Documentary Scholarly Communications in the Perspective of Social Informatics

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Documentary Scholarly Communications in the
Perspective of Social Informatics
Rob Kling SLIS Center for Social
Informatics Indiana University Bloomington,
IN kling_at_indiana.edu www.slis.indiana.edu/kling
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Top Level Overview

• How is Social Informatics (SI) Defined?
• Four Brief Examples of SI Analyses
• How SI Matters

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Social Informatics
Social Informatics is the body of research that
examines the design, uses, and consequences of
information and communication technologies in
ways that take into account their interaction
with institutional and cultural contexts.
Organizational Informatics is SI when major
explanations can be bounded within a one-or a few
organizations.
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Some Topics studied in OI SI

• IT organizational change (worklife,
  communication, structures, power relations)
  (usually OI)
• IT changes in schooling (incl. dist. education)
• Privacy social control via IT
• The dynamics trajectories of IT standards
  governance - such as Internet standards
• Mobilization of support for IT projects (via
  professional reform movements, actor networks,
  etc.)
• IT changing communication patterns (in science,
  scholarship, health care public, sociable
  spaces)
• Household appropriation of IT

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SI Analyses Illustrated in this Talk

• Lotus Notes Use Technological imperatives vs.
  organizational incentives
• Digital Convergence or Not Just a Matter of
  Time?
• The Transformation of E-BioMed to PubMedCentral
• Developmental Trajectories of Scientific
  Communication Systems Technological imperatives
  vs. the political economy of scientific fields
• IT Ontology Socio-technical Interaction Networks
• The social and technical are not readily
  separable in complex IT systems.

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More About Social Informatics

• See the Social Informatics Home page, a resource
  about research, teaching, conferences journals
  at
• http//www.slis.indiana.edu/SI
• "What is Social Informatics and Why Does it
  Matter? D-Lib Magazine January 1999 5(1)
• at http//www.dlib.org80/dlib/january99/kling/01kli
  ng.html

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Technological imperatives vs. organizational
incentives

• The next slide summarizes the case of Lotus Notes
  use in a major consulting firm. While many groups
  might have routinely used Notes to share
  information with others in the firm, the actual
  usage pattern varied. Why? (This case study is
  discussed in detail in "What is Social
  Informatics and Why Does it Matter? D-Lib
  Magazine January 1999 5(1)
• at http//www.dlib.org80/dlib/january99/kling/01kli
  ng.html

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Lotus Notes at Price Waterhouse (1990-91)
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Digital Convergence or Not Just a Matter of
Time?

• How will the structure and use of electronic
  communications forums in scholarly communication
  evolve in the medium-run (10-15 years) at the
  field level?
• Evolutionary Convergence or Heterogeneous
  Development?

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Digital Convergence or Not Just a Matter of
Time?

• The following few slides help to illustrate an
  analysis which appears in Not Just a Matter of
  Time Field Differences in the Shaping of
  Electronic Media in Supporting Scientific
  Communication". To appear in the Journal of the
  American Society for Information Science.
• An electronic copy is available at
  http//www.slis.indiana.edu/SCIT/publications.html

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Convergence

• Regardless of how different research areas move
  into the future (perhaps by some parallel and
  ultimately convergent evolutionary paths), I
  strongly suspect that on the one- to two-decade
  time scale, serious research biologists will also
  have moved to some form of global unified archive
  system, without the current partitioning and
  access restrictions familiar from the paper
  medium, for the simple reason that it is the best
  way to communicate knowledge, and hence to create
  new knowledge.
• Paul Ginsparg, September 1999

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Convergence Assumptions

• Predicated on technological features of various
  electronic media and
• Economic efficiencies enabled by these features
• These efficiencies will eventually compel
  universal adoption
• The only forces opposing them are inertia and the
  vested interests of publishers

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Heterogeneous Development

• Views e-forums as socially shaped
• Social forces matter in determining technology
  adoption, shaping, and use
• Social forces are more stable than mere
  individual preferences

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Heterogeneous Development

• Also views e-forums as socio-technical networks
• Focuses on linkages, resource dependencies, and
  complexities
• Technologies inscribe social relationships
• Access control
• Social protocols
• Resource dependencies
• Social relationships matter

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Examples of E-Forums in Different Fields

• HEP/SPIRES (High-Energy Physics)
• XXX/Arxiv.org (primarily Physics)
• ISWORLD (Information Systems)
• FlyBase (Drosophila Biology)
• Psycoloquy (Cognitive Science)
• NCSTRL (Computer Science)
• Voice of the Shuttle (English)
• PubMedCentral (Biomedicine)

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Key Differences Between E-Forums

• Materials posted before or after peer review
• Centralized vs. distributed maintenance
• Type of material (research papers vs. teaching
  materials vs. professional materials vs. data)
• Degree of curation

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One major model ArXiv.org

• arXiv.org -- an online repository of self-posted
  articles that is inexpensive for authors and
  readers to access is often advanced as a
  universal model for all disciplines. We will
  examine the universality of arXiv.org.

