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Scientific Impact of research in the Internet Age

Eberhard R. Hilf at ISN Institute for Science Networking Oldenburg GmbH an der Carl von Ossietzky Universität

Talk given at the Physikalisches Kolloquium, called for by the University Library Bielefeld.

The current version profitted from helpful comments by Wolfgang Binder. The professional and lively discussion at the talk is acknowledged.

Link to this document: www.staff.uni-oldenburg.de/eberhard.hilf/vortraege/bielefeld06/bielefeld-browse.html and as (slides )

Comment: ISN GmbH develops services for scientific document management
(for authors, users, research groups, departments, University Libraries and Journals).

 

Urheberrechtsverfügung: You may read, download, use in your own talks any or all of these slides, provided you cite and give a link to http://www.isn-oldenburg.de/~hilf/vortraege/bielefeld06


Information Management Requirements for research work have and will never change:

But how will the players in the scientific information have to act in the digital age?
  1. Authors to put a copy of their new scientific documents Open Access to increase citation and impact;
  2. Readers to learn to make use of the emerging intelligent field-specific search services (especially in physics and related fields);
  3. Departments/Universities to apply new metrics for measuring scientific impact to compete for visibility, researchers, students, and money.

We want to stay with our traditioned work habits while doing outragous research..
 

A. Eternal Requirements for scientific information management

get Information from anyone to any individual researcher
Voting of a Fachbereichsrat: inecessity of spending money for inf.-supply versus visibility: 100 : 00
 

B. The Paper Age Solution and Value Chain

Technical constraints to paper, print and tradition Scientists got used to the Deficiencies over the last 150 years..
The Bremen-Riddle: to step out of the contract was more expensive than to stay within for the Bremen Library, because of the contract conditions: five year, high penalty, guaranteed price increase per year, ..
 

C. Principal Prospects of the Internet Age

and the negative thinking of the Elite over the years.
 
A. The Author: what to do?
  1. all: make the digital version of all your documents the principal original [Ed Fox: 1999]
  2. complete: give the complete information [DFG good practise rules]
  3. timely: do it prior to refereeing; [London misuse Conference]
  4. relevant: attach tags to tell search engines what you mean [metadata language DC]
  5. usable: use international exchange formats and Markup Languages [latex, txt, html,..; PhysML, MathML,..]
  6. barrierfree: post it (or let it be posted) on a web-server.
it is so simple, but it is not the author's prime concern
 

B: The author: why and how to do it? Author's Motivation
  1. Professional desire to get read, to make an impact to the progress of science
  2. Desire to make a career in his/her profession.
What to do: go Open Access (put copy of document free available full text online)
independent of any other (even commercial) usage by the author.
  1. Choose the server with the highest quality service [see below]
  2. Distribute first, publish then (as Fermi started in 1932).
  3. Rely on impact metrics [Euroscience, Cornell U., DINI-network, .!!..].
  4. Know and use your citations [they jump [A. Swan, page 5] by a factor of 2-10 for OA].

.. but authors rely on other author's opinion, ...
and the majority does not care for maximizing readership.
 

A. the personal Repository (Author's Archive of web-posted documents)

typically realized by the Publication list of the author or his Research Group on their local Web-Server.

Wide range of Quality (with regard to the aim of impact)

  1. no or just an image of a pR
  2. just a text list of citations with no links to document
  3. ... but with links
  4. ... but with links and metadata [example; webform: siehe die Liste nützlicher Werkzeuge: MyMetaMaker]

No long term preservation; no guarantee for readability etc. ...
 

Status of personal Repositories: a little testing

(Numbers: our own University, and Harnad/Stamerjohanns/Brody/ERH et al. study.)
to wait and see is not a suitable policy.
 

Networking personal Repositories

Physnet (www.physnet.net)
Not too many know the relevant existing Networks and Collaboratories.
 

B. The IR Institutional Repositories

Definition: Repository driven by the University (Library)
Motivation: The impact of locally created science will boost the image of the University to attract Scientists, students, money.

Thus: for shure the Universities will make excessive use of impact metrics in its struggle for money, students, scientists.

The competition between Universities is just beginning.

Let here other people, who's profession it is, work for you!
 



Wide range of type and quality of Institutional Repositories

  1. plain document repositories
  2. archive with some metadata
  3. OAI-MPH 2.0 compliant repositories [world list of data- and service providers]
  4. additional services: long term archiving, printing on demand, ..
  5. DINI-certified IRs [quality services refereed!; national list]
How are IRs used?
Guess, how many of bielefeld-physics documents are in the local OAI-Data-Provider?
 

Networking Institutional Repositories

International: National: Next step professional Quality Services:
Worldwide OA allows a Quantum-step in professional knowledge avialability and usability
 

C: CR The Central Repositories


Mandating is the way to go (Government Interest ...)
 

D: The Open Access Publishers

Business model is still sought
Cost reduction

Prices range from 20 Euro/page (ACP) to 3.000- per paper (Springer et. al.)

Number of OA-Journals differs widely:
355: EZB-Physik

038: DOAJ
Prices for publishing are marginal, costs of refereeing/lectoring stay
 


A. Patience required

Paper-to-Digital information management deals with a finite number of authors/readers.

Phase Transition Theory predicts: Transition the faster the larger the number of constituents.
Example from cluster physics [go to figure with the complex plane pole diagram and read: horizontal axis is inverted temperature, vertical is related to time; The pole next to the horizontal axis determines by its distance the phase transition curve. The closer, the sharper; Distance is proportional to inverse of particle number.]
Classification of phase transitions in small systems; P.Borrmann et al.; PRL 84, 2511, 2000

B. Changes to qualitatively new products in Industry

  1. keep old product as long as possible,
  2. deny new developments in public [even legally: Urheberrechtsdebatte]
  3. develop energetically new services
  4. jump in second on the market.

In a year from now you will see radically new OA-services by commercial publishers.
 

Wait to be mandated or compete