The New Kaleidoscope of Scholarly Communication Steven Wheatley Vice President American Council of Learned Societies Cornell University June 7, 2007 Ithaca, New York

Our Cultural Commonwealth, 2006

Four score and seven years ago (4 x 20 = = 87) new nation liberty created equal Our Fathers Parents Founders brought forth upon this continent

Problems of Scholarly Publishing, 1959

Conclusions: Scholarly publishing is not and cannot realistically be expected to be self- supporting The uncomplicated scholarly manuscript of good quality will find a publisher

Problems of Scholarly Publishing, 1959 But certain kinds of manuscripts will have difficulties: Highly specialized Too long as an article/ too short as a book Using specialized materials The scholarly tool work

Problems of Scholarly Publishing, 1959 Solutions: Technology: micropublication, XeroX Funding: “the provision of appropriately administered funds. [from] the generosity of one or more of the philanthropic foundations...”

On Research Libraries, 1967

“American research libraries...are all faced with refractory problems that impede their satisfactory performance.” p. xiv

On Research Libraries, 1967 Problems: Inadequate bibliographic apparatus Inadequate funding Automation (“both a problem and a promise”)

On Research Libraries, 1967 Recommendations: National Commission on Libraries, which would coordinate acquisition and bibliographic policies Increased Federal and private funding

Scholarly Communication, 1979

Motivated by “widespread concern in the academic community that a crisis in finance threatened the performance of research libraries and the viability of scholarly publishing” – p. 1

Scholarly Communication, 1979 Conclusion “The extraordinary growth of the scholarly enterprise in the last two decades requires important qualitative changes in the way certain scholarly materials are published, disseminated, stored and made available.” –P. 11

Scholarly Communication, 1979 Recommendations National bibliographic system, periodical center, library agency Broader role for foundations NEH Office of Scholarly Communication ACLS, ARL, and AAUP Standing Committee on Technology

Commission Members Paul Courant Provost, Economics University of Michigan Sarah Fraser Art History Northwestern University Mike Goodchild Geography UC Santa Barbara Margaret Hedstrom School of Information University of Michigan Charles Henry VP & CIO Rice University Peter B. Kaufman VP, Innodata-Isogen President, Intelligent Television Jerome McGann English University of Virginia Roy Rosenzweig History George Mason University John Unsworth (Chair) Library and Information Science University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Bruce Zuckerman Religion University of Southern California

Why a report?

Potential of Cyberinfrastructure “New information technologies empower research on traditional objects of study.” ACLS Report, p. ii

Necessity of Cyberinfrastructure “Most expression of human creativity in the United States will be ‘born digital.’ The intensification of computing as a cultural force makes the development of a robust cyberinfrastructure an imperative for scholarship in the humanities and social sciences” ACLS Report, p.ii

What is Cyberinfrastructure? “an effective and efficient platform for the empowerment of specific communities of researchers to innovate and eventually revolutionize what they do, how they do it, and who participates.” -- NSF Report

What is Cyberinfrastructure?  Discipline-specific software  Expertise  Best Practices  Tools  Collections  Policies  Collaborative environments ACLS Report, p. 6

Necessary Characteristics Accessible as a public good Sustainable Interoperable Facilitate collaboration Support experimentation

Recommendations 1.Invest in cyberinfrastructure as a strategic priority. 2.Develop public and institutional policies that foster openness and access. 3.Promote cooperation between the public and private sectors.

Recommendations (cont’d)  Cultivate leadership.  Encourage digital scholarship.  Establish national centers to support scholarship that contributes to and exploits cyberinfrastructure.

Recommendations (cont’d)  Develop and maintain open standards and robust tools.  Create extensive and reusable digital collections.

Invest in Cyberinfrastructure

Create Extensive Digital Collections

Encourage Digital Scholarship

Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion Recommendation: “The profession as a whole should develop a more capacious conception of scholarship by rethinking the dominance of the monograph...”

Encourage Digital Scholarship Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion Recommendation: “Departments and institutions should recognize the legitimacy of scholarship produced in new media, whether by individuals or in collaboration, and create procedures for evaluating these forms of scholarship.”

Encourage Digital Scholarship Hillary Ballon and Mariet Westermann, Art History and its Publications in the Electronic Age “While art history continues to be a field of lively intellectual investigation and scholarship, its system of scholarly publication does not serve the discipline or general readership as well as it could.”

Encourage Digital Scholarship Hillary Ballon and Mariet Westermann, Art History and its Publications in the Electronic Age Recommendations “Support libraries in their efforts to use the internet to make copyrighted and orphan works available at the lowest possible cost to the widest communities of readers.”

Encourage Digital Scholarship Hillary Ballon and Mariet Westermann, Art History and its Publications in the Electronic Age “Develop online publication genres and formats that take advantage of museum exhibition as sites of research and appear during and after the exhibitions. Enhance the mission of university presses in terms of knowledge dissemination and scholarly communication rather than book publishing alone, and connect some of their programs more closely with their namesake universities and libraries.”

Foster Openness and Access

Scholarly Communication, 1979