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Formal Topical Groupings of arXiv.org - e-Print
Archive
Astrophysics (astro-ph) Condensed Matter
(cond-mat) General Relativity and Quantum
Cosmology (gr-qc)) High Energy Physics -
Experiment (hep-ex) RK notes 4 areas for HEP
High Energy Physics - Lattice (Guage Theory)
(hep-lat) High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
(hep-ph) High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
Mathematical Physics (math-ph) Nuclear
Experiment (nucl-ex) Nuclear Theory (nucl-th)
Physics (physics) RK notes how much of
physics is in 1 area includes Accelerator
Physics Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics Atomic
Physics Atomic and Molecular Clusters
Biological Physics Chemical Physics
Classical Physics Computational Physics Data
Analysis, Statistics and Probability Fluid
Dynamics GeneralPhysics Geophysics History of
Physics Instrumentation and Detectors
Medical Physics Optics Physics Education
Physics and Society Plasma Physics
Popular Physics Space Physics Quantum Physics
(quant-ph new, recent, abs, find)
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arXiv.org - Mathematics e-Print Archive
Mathematics (math) RK notes that all of math is
1 area vs. 4 for HEP includes Algebraic
Geometry Algebraic Topology Analysis of PDEs
Category Theory Classical Analysis
Combinatorics Complex Variables Differential
Geometry Dynamical Systems Functional Analysis
General Mathematics General Topology Geometric
Topology Group Theory History and Overview
K-Theory and Homology Linear Algebra Logic
Mathematical Physics Metric Geometry Number
Theory Numerical Analysis Operator Algebras
Optimization and Control Probability Theory
Quantum Algebra Representation Theory Rings and
Algebras Scientific Computation Spectral
Theory Symplectic Geometry
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Monthly Submissions to arXiv.orgdefinitely
actively used
Since Aug 1991, total submissions 128,726
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E-BioSci Controversy

• In 1999, Hal Varmus, Director of the (US)
  National Institutes of Health proposed an e-print
  repository of self-posted articles for
  bio-medical sciences. While the orogonal proposal
  was modelled on arxiv.org, the final version --
  PubMedCentral -- was very different (materials
  selected by scientific societies, no unrefereed
  materials). Why wast an arxiv.org approach
  acceptable (or desireable) to the bio-medical
  research communities?

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E-BioMed Proposal (May 5, 1999) Based on
arxiv.org
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Some Info Sources re. E-BioMed Controversy

• Archive Of Comments On E-biomed
• http//www.nih.gov/about/director/ebiomed/comment.
  htm
• Selected Citations Regarding E-biomed (list of
  28 articles in Science, Nature, Wall Street J.,
  Chronicle of Higher Ed, ... Etc.)
• http//www.nih.gov/about/director/ebiomed/ebiomedc
  it.htm

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E-BioMed Comment by Stevan Harnad, University of
Southampton, May 8, 1999
gtE-BIOMED A PROPOSAL FOR ELECTRONIC PUBLICATION
IN THE BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES gt
The full potential of electronic communication
has yet to be realized. The scientific community
has made only sparing use thus far of the
Internet as a means to publish scientific work
and to distribute it widely and without
significant barriers to access.lt This generally
accurate assessment of the current failure to
exploit the full potential of the Internet for
scientific publication has one prominent and
extremely relevant and important exception. It
would be much more accurate as well as helpful
to note this explicitly from the outset, as this
notable exception is very likely to be the model
for all the rest of the disciplines Physics is
the exception (and to some degree, mathematics).
It is now both an empirical and a historical fact
that well over half of the current physics
(journal) literature is freely available online
from the Los Alamos Archive and its 14 mirror
archives worldwide, and is being used by perhaps
50,000 physicists a day. (http//xxx.lanl.gov/cgi
-bin/show_monthly_submissions) It would be
misleading in the extreme to describe this as
"sparing use"! Instead, it should be acknowledged
that this has been a revolutionary change in
Physics, and if there were a way to extend it to
the other sciences (and the other learned
disciplines) then the full potential of
electronic communication WOULD indeed be
realized. I stress this, because to pass over
the revolution in Physics as if it had not
happened is not only to fail to give historical
facts their due, but it is to miss an important
lesson for the rest of the scientific and
scholarly world in general, and the Biomedical
Sciences in particular. http//www.nih.gov/about
/director/ebiomed/com0509.htm
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PubMedCentral Proposal (Aug 30, 1999)
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What can we learn from the E-BioMed Controversy?

