RE: Flashback to 1971: formalizing informal communication channels

["Pikas, Christina K." <Christina.Pikas@jhuapl.edu>]

I use the Garvey and Griffith model to organize some of my 
thoughts about scholarly communication (and about information 
retrieval in the sciences while functioning as a librarian); but 
their model, just like any other model, makes some important 
simplifications and doesn't fully cover all areas of scholarly 
communication in the sciences.  For example, in CS, conferences 
are frequently more important than journal articles and are the 
final product.

There has been a lot of research looking at the impacts of ICTs 
on informal scholarly communication, including whether or how 
making informal communications accessible - even codifying them 
to an extent - impacts science.  As an example, many hopeful 
articles in the early '90s proposed that this would end 
peripherality and enable researchers in colleges, in less 
developed countries, etc., to participate on an equal footing. 
Not so (of course).  This was a question asked of the science 
bloggers at the session I moderated at ASIST: whether or how 
blogging could enable remote participation in the invisible 
college.

(BTW - G & G led a team at JHU looking at this issue... They are 
just the famous ones on the team...)  The UNISIST model is also 
useful, as is its update by Sondergaard, Andersen & Hjorland 
(2003)

In any case, based on my reading and study of informal scholarly 
communication (most likely to become the area for my 
dissertation), I do not see mandating deposition of manuscripts 
as formalizing the informal. In the scholarly communication 
process, by the time it gets to journal article manuscript stage, 
it has already come a long way from the data and has been 
popularized to an extent for a larger audience.  Yes, it was an 
advantage of membership in the invisible college to get mailed or 
otherwise notified of pre-prints in your area, but I think that 
will still happen prior to depositing the manuscripts.

Ah, my brain is goo from working straight through the weekend - I 
hope this makes sense.

Christina K. Pikas, MLS

(but no doubt answering this e-mail as University of Maryland 
iSchool doctoral student, *not* professional librarian 
representing the place of work indicated in my e-mail address :)

Sondergaard, T. F., Andersen, J., & Hjorland, B. (2003). 
Documents and the communication of scientific and scholarly 
information - revising and updating the UNISIST model. Journal of 
Documentation, 59(3), 278-320.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Toth, Joe
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2008 10:45 PM
To: 'liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu'
Subject: RE: Flashback to 1971: formalizing informal communication
channels

Phil's observation hardly rambles--and departures from the 
pedestrian are prized by a list-lurker like me. My thanks for the 
offering.

Garvey and Griffith offer a sharp reminder of the organizing 
power of a discipline, which is designed to structure 
consideration by vetting observations, assertions, conclusions, 
and other claims to truth in accredited ways: through refereed 
journal publishing; holding conferences and symposia; 
promulgating standards, guidelines and best practices; and so on.

But the more I think of this excerpt, the more it smacks of tory 
history in its willingness to label only as "judicious" a process 
that at times may also be arbitrary, retrograde, or 
discriminatory. Leslie White was right when he said that "science 
is 'sciencing'", and my less than original point is that the 
"institution of science" amounts to a bunch of people engaging in 
a wide variety of practices related to what we might call 
scientific enquiry motivated by desires to solve problems, make 
money, safeguard truth, investigate the unknown, and so forth 
into the sustained and varied drive of the ego. Converting 
informal information into formal knowledge certainly is a long 
process, but in this bazaar of activities, it probably is not as 
judicious as Garvey and Griffith think it is.

And to Phil's question about keeping separate formal and informal 
communication processes, perhaps the issue is more about 
establishing a continuum of work products for practitioners for 
them to ascribe value to what they encounter. I mean, has the 
enterprise of physics or economics been hurt or helped by the 
speedy transmission of informal information through e-mail, 
e-print servers, and institutional repositories? And has the 
presence of both sanctioned/published and unsanctioned/pre-pub 
materials in an IR really begun to dismantle science's walls of 
rigor?

--Joe Toth
Middlebury College

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 9:22 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Flashback to 1971: formalizing informal communication channels

In the early 1970s, the American Psychological Association entrusted two
psychologists, William D. Garvey and Belver C.
Griffith to make sense of the "crisis in scholarly communication."  In
doing so, they embarked on research to first better understand the
communication processes of researchers -- both the *informal* where most
of the communication among peers is done, and the *formal* which
describes the traditional journal and book publication process.

In one of their first published reports [1], the psychologists warn
about formalizing the informal communication channels. They write,

"accelerating the flow of scientific information in the informal domain
and expanding its dissemination is a problem precisely because it occurs
in systems that obscure the boundary between the informal and formal
domains. This boundary is one that science has deliberately erected to
curtail, temporarily, the flow of information until the information has
been examined against the current state of knowledge in a discipline.
Non-scientists view procedure of curtailment as ultra-conservative;
experienced, practicing scientists perceive it as the essential feature
of science....The long judicious procedure by which this conversion is
made is unique to science.
To reorganize it for the sake of speed, or for open communication with
other spheres of intellectual endeavor, would almost certainly dismantle
the institution of science as we know it today." (p.362)

Manuscript depositing mandates (e.g. Harvard, NIH, etc.) could be seen
as essentially formalizing the informal. Most of the discussion
surrounding the debates have been on immediate effects (the time and
resources devoted to archiving, the mechanisms required to streamline
the process). Little has been devoted to possible unintended
consequences of such mandates. Unintended consequences are not
necessarily negative [2], and I don't want to imply that I'm implying an
argument against institutional archiving. Still, is there reason to
argue (like Garvey and
Griffith) that we should strive to keep the informal and formal
communication processes separate?

--Phil Davis

[If these graduate student ramblings are tiresome, I'm happy to return
to more pedestrian dialogs].

[1] Garvey, W. D., & Griffith, B. C. (1971). Scientific
communication: Its role in the conduct of research and creation of
knowledge. American Psychologist, 26(4), 350-362.

[2] Merton, R. K. (1936). The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive
Social Action. American Sociological Review, 1(6), 894-904.