Presentation on the Metrics of Social Scholarship at the Charleston Conference
I was pleased to be invited to join Leigh Dodds, Chief Technology Officer of the scholarly publisher Ingenta, to speak at this year's Charleston Conference later in the week. Our presentation is titled "Authoritative? What's That? And Who Says?" Here is Leigh's description.
Web 2.0 makes it easier for anyone to publish information online, and search engines make content more easily findable. But how do users know what information is authoritative? Do they even understand what "authoritative" means? And who defines that something is "authoritative" in the first place?
In scholarly publishing, the peer review process is an indicator of quality. But as content is increasingly mashed-up, syndicated and blogged in many different locations, how do users differentiate between peer reviewed content, and "user generated content"? And is there a natural progression from the creative chaos of Wikipedia, through the “gentle expert oversight" of Citizendium to, ultimately, the closed rigorous approach of double-blind peer review?
I'm impressed when someone who works in scholarly publishing opens his mind to these issues. These are issues that will change the face of the business in the next 10-15 years - I'm in agreement with Michael Jensen on this point. Not only is Leigh thinking about these things, but he wants to share his ideas with an audience at Charleston. So I'm especially glad to be collaborating with him to give a librarian's perspective on this topic.
I'll be speaking on "The Promise of Authority in Social Scholarship." You can take a look at my PowerPoint slides on SlideShare. SlideShare didn't do a perfect job of reproducing my slides, but it's good enough.
One big advantage of presenting at the Charleston Conference is the opportunity to dialog with scholarly publishers. Publishers make a point of attending the talks. This is something that distinguishes this conference from others at which I've spoken. And this is such an important time for academic librarians and publishers to be talking to each other.
Besides, do I ever love Charleston, the city. It's an architecture-lover's dream.
There's one sour note. I'm disappointed that the South Carolina Democratic party rejected Charleston native Stephen Colbert's bid to be on the presidential primary ballot. But hey, you can't have everything.
Comments
That Wikipedia articles aren't signed (even if there's a list of contributors on the "History" tab) is why English Wikipedia is getting so big on referencing - the page has to stand alone, so references show the reader there's a passing chance the writer's done their homework and so forth.
Posted by: David Gerard | November 12, 2007 02:22 PM