• My talk in June, 2000 discussed the controversy
  and the ways that many US scientific societies
  opposed it. This discussion is the focus of a new
  article Rob Kling, Joanna Fortuna, Adam King,
  and Geoffrey McKim. (in press). Virtual
  Publishing, Real Stakes The Transformation of
  E-Biomed into PubMed Central. In Robin Peek
  (Ed.) Scholarly Publishing The Electronic
  Frameworks MIT Press.
• I also discussed the way that The U.S. Dept of
  Energy developed an uncontroversial pre-preprint
  network in 1999/2000 at http//www.osti.gov/prepr
  int/ and the politics of arxiv.org versus The
  Department of Energy's PrePRINT Network. This is
  the subject of 2 new articles.

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The Socio-Technical Chracater of Information
Technologies

• The next part of the talk examines conventional
  technical views of Infotech (as embodied even
  in US Government documents) with a richer
  socio-technical view. An early version of this
  argument appears in A Bit More To It Scientific
  Multiple Media Communication Forums as
  Socio-Technical Interaction Networks. by R.
  Kling, Geoffrey McKim, Joanna Fortuna, and Adam
  King. It is available at
• http//www.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/INF/PR/PR-99-12-16.ht
  ml

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February 8, 1996 CIRCULAR NO. A-130
Revised (Transmittal Memorandum No. 3)
(Accompanying Federal Register Materials - Feb.
1996) MEMORANDUM FOR HEADS OF EXECUTIVE
DEPARTMENTS AND ESTABLISHMENTS SUBJECT
Management of Federal Information Resources
Circular No. A-130 provides uniform
government-wide information resources management
policies as required by the Paperwork Reduction
Act of 1980, as amended by the Paperwork
Reduction Act of 1995, 44 U.S.C. Chapter 35.
This Transmittal Memorandum contains updated
guidance on the "Security of Federal Automated
Information Systems," Appendix III and makes
minor technical revisions to the Circular to
reflect the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995
(P.L. 104-13). The Circular is reprinted in its
entirety for convenience. Alice M.
RivlinDirector Attachment
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The term "information technology" means
the hardware and software operated by a Federal
agency or by a contractor of a Federal agency or
other organization that processes information on
behalf of the Federal government to accomplish a
Federal function, regardless of the technology
involved, whether computers, telecommunications,
or others. It includes automatic data processing
equipment as that term is defined in Section
111(a)(2) of the Federal Property and
Administrative Services Act of 1949. For the
purposes of this Circular, automatic data
processing and telecommunications activities
related to certain critical national security
missions, as defined in 44 U.S.C. 3502(2) and 10
U.S.C. 2315, are excluded.
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IT as a "socio-technical interaction network

• comprised of
• people (computer specialists, managers
• hardware (computer mainframes, workstations,
  peripherals, telecommunications equipment),
• software (operating systems, utilities and
  application programs),
• techniques (procedures, knowhow,
  training/support/help),
• regulatory regimes (legal contracts/social norms)
  and
• data

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A Scientific Journals Production as a
Socio-Technical (Interaction) Network
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An Electronic Journal Embedded in a
Socio-Technical Interaction Network
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How Social Informatics Matters

• The standard Tool Model underestimate the costs
  and complexities of computerization, and
  overestimate the generalizability of IT
  applications from one setting or group of
  individuals to another. -- resulting in loss
  disappointment.
• A major concern of Social Informatics researchers
  is to develop a cumulative body of research that
  will help many people effectively shape IT so
  that they can improve peoples work and lives.
• Such research is trans-technologies and
  trans-institutional i.e., it develops concepts
  and theories that are applicable to understanding
  numerous kinds of ICTs and highly varied social
  settings.
• Better understand new socio-technical phenomena,
  such as the material practices of dot-coms, swift
  trust in virtual teams, .

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Social Informatics Followup

• See the Social Informatics Home page at
  http//www.slis.indiana.edu/SI
• a resource about research, teaching, conferences
  journals

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Scholarly Communication Followup

• Scholarly Communication Information
  Technologies Project at
• http//www.slis.indiana.edu/SCIT