- May 2019
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csvconf.com csvconf.com
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2019 organizing team
a big thank you to the organizers!
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- Feb 2019
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via3.hypothes.is via3.hypothes.is
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nderstanding these in order to rethink the natureof knowledge on the one hand and improve design on the other entails devel-oping fundamental new ways of working in natural and social science.
The broad understanding of Open Science seems to be entailing these dimensions to varying degrees. Advocates coming from different backgrounds (and often not in unison) have argued and asked for reproducibility of research, open data & open source, cognitive and epistemic justice in science and more.
I am not convinced yet what the exact role of open science might be in the context of infrastructure studies, but I am excited to explore the connections and first leads.
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And yet the verynature of publishing is changing and will potentially change more
Indeed. Since 2009 Open Access and new publishing formats have increasingly pushed established publishers to adopt and evolve. Advocates fear that Open Access has been co-opted and monetized while government intervention is too slow to adopt.
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A system – whatever the blend of technical, organizational, social – consistsof multiple layers and dimensions at differing stages of maturity
A circumstance which is aggravated by an increasing Open Source and open re-use philosophies
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One aspect ofinfrastructure studies inquiry is consideration of new types of roles evolving withthe process of building information infrastructure – roles such as digital librarians,information managers, and network specialists.
I am wondering if open science would also fit that description.
idea/thought: Open Science/Scholarship as a type of critical infrastructure activism
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Similarly, today’s scientific infrastructures must be understood as an outgrowthof these developments rather than ahistorically as “revolutionary” or “radical.”2
I am planning to write about the history of the citation index from a technological perspective.
The citation index was a very technical development (initally closer to librarianship, recently increasing requiring AI and advanced algorithms to automatically extract & manage references) but has substantially impacted how academia looks and operates today.
The management of science has been entirely enabled by citation indices. Research evaluation has become fully dependent on that particular technology. The social impact is obvious once we consider these two cases.
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It is thedistributionof solutions that is ofconcern as the object of study and as a series of elements that support infrastructurein different ways at different moments.
Some parts of the open community have shifted their focus from purely technical solutions to social/cultural/political solutions, especially, with an increasing demand for infrastructure that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive
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always a long-term venture, programs and communities are faced with developingtechnologies that look farther ahead than immediate research concerns.
I would also question this notion.
Capitalism and, espeically, VC based funding models have been increasingly popular for scholarly infrastructure. e.g., Authorea which attracted a big userbase but finally ran out of funding...
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Cyberinfrastructure projects come in many forms but they often seek to bringtogether, under a single umbrella, various domain sciences with novel informationtechnologies.
Recently, scholars from the humanities and social sciences have been increasingly vocal about the fundamentally different requirements for infrastructure in the HSS vs Open Science
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Twomain issues are associated with such projects: first, the idea of a shared infrastruc-ture in the sense of a public good; second, the idea of sustainability, of supportingresearch over the long term.
Open Science and scholarly communication/infrastructure folks have started to exactly address these two issues. I am mostly observing conversations centered around funding, policy, and education.
Quite excited to see this observation from a "theoretical" perspective
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n addition our image would be incomplete without the variety ofscientific organizations, such as funding agencies, professional societies, librariesand databases, scientific publishing houses, review systems, and so on, that areinherent to the functioning of science
In my case, I would really love to focus on the new alternative forms of scholarly communication.
micro-blogging, open peer review, preprints, Sci-Hub, ...
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undervalued or invisible workers
the neoliberal academy; precarity of labour, increasing short-termness of any employment before tenure track and, additionally, the reduction of tenure track positions
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nfrastructure typically existsin the background, it is invisible, and it is frequently taken for grante
It's intriguing to consider the traditional makeup of scholarly publication formats which is centered around paywalls. Far from invisible...
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- Nov 2018
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generousthinking.hcommons.org generousthinking.hcommons.org
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But this labor too often remains invisible. As Martin Eve has pointed out, in the academic environment, labor that we consider professional is credited, and so “[i]f we are to accurately appraise the labours that we claim to value and want to continue in any open-access environment, then we need to give credit where it is due.” We also need to understand that labor as professional and compensate it accordingly.
