Re: Blog vs. Peer Review Final Report: Lessons Learned

[richards1000@comcast.net]

I agree with Dr. Watkinson respecting changes in scholarly 
workflow.  I think that one significant change in scholarly work 
flow is the dissemination of scholarly ideas and resources 
through informal genres such as preprints and preprint services 
(such as RePEc), microblogs (like Twitter), blogs, listservs, 
social network tools like Mendeley, certain datasets, and 
podcasts, which allow for informal peer review and peer 
commentary throughout the entire lifecycle of a scholarly 
project.  Often these communications express scholarly ideas at a 
much earlier stage in the scholarly work process than previously 
enabled by colloquia and conference papers.  Further, because the 
audience for these new media is much greater than the audience 
for traditional media, scholars using the new media can receive 
much more input much earlier in the scholarly process.  The new 
media thus enable the integration of "crowdsourcing" into the 
scholarly process in many disciplines.  Relatedly, the new media 
and communications networks make possible long-distance 
collaboration as never before, and permit an in-progress 
scholarly project to incorporate new ideas and new personnel 
(e.g., to morph from a one-person, two-concept, 
single-disciplinary project, to a four-person, seven-concept, 
multi-disciplinary project) in a very short time, again in a 
manner not possible using traditional media.

Moreover, often the dissemination of ideas in these new media 
becomes an end in itself: for example, many an influential 
scholarly blog post never leads to a formally published scholarly 
work.  Finally, in recognition of the scholarly value of these 
informal new media communications, there are efforts in many 
disciplines to grant faculty credit towards tenure or post-tenure 
review for work disseminated via these new media.

For perspectives from the legal community, see, e.g., Jan Ryan 
Novak & Leslie A. Pardo, The Evolving Nature of Faculty 
Publications, 26 LEGAL REFERENCE SERVICES Q. 209 (2007) 
(Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Research Paper No. 07-134) 
(Feb. 2007), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=961879 ; Jack 
M. Balkin, Online Legal Scholarship: The Medium and the Message, 
116 Yale L. J. Pocket Part 20 (2006), available at 
http://www.thepocketpart.org/2006/09/06/balkin.html ; Lawrence B. 
Solum, Download It While It's Hot: Open Access and Legal 
Scholarship, 10 LEWIS & CLARK L. REV. 841, 860-61 (2006), also 
available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=957237 ; Symposium on Legal 
Blogs, 84 WASH. U.L. REV. No. 2 (2006), also available at 
http://lawreview.wustl.edu/inprint/84-5/ .

In addition, two very interesting articles on legal scholarship 
and new media, one of them recently published: Stephanie L. 
Plotin, Legal Scholarship, Electronic Publishing, and Open 
Access: Transformation or Steadfast Stagnation?, 101 LAW LIBR. J. 
31 (2009), also available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1350138 ; 
J. Robert Brown, Jr., Blogs, Law School Rankings, and "The Race 
to the Bottom" (Univ. of Denver Sturm Coll. of Law Legal Research 
Paper Series No. 07-33, 2007), available at 
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1003425


Robert C. Richards, Jr., J.D., M.S.L.I.S., M.A.
Law Librarian & Legal Information Consultant
Philadelphia, PA
richards1000@comcast.net

----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Krichel" <krichel@openlib.org>
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Friday, May 22, 2009 10:26:31 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada 
Eastern
Subject: Re: Blog vs. Peer Review Final Report: Lessons Learned

Anthony Watkinson writes

> We are concerned with examining the odd fact that the traditional
> form of formal scholarly communications (monographs and in
> particular and mainly journal articles) are still much the same in
> spite of significant changes in scholarly work flows.

Are there significant changes? From the academics' point of view
they are still producing "papers" for print media, aren't they?

Cheers,

Thomas Krichel