The Digital Scholar How Technology Is Transforming Scholarly Practice Martin Weller BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC First published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Academic an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 36 Soho Square, LondonWiD3QY, UK and 175 Fifth Avenue, NewYork, NY 10010, USA Copyright © Martin Weller 2011 This work is published subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher. For permission to publish commercial versions please contact Bloomsbury Academic CIP records for this book are available from the British Library and the Library of Congress ISBN 978-1-84966-497-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-84966-617-6 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-84966-625-1 (ebook) Visit http://bloomsburyacademic.com/ to find out more about our authors and their books. You will find extracts, author interviews, author events and you can sign up for newsletters to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers. Coverimage: © PeterPhoto123/Shutterstock To Ellen While industries such as music, newspapers, film and publishing have seen radical changes in their business models and practices as a direct result of new technologies, higher education has so far resisted the wholesale changes we have seen elsewhere. However, a gradual and fundamental shift in the practice of academics is taking place. Every aspect of scholarly practice is seeing changes effected by the adoption and possibilities of new technologies. This book will explore these changes, their implications for higher education, the possibilities for new forms of scholarly practice and what lessons can be drawn from other sectors. Table of Contents The Digital Scholar Table of Contents Acknowledgements 1. Digital, Networked and Open 1.1. A tale of two books 1.2. What is digital scholarship? 1.3. Digital, networked and open 1.4. Fast, cheap and out of control 1.5. Technology determinism 1.6. The structure of this book 2. Is the Revolution Justified? 2.1. The net generation 2.2. Context 2.3. Lack of relevance 2.4. Different attitudes 2.5. Overestimating skills 2.6. Seeing difference where there is none 2.7. People are learning in different ways 2.8. Meeting unmet needs of learners 2.9. Open education 2.10. Lessons from other sectors 2.11. Conclusions from the evidence 2.12. An appropriate response 2.13. Conclusion 3. Lessons from Other Sectors 3.1. The newspaper industry 3.2. The music industry 3.3. Ownership and identity 3.4. Boundary wars 3.5. A component analysis 3.6. Conclusion 4. The Nature of Scholarship 4.1. Scholarship 4.2. Digital scholarship revisited 4.3. Conclusion 5. Researchers and New Technology 5.1. The current state 5.2. A networked research cycle 5.3. Themes 5.4. Conclusion 6. Interdisciplinarity and Permeable Boundaries 6.1. Interdisciplinarity 6.2. The potential of technology 6.3. Twitter as interdisciplinary network 6.4. Conclusion 7. Public Engagement as Collateral Damage 7.1. Public engagement 7.2. A long-tail content production system 7.3. Frictionless broadcasting 7.4. Conclusion 8. A Pedagogy of Abundance 8.1. Economics of abundance and scarcity 8.2. Education and abundance 8.3. Possible pedagogies 8.4. Conclusion 9. Openness in Education 9.1. The changing nature of openness 9.2. Digital and networked 9.3. Open education as a ‘movement’ 9.4. Open educational resources 9.5. Open courses 9.6. Conclusion 10. Network Weather 10.1. Network weather 10.2. Remote participation 10.3. Backchannel 10.4. Amplified events 10.5. Socialisation 10.6. Changing formats 10.7. Case study – the Open University conference 10.8. Conclusion 11. Reward and Tenure 11.1. The tenure process 11.2. The digital scholarship barriers 11.3. Recognising digital scholarship 11.4. Conclusion 12. Publishing 12.1. The academic publishing business 12.2. Open access publishing 12.3. The advantages of open access 12.4. Reimagining publishing 12.5. Conclusion 13. The Medals of Our Defeats 13.1. Avoiding extremism 13.2. Superficiality 13.3. Quality 13.4. Brain damage 13.5. Forgetting and identity 13.6. Next-big-thingism 13.7. Property and ownership 13.8. Sustainability 13.9. Conclusion 14. Digital Resilience 14.1. Techno-angst 14.2. A failure of ownership 14.3. Levels of engagement 14.4. Resilience 14.5. Room for disruption 14.6. Conclusion References Acknowledgements This book has grown out of a number of converging projects and interests, some of these related to my institution, the Open University (OU), some from research and others from my online network. In my workplace at the Institute of Educational Technology at the OU, there are a number of colleagues who I have worked with on various projects