<3
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Increasing the discoverability of scholarly work online,
incredibly important and, imo, often ignored aspect of modern scholarship. discoverability of research.
the amount of formally published (and increasingly work in progress) research is growing already. One of the reasons why we have gone down the path of citations, IFs, and h-indices is that we need to somehow sift through that research in efficient ways.
How can we discover relevant research without reproducing the problems the current system?
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that education is a private responsibility rather than a public good
this is important. private responsibility in a system that is full of dependencies, inequalities, and biases is a dangerous myth (of course this needs to be further qualified... not trying to dismiss the notion of responisibilty as a whole :D)
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generousthinking.hcommons.org generousthinking.hcommons.org
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In other words, we need to think not just about the public’s potential consumption of the work that is done by the university, but also about potential new modes of co-production that involve the surrounding communities in the work of the university.
I have been recently wondering if these issues are also technological ones or if that is a mistake that simply keeps us reproducing the same inequalities and problems of current solutions.
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as they did in the early 2000s; instead, we need to be deliberate in reaching out to potential readers and participants where they are, finding ways to draw them, and ourselves, back into sustained conversation
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The events of the last few years, from GamerGate to the 2016 presidential campaign and beyond, have made the risks of opening one’s work up online all too palpable.
Even more reason to actively reward and incentivize working in the open rather than the opposite or simply treating it as a nice extra.
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my first real online colleagues, and we remain connected today
Have always been fascinated with the often surprising depth and longevity of online friendships. Especially fascinating when these are friendships are fully based on pseudonyms, e.g., online gaming or a on forums.
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robinderosa.net robinderosa.net
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openly share our courses
would be interesting to hear more about this in the context of the established model of most MOOCs which is providing the content but charging for certification
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public marketplace of ideas
I wonder if that marketplace refers to the barter of ideas...
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deemphasizes the transmission of static disciplinary content with its limited shelf life, and instead develops scholarly and applied communities of practice
grounding learning in community and practice rather than static snapshots of a (probably biased) view of the world at a time.
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Open Pedagogy
not very often talked about in comparison to the other Open * but very much feels like a fundamental goal/method/requirement for many of the other movements
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journals.plos.org journals.plos.org
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a lower scientific impact.
what is "scientific impact"?
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the shift from print to electronic publishing.
It is quite fascinating to compare other publishing industries and their struggles with the digital revolution. The music and film industry have been vastly impacted by the availability of illegal streaming services and piracy. At the same time, academic publishers are only recently facing developments such as a demand for Open Access or piracy (i.e., Sci-Hub)
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while the humanities have remained relatively independent (20% from top five publishers)
Since learning about the publishing landscape I have been fascinated with the particular status of the humanities.
English is less dominant, monographs rather articles, in general slower. While they face their own certain challenges, I've often wondered if there's other things that the sciences could learn.
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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Latour believes that if scientists were transparent about how science really functions — as a process in which people, politics, institutions, peer review and so forth all play their parts — they would be in a stronger position to convince people of their claims.
Science and scholarship need to be more transparent concerning their flaws
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eprints.rclis.org eprints.rclis.org
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This fact is often overlooked because the rankings of journals are taken to be objective facts and not peculiar forms of metrics.
I assume that confirmation bias plays a big role in this...
Luckily, there are many different rankings and ways of breaking down, e.g., "the best university". This way everyone can find their favourite ranking. It is just fascinating that rankings dominate our everyday life even though, imo, everyone knows how subjective (in the sense that you can select arbitrarily) those are
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very long tail of ‘good’ scientists
It would interesting to read some empirical research about the long tail of "good" scientists to support that idea that science needs that long tail.
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Designed to understand the communication networks of science, and to help interdisciplinary heuristics, they were not meant to measure quality.
concise summary of the problem. I like.
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quest for excellence
"Excellence is bullshit" by Cameron Neylon
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stacks.stanford.edu stacks.stanford.edu
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serendipitous discover
shameless plug for a project that I am a part of:
Open Knowledge Maps is a visual academic search engine that tries to extract topics and relevant clusters for a search term.
