Scholarly Communication: A Long View

Abstract

This article reviews the different approaches taken by scholars and researchers in communicating with each other. It thematically considers the options available from the standpoints of information ecology, culture, and technology interaction, formal and informal, private and public. The roles of journals and books as vehicles for formal communication are also considered as well as the communication roles that journal authors and readers can take.

Keywords:

• scholarly communication
• researcher behavior
• journals

Introduction

Scholars communicate in a range of ways. Some of these are well documented (the public and formal parts), others are not. This article takes a long view at the wide variety of scholarly communication routes and the roles they play.

Much of this is well trodden territory and has been written about on a number of occasions using an historical approach (Meadows 1980, 1998; Mabe 2009). Here, however, a thematic method will be adopted looking at contrasting areas: the information ecology of scholarly communication; culture versus technology; formal and informal, public and private; journals and books; authors and readers.

Information Ecology

From a sociological point of view, all instances of human communication can be thought of as having characteristics that allow for their classification. We can think of these as “dimensions,” although they cannot all be orthogonal and mutually independent. In purely linguistic terms, some of these are equivalent to the “register” of language use, others descriptive of the connectivity, and others the directionality of any communicative act. These are laid out in Table 1. Using this table we can classify scholarly communication acts. For example, the present article could be described as in Table 2. This approach allows us to view communication acts as occupying one of a series of potential information “ecological niches” without reference to any particular mechanism for their communication and independent of medium.

TABLE 1 Dimensions of a Communication Instance

Dimension	Options
Mode	One-to-one, One-to-many, or Many-to-many
Directionality	Transmit, Receive, or Interactive
Delivery regime	Oral or Written
Temporality	Live or Recorded
Register	Private, Public, Formal, or Informal
Enhancement	Local or At a distance

TABLE 2 An Example of the Dimensional Schema

Dimension	Instance
Mode	One-to-many
Directionality	Unidirectional
Delivery regime	Written
Temporality	Recorded
Register	Public	Formal
Enhancement	At a distance

Why is this useful? Much play has been made by those who assert that the introduction of digital technology is a revolution akin to the invention of writing (Harnad 1991). I believe this view is much overstated and arises from naive notions of progress embedded within technologically-based analyses. Information ecology is a good counter to this prevailing assumption. It has great utility when considering the future forms of communication as it allows the essential similarity between communication instances with and without new technology to be demonstrated. Thus, a private, in person conversation will share the same characteristics as a private telephone conversation, except that the latter has enhancement by allowing interaction at a distance. Or, the exchange of opinions by letter is essentially the same as an Email exchange, except faster. Or, that being at a lecture is in essence identical to watching a web video of it, except that the latter can be done at a distance and (if recorded) repeated, but without further suitable technical enhancement allows no interaction with the speaker.

Table 3 illustrates the ways in which communicative acts are little changed through the use of enhancing digital technology. In almost all cases the essential communication “instance” (a conversation, a lecture, a symposium, etc.) remains even when the technology vehicle profoundly alters the reach of the communication. There are indeed new tools, but they are new tools for old purposes. In almost all cases, the digital transition is enhancing not transformative: to use a transport analogy, we get better more efficient cars not completely novel modes of transportation. The exception here is in the technical enabling of “many-to-many” interactions. In the physical world a many-to-many oral communication event would be an unintelligible cacophony. In the virtual and written space of wikis it becomes a possibility and has been exploited by a number of scholarly groups, especially economists with their tradition of collaborative papers.

