SciELO in Perspective | A comment on “The big idea: should we get rid of the scientific paper?”

[Glenn Hampson]

Forwarding this message from Abel

 

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Abel L Packer <abel....@scielo.org>
Date: Thu, Apr 14, 2022 at 6:37 PM
Subject: Fwd: SciELO in Perspective | A comment on “The big idea: should we get rid of the scientific paper?”
To: <osi20...@googlegroups.com>

 

 

Glenn et al, We are promoting a discussion on Stuart Ritchie's article in THe Guardian "The big idea: should we get rid of the scientific paper?" via SciELO in Perspective blog.

 

I am happy to share the first comment by Adeilton Brandon, Editor-in-chief of Memoria do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Any reaction is welcome and the blog is open to receive new posts commenting the article. All the best. Abel

 

 

 

 

View this email in your browser   A comment on “The big idea: should we get rid of the scientific paper?”     04/14/22 By Adeilton Brandão   In The big idea: should we get rid of the scientific paper?, published on the Guardian, Stuart Ritchie argues for a radical action: scientists should abandon the current format of the scientific paper, which is static and not interactive. Adeilton Brandão, Editor in Chief of Memorias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz and researcher at Fiocruz, comments on the article. … Read More → The post A comment on “The big idea: should we get rid of the scientific paper?” first appeared on SciELO in Perspective.     Latest posts SciELO Books 10 Years: Interview with the Vice-Rector of Culture and Open Science at the University of Coimbra, Delfim Ferreira Leão SciELO Books 10 Years: Interview with the Brazilian Association of University Publishers (ABEU) SciELO Books 10 Years: Interview with OAPEN Foundation director and DOAB Foundation co-director, Niels Stern SciELO Books 10 Years: Interview with the Directors of the Founding Publishers Society has a strong demand for open access science   Share   Tweet   +1   Forward   All the contents on this newsletter, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. You are receiving this e-mail because you previously subscribed to this notification service. / Você está recebendo este e-mail pois se inscreveu neste serviço de notificação. / Está recibiendo este correo electrónico porque se ha suscrito a este servicio de notificación. Scientific Electronic Library Online Rua Dr. Diogo de Faria, 1087 – 9º andar Vila Clementino São Paulo, SP 04037-003 Brazil Add us to your address book unsubscribe from this list  |  update subscription preferences

[Bryan Alexander]

Didn't Cell run an article of the future experiment, a few years back?

This reminds me of some debates over ebooks, which are usually something like a mildly formatted text file or pdf.

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Bryan Alexander

Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education

https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/academia-next
http://futureofeducation.us/

http://forum.futureofeducation.us/ 

http://twitter.com/BryanAlexander  

[David Wojick]

I just submitted the following comment, which is in moderation (even though not particularly moderate):

"I think Ritchie and Brandão are both wrong, ironically for the same reason. Turning articles into complex interactive media would take much more time than articles are worth, or that scientists have. Articles are basically long form announcements. People who then really need to understand what was done communicate with the researchers. 

Moreover, articles are already quite dynamic. They have lots of links and in many journals there are lots of viewing options. They are nothing like static documents. In addition, advanced search technologies, including AI, provide many ways of seeing the article in various community contexts. 

I suggest celebrating the great progress we are making, with much more to come."

End of comment.

David

On Apr 16, 2022, at 11:16 AM, Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org> wrote:



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[Kaveh]

Hi David

I don't think anyone is talking about taking articles (basically narratives of the research) and converting them back into interactive media. They (and I) are saying that the narrative is not the place to start with when communicating research. 

But in my view at least, the narrative is absolutely needed, to tell the story of the research to everyone except those few intimately involved with the research in question. So there might be multiple narratives, therefore even more publications, to tell the story to different people. So we need publishers, and more of them.

Regarding "dynamic" articles, with respect I don't think that a few hyperlinks and having different formats is any cause for us in the publishing world to "celebrate". ;-)

Regards
Kaveh

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/F162DBAD-0FEE-4DF6-BC4C-8885D1640F57%40craigellachie.us.

--

Kaveh Bazargan PhD

Director

River Valley Technologies ● Twitter ● LinkedIn ● ORCID

Accelerating the Communication of Research

[Bryan Alexander]

Having hyperlinks is, alas, an idea far too many people still avoid.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/CAJ2R9piQ8jxwXMe5ym_7fK53yJ0RMjBVZGHdTWwz2e4XS2iiaQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[David Wojick]

There are two issues here, Kaveh, both of which I have done research on. 