Example map for "open access"
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evel of public use by individuals accessingfor personal interest and gain,
nitpicking, but similar to Haustein's levels of engagement, imo, it's important to be clear about the meaning of "use". Clicking on a link vs downloading vs reading vs applying etc... This is very challenging for empirical research, but I believe that the differentiation is important
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need to be translated for lay audiencesor presented in other venues for it to reach beyond the walls
echoing this comment just a few lines above:
It would be very interesting to find out more about the use rather than the simple access and reach, as availability does not imply accessibility
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- Oct 2018
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www.epa.gov www.epa.gov
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Enable the use of citizen science data at the Agency
A cultural change of accepting and embracing data provided by non-academics
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Invest in citizen science for communities, partners and the Agency
Investing in infrastructure is incredibly important. This is true for traditional science and academia, but I assume even more so for citizen science
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- Sep 2018
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www.scholcommlab.ca www.scholcommlab.ca
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I wonder how one could investigate when these incentive structures and established mechanism of "traditional research" start to have their effect on researchers and scholars. While RPT is definitely a very obvious and impactful influence on academics, a lot of academics might never get to the point of having to deal with RPT, while I am sure that the incentives described in the study are still prevalent before RPT
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Such a change is supported by the first of the principles in the Leiden Manifesto that reminds us that “quantitative evaluation should support qualitative, expert assessment,”not supplant i
<3
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pen access was not mentioned at all in Bacc-type institutions
I am not really surprised by that. I am still puzzled by the very extreme distinction between undergrads and grad students. There is, obviously, a difference in the goals and future career path of someone who pursues a graduate degree. But shouldn't the underlying values and practices ideally still be the same?
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engaged by diverse audiences without specializedtraining)
I love the example of CERN publishing most (if not all) of their datasets. It is funny that even most trained experts wouldn't be able to process and explore these massive datasets, because they would lack the infrastructure and facilities to do so. would that justify hogging the data?
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“Research and Scholarly activities may include traditional research with traditional dissemination venues and publicly engaged academic work that creates knowledge about, for,and with diverse publics and communities with traditional and non-traditional dissemination venues.”
this just sounds terrible to me... can't help it
the traditional mode of research which is even defined as inherently exclusive while also approving of that new thing with the public.
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“growing pressures for audit and evaluation of public spending on higher education and research”
reminds me of Goodhart's law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." (thank you wiki)
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even at private institutions(NSF, 2016
this is very good to know. not trying to dismiss the argument of people who argue against Open Access and similar movements, but it's important to state that even private institutions are supported by the public
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an undervalued aspect of academic careers
I recently talked about the gap between the possibility of TAing and then finding a more "stable" teaching position. Maybe I don't fully understand the system (also hoping that someone can help me here), but it seemed like a very extreme jump from being a TA to teaching a class.
Is there any way to teach (without a second job because a TA position probably won't cut it for long) while working on the academic career?
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www.scholcommlab.ca www.scholcommlab.ca
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One ofthe defining claims for scientific knowledge is its objectivity,and freedom from distorting factors that may alter the waythat the object of study is detected, measured and reported.
Can science ever be free of distorting factors? Science needs to be funded, funders are usually driven by (political) agendas, every individual scientist is a political individual, etc...
Not trying to make a relativist point here, but simply questioning the notion that science needs to be "free of distortion". I think that, realistically, we could aim for "transparent in the distorting factors".
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These are the nature of evidence itself; thenormative, moral or ethical ‘politics’ of policy-making; and the operation of power in thepolicy process.
wow. sounds like a very challenging (but hopefully fruitful) undertaking
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paulcairney.wordpress.com paulcairney.wordpress.comEBPM1
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but that scientists will maintain an often-useful image of objectivity
I actually dislike this notion... (1) it reminds me of scientism and (2) I believe that this reliance on images and preaching of objectivity leads to some of the problems around mistrust (climate deniers, anti-vaxxers, and other proactively counter-scientific movements).
Instead of relying on the narrative of the research often it is demanded that the public blindly trusts scientists based on their 'objectivity'.
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inst-fs-iad-prod.inscloudgate.net inst-fs-iad-prod.inscloudgate.net
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tentative and exploratory philosophical analysis
my favourite kind of analysis!
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- Jun 2016
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www.jacobinmag.com www.jacobinmag.com
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smartphones and streaming movies; driverless cars and social media; Jumbotron screens at football games and video games connecting thousands of players around the world; every conceivable consumer product available on the Internet for rapid home delivery; astounding increases in the productivity of labor through novel automation technologies; and more.
This reminds me of "One-Dimensional Man", Herbert Marcuse.
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