TABLE 3 New Technology Versus Old

Delivery
regime	Mode	Paper World	Directionality	Digital World	Directioanlity
Oral	One-to-one	in person conversation	verbal question	instant messaging audiovisual	verbal question
		telephone conversation	verbal question	Voip telephony	verbal question
	One-to-many	lecture/conference talk	verbal question	instant messaging audiovisual	verbal question
		television broadcast	n/a	web video	email
Written	One-to-one	letters	letter reply	email	email
	One-to-many	printed publication	counter publication Written correspondence	web based publication	rapid response commentaries
				blogs
	Many-to-many	n/a	n/a	wikis	in-built
				e whiteboards	in-built

It may seem odd to commence even a thematic article about the long view of scholarly communication in this somewhat theoretical way. However, almost all attempts to do such broad surveys inevitably bang-up against the idea of predicting the future, and that future is almost universally predicated on the idea that it will be determined by technology alone. Examining the information niches demonstrates that new technology solutions often have much more in common with pre-existing forms and have not ipso facto generated new ones. Electronic products resemble their paper forebears not because of atavistic and reactionary tendencies (although of course these may too be present) but because they are solutions to human needs and those needs have not changed.

Culture Trumps Technology: Young versus Old

Another prevailing view among commentators on scholarly communication is the idea that an upcoming younger generation, brought up with the internet will of preference and choice reject pre-existing communication modes in favor of new digitally mediated ones, such as the web 2.0 social networking sites familiar to them in their personal life. On this basis, it is assumed that entirely novel approaches to both formal and informal communication will be adopted and that the tyranny of a papyrocentric approach to publication standards and behavioral norms will be overthrown (Harnad 1991, 1994, 1999).

As we saw in the previous section, it is unclear that there are any truly novel instances of human communication that have evolved under new technology. However, it is certainly the case that, in the mass media (at least), behavioral patterns of users and producers are changing (Nicholas and Rowlands 2008); although, it may be too extreme to claim that they are completely different. To what extent could we see a rising digital generation changing the norms of the ways scholarship is communicated? Over the past few years a number of studies have thrown light on this (Mulligan and Mabe 2010; Tenopir et al. 2009; RIN 2009; Harley et al. 2010). There is a building consensus that the younger and older scholar differ very little in their approaches to the use of new technology and web-based tools in their communication. It is clear that one is a scholar of a discipline, first and foremost, rather than an old or young one. It is also clear—especially in the results of two major studies (RIN 2009; Harley et al. 2010)—that scholarly behavior is profoundly conservative where communication is concerned and that, if anything, younger members of a discipline are even more conservative than their elders who are better established. There is no evidence in these studies to suggest that scholarly versions of social networking sites are about to sweep the board. It could be argued that this is a reflection of the relative newness of digital options, but as the World Wide Web is, at the time of writing, 19 years old; web based journals, 17; and journal platforms, 14, it is surprising that there is no evidence of any such a trend. A view often advanced is that when the current generation of children who have been totally reared in an internet world become scholars real change will commence. Perhaps. Equally, it could be that as this cohort of web children age and become scholarly professionals they will adopt the habits expected of such professionals: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, ‥ :but when I became a man I put away childish things” (1 Cor 13:11 King James).

Formal and Informal, Private and Public

A major dividing line in scholarly communication is that between instances that are intended to be formal (on the record statements) and the informal discourse that helps scholars refine and develop their views. Partly, this is a function of the stage of a communication, but, obviously, it is also about its intent. Garvey (1979) created a time arrow diagram showing the evolution of a scholarly idea, from its initial conception as a research outcome, its further development via symposia and presentation at national conferences, its appearance as a formal, public evaluated (peer reviewed) object, such as a paper in a scholarly journal, through to its citation in review publications. During the initial stages, the idea is very much held private to the investigating team and informally discussed in person, via email, or letter or on the telephone. Increasingly such interactions between members of a research team (and in the sciences especially such work is increasingly done in teams, often in different institutions and frequently different countries) are taking place via new technology tools: web telephony, shared internet white boards, and collaboration spaces. The increased use of these computer tools means that, for the first time, the ephemeral interactions that shape and form the final published work will leave physical and potentially permanent traces in the world, if only as items in the memories of computer servers. This is a new state of affairs: for the first time the informal discussions are essentially “on the record” with technology moving the formal/informal boundary and potentially allowing the private to be made public, a matter of some recent concern to climate scientists at the University of East Anglia (Leake 2009). Ultimately, however, the intention is always to make the results public, though usually more at a time and place of the investigators choosing.