and talked through many of the issues in this book. These include Patrick McAndrew, Grainne Conole, Eileen Scanlon, Doug Clow, Nick Pearce, Josie Taylor, Will Woods, Sam Kinsley and Karen Cropper amongst many others. Elsewhere in the OU, Tony Hirst has acted as my archetype for a digital scholar, and John Naughton showed me the power of blogging before they were even called blogs. I'd also like to express my gratitude to all the colleagues who have patiently attended workshops where I have worked through these ideas and the various senior managers who have indulged half-baked project plans and supported the writing of this book. My online network features far too many people to list, and I fear I will offend people by not including them, but it would be remiss of me not to highlight the influence of early bloggers and online contributors, including Alan Cann, George Siemens, Josie Fraser, Scott Leslie, Brian Lamb, Brian Kelly, Alan Levine and Jim Groom. I am aware that evenings when I should have been giving my family my full attention were occupied with writing, or ‘playing with stuff’, so thank you to my wife and daughter for allowing me to get on with it. But most of all, my thanks go to all those who constitute my network, who, on a daily basis, share resources, thoughts, links, insights and poor jokes and thus enrich my professional and personal life. 1. Digital, Networked and Open ‘Dad, you know that book you're writing, what's it about?’ my daughter asked, as I walked her to school. The ‘elevator pitch’ is always difficult for academics, who prefer to take their time to explain things in depth and give all sides to an argument. An elevator pitch for a nine-year-old is almost impossible. ‘Well,’ I pondered, ‘it's about how using technology like the Internet, dad's blog, and Wikipedia is changing the way people like daddy work.’ Having recently completed a school project, she was well acquainted with Wikipedia. She considered this and then concluded, ‘da-aaaaad, no one's going to want to read that!’ I fear she may be right, but I realised I have been writing this book for the past four years, mainly through my blog, which I have been using to explore what the advent of technologies, which offer new ways of communicating, collaborating and creating knowledge, mean for higher education. I figured if it had kept me interested for this long, it might be useful to share some of that with others. 1.1. A tale of two books So what are these new ways of working that I had hinted at to my daughter? I'll start with an example that is in your hands now – the process of writing this book. Six years ago I wrote my last book, and halfway through writing this, I thought I'd compare the two processes. Below is a list of some of the tools and resources I used to write this book: Books – they were accessed via the library but increasingly as e-books, and one audiobook. E-journals – my university library has access to a wide range of databases, but I also made frequent use of others through tools such as Google Scholar and Mendeley. Delicious/social bookmarking – as well as searching for key terms I would ‘forage’ in the bookmarks of people I know and trust, who make their collections available. Blogs – I subscribe to more than 100 blogs in Google Reader, which I try to read regularly, but in addition I have cited and used many posts from other blogs. YouTube, Wikipedia, Slideshare, Scribd, Cloudworks and other sites – text is not the only medium for sharing now, and for certain subjects these ‘Web 2.0’ services offer useful starting points, or overviews, as well as insightful comment. My own blog – I have kept a blog for around five years now, and it provided a useful resource for items I have commented on and drafts of sections of this book. I also keep a scrapbook-type blog using Tumblr where I post any interesting links or multimedia and revisited this for resources I had harvested over the past few years. The blog was also a means of posting draft content to gain comments and feedback, which could then be incorporated into further iterations of writing. Social network – my Twitter network is especially useful for gaining feedback, asking for suggestions and, on a daily basis, as a filter and collection mechanism for sharing resources. Work and personal network – undoubtedly working in an intellectually lively environment and having face-to-face discussions with colleagues have been invaluable. Google alerts – I have set up alerts for a few key phrases which would then provide me with daily email updates on new content containing these keywords. This allowed me to find new resources, track conversations and stay abreast of a field which was changing as I wrote the book.