enhanced publications. This report consists of two main parts, one part focuses on interoperability standards for enhanced publications, the other part consists of three subchapters, which give a landscape picture of current and surfacing technologies and communities crucial to DRIVER. These three subchapters contain the GRID, CRIS and LTP communities and technologies. Every chapter contains a theoretical explanation, followed by case studies and the outcomes and opportunities for DRIVER in this field