The central role of public, formal evaluated publication cannot be underestimated. Philosophically it is equivalent to the old Platonic formula that knowledge is “justified true belief.” In the context of scientific publication, the belief is the idea or observation made by the investigator, a claim which they wish to persuade all others is true. The justification comes in two parts, the application of the scientific method in the research and subjecting the claim to critical peer review. To this, Ziman (1968) has added the notion of “public”: scientific knowledge is public knowledge. This goes some way to explaining the centrality and strong adherence of scholars to evaluative formal publication and the increasing dominance of the peer reviewed journal as the mechanism for achieving it.

Books and Journals

Formal publication is usually undertaken through either a specialized book or through an article in a peer reviewed journal.

Books

The specialized text or monograph remains a feature of most disciplines but is significantly better attested in social science, arts, and humanities areas, where it still predominates. Even in these areas, the journal is starting to challenge its dominance. Partly, this is due to the growing use of journals as evaluative tools but it also is driven by the same force that created journals in the first place. Books take a long time to write and to read and the rapid pace of modern scholarship, as well as the desire to focus on very specific topics, means that shorter treatments become preferred. Book publication has a long and distinguished history which has been excellently surveyed by Thompson (2005), so I will not deal with those aspects here.

Journals

There are approximately 25,000 active peer-reviewed scholarly journals publishing about 1.5 million articles each year (Ware and Mabe 2009). About one million unique authors publish annually for a global audience of roughly 10–15 million readers located in more than 10,000 institutions (Mabe and Amin 2002). The number of journals and articles continues to grow: each year the number of articles increases by 3%, the number of journals by about 3.5% (Mabe 2003a). This growth has been relatively consistent over the last couple of hundred years. Its cause is surprisingly simple: the growth in the number of researchers in the world (Mabe and Amin 2001). In 2007/8 there were over 1.5 billion downloads of scholarly journal articles at an average cost of one or two euros per download: the electronic revolution has allowed more knowledge to be available to more people than at any previous point in history (Ware and Mabe 2009).

Learned publishing via the journal first began in January 1665 with Denis de Sallo's Journal des Sçavans (Meadows 1980). Henry Oldenburg (1619–77) created the world's first research journal in March 1665 as part of his involvement in the newly founded Royal Society of London (of which he was first Joint Secretary). He did so to solve a number of problems faced by early scientists. Principal among these was the desire to establish precedence: the first authors of a phenomenon or result wanted their priority as discoverer to be publicly acknowledged and secured before they were prepared to share their results with their colleagues. Oldenburg realized that a periodical publication run by an independent third-party could resolve this dilemma for the pioneering scientists of his age by faithfully recording the name of the investigator, the date he submitted his paper as well as his description of his work (Hall and Hall 1965–86a).

Philosophical Transactions, was set up by Oldenburg in 1665 to do exactly this. In its monthly issues, it registered the name of the authors and date that they sent their manuscripts to Oldenburg as well as recording their discoveries. This simple act secured the priority for first authors and encouraged them to share their results with others, safe in the knowledge that their “rights” as “first discoverers” were protected by so doing (Hall and Hall 1965–86b).

From its outset Philosophical Transactions did not publish everything it received; the Council of the Royal Society looked at what was sent to Oldenburg before approving some for publication, the first recorded instance of “peer review” (Royal Society 1665). The accumulating monthly issues of the journal also represented a record of the transactions of science of archival value.

Modern Journal Practice

The four functions of Oldenburg's journal: registration, dissemination, peer review, and archival record are so fundamental to the way scholars behave and how scholarship is practiced that all subsequent journals have conformed to this model.

Peer review is probably the most important defining characteristic of the modern learned journal and is embedded in the physical structure of final articles. Each published paper will generally contain a series of dates indicating the progress of the article through the journal's peer review system. Almost all will record a “received date,” the date the manuscript was received by the journal editorial office, and an “accepted date,” the date the peer review process concluded with the acceptance for publication of the article in the journal. It is also common for journal issues (and increasingly single articles published online) to contain a final publication date as well.

Peer review itself, as commonly practiced, involves the systematic, critical review of a submitted paper by two or more scholars from the same academic community as the author. These academic “peers” are selected by the journal editor and are asked to critique the paper in respect to its originality, methodological soundness, the significance and strength of its conclusions, the degree to which the evidence presented supports the conclusions given, and proper attribution of original sources. While peer review cannot prove that a paper is “correct” or that the data presented is not fraudulent, it is widely accepted by both authors and readers as greatly improving the quality of reported research.

Authors and Readers of Journals

It is commonly believed by outsiders that the researcher as reader should be no different from the researcher as author: they are, after all, the same individual! Yet, it is clear from many studies that they behave quite differently, even contradicting each other. Many of these dichotomies were first pointed out previously (Mabe and Amin 2002), but the perceptual differences on issues such as whether research data should be made available to others continue to be observed (RIN 2009). Authors generally say they want to publish more, while the same individuals as readers say they want to read less; however, in reality, author productivity is static or declining while readers are actually reading more (Tenopir et al. 2009).

Authors

There are an estimated 1 million unique authors publishing every year, about 70% of whom are scholars or researchers based in universities (Mabe and Amin 2002; Ware and Mabe 2009). The remainder are connected to the research departments of teaching hospitals, government institutions, and research intensive corporations (especially pharmaceutical and chemical companies).

When considering where to publish a draft paper, authors will self-assess the level of their work and attempt to match it to an equivalent category of journal. The author selects the journal category in which they would like to have their work published on the basis of a number of factors of which relevance, reputation, and ranking in its field predominate. Having identified a “short-list” of appropriate titles, the actual journal chosen depends upon the direct publishing experience of the author, their colleagues or superiors (Mabe 2003b).

Modern authors publish to establish their personal reputations and to register their priority and ownership of ideas. The third-party date-stamping mechanism of the journal marks their paper as received and accepted at a certain date, while the reputation of the journal becomes associated with both the article and by extension the author. As authors publish in more and better journals, they, in turn, become regarded as more prolific and better authors. In other words: they associate with known high quality brands and this leads to their own names becoming high quality brands in their own right.

For authors, journal publication asserts priority, establishes ownership of an idea, rewards the better authors by giving them recognition, and helps build a reputation. In addition, because publications are the only countable and assessable output of research, they have become intimately associated with the evaluation of research programs, the researchers themselves, and the institutions to which they belong. The pressure on academics in respect of funding and career progression has become known as Publish or Perish. It sits on top of the fundamental motivating factors that affect all authors, whether they are in academia or industry: the desire to see their ideas being publicly credited to them and having a permanent record of their work available in the scientific record.

Readers

There are an estimated 10–15 million readers of scholarly journal content, ranging from the intensive readers at the core who are also authors, through to the occasional reader from the general public and small businesses. For readers, the journal information functions assist in the act of information retrieval and use at the level of multiple articles and journals. Registration allows readers to assess who the originators of a field were, but it is the other three functions that are more important, because they allow the journal literature to be classified according to user-relevant criteria. The validation or certification function allows them to select information to read based upon its perceived quality and trustworthiness, while a consequence of the dissemination function separates journals according to specialization, approach, and which section of the research community publishes within them. The archival function allows reading to occur over time and is the accumulating repository of scholarly knowledge that can be accessed.

Future Prospects

Throughout this review, I have concentrated on the behavioral and information science aspects of scholarly communication. There are, of course, many other elements to be considered, such as political and economic factors, which could affect future outcomes. Space does not permit these to be dealt with here. Clearly, wholesale changes in the way scholarship is funded, the adoption or imposition of open access models, top down requirements on the way scholars are assessed, and work will all make a contribution. However, even including these factors, I think that in the short term we are unlikely to see anything other than superficial change. It is clear that the range of options open to scholars and the ways these can be fulfilled will only evolve if there is a clear perceived benefit, and, for most, this would mean time saving above all else. Where technology has easily allowed this and fits in with the behavioral requirements, it has been readily adopted.

Beyond a ten year horizon, it is foolish for any commentator to predict, but I believe we may see a system still in place that has much more in common with the present than we may hope or fear.