1. Replacing the journal article

The present article has three primary components

Here is the problem

Here is what we did

Here is what we found

Proposed replacement raises four questions

What is proposed?

Why?

What is the cognitive cost?

How paid?

The cognitive cost is the extra effort required on the research's part. How paid is what other cognitive activity is cut back? Research? Proposals? Teaching?

Ritchie's proposed replacement looks very demanding. I see no consideration of the cognitive cost. 

What are you proposing? You mention multiple narratives which sounds cognitively expensive. What are the supposed benefits of this extra work? What other activity should be cut back to pay for it?

2. The dynamics of the present system

It is not a few links. In the typical case there are thousands of immediately available links, in several different systems. The exploration potential is huge. I am looking at an article with about 40 references. Each is linked to Google Scholar, so for each reference article you can get all the articles that cite that article, plus the 100 semantically closest articles. So there are over 4,000 links to the immediate field, many more if there are a lot of citing articles. They also include Scopus and PMC links for many references, each with powerful exploration tools.

See https://www.thebreastonline.com/article/S0960-9776(21)00994-2/fulltext#relatedArticles

The topic is online patient educational materials, a major alternative to journal article access.

I did notice an opportunity, which is for the journal to add links to GS, etc., for the article itself when these become available.

In short it is not obvious that articles need revolutionary change.

David

On Apr 17, 2022, at 3:40 AM, Kaveh <ka...@rivervalleytechnologies.com> wrote:



[Kaveh]

Hi David

Thank you for your reply. And sorry if I was terse or rude!! If you have some time to spare, here are two presentations you could listen to in the background, where I explained what I am thinking:

• A short one on micropublishing
• A longer one in 2017

Regards
Kaveh

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/F9B4B9D3-AF8B-4F20-A006-54AC7C5DFE45%40craigellachie.us.

[Joyce Ogburn]

Bryan, can you expand on this? 

Joyce

Joyce L Ogburn 

Professor of Practice

UNC-Chapel Hill

On Apr 17, 2022, at 10:11 AM, Bryan Alexander <bryan.a...@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/CAJNuR2iPsoqDL26bGadQ5g_wHROXPDvS34w1QwSvT7x_Mq1iyw%40mail.gmail.com.

[David Wojick]

Very interesting, Kaveh, but your videos do not address the issues I listed. If you ever do something that does I would love to read it. I much prefer text to video because I like to stop and think, jump around in the ideas, back up, etc. (Actually the ideas necessarily jump around because expressed thought is a tree structure, but I digress.) This sort of complex cognitive interaction is difficult with video.

Note too that there already exist elaborate systems for conveying important scientific findings to lay audiences. The diffusion of scientific knowledge is a complex process, like most diffusion processes. The idea that scientists frequently need to communicate their findings directly with large numbers of non scientists is questionable in my view.

My best wishes,

David

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/CAJ2R9pjWyOAZSQGmKj2xHX-bP7UZgvb8seOQfNjaFBhc-g-vYg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Bryan Alexander]

Joyce, I have in mind how some academics and academically adjacent folks

refuse to hyperlink in their writing.  Sometimes it's due to editorial or software

constraints, but also, I suspect, habit and perhaps confusion.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/CBC538F6-FA5B-4A45-932C-7555B131E515%40craigellachie.us.

[Kaveh]

Hello David

Thanks for the time you took to look at the recordings. Pls see comments below.

On Sun, 17 Apr 2022 at 21:55, David Wojick <dwo...@craigellachie.us> wrote:

Very interesting, Kaveh, but your videos do not address the issues I listed. If you ever do something that does I would love to read it. I much prefer text to video because I like to stop and think, jump around in the ideas, back up, etc. (Actually the ideas necessarily jump around because expressed thought is a tree structure, but I digress.) This sort of complex cognitive interaction is difficult with video.

I understand the limitations of video as opposed to text. I know I have not address some points you made but I was addressing what I saw as the main drawbacks of "papers" or narrative as the definitive mode of communicating research.

 

Note too that there already exist elaborate systems for conveying important scientific findings to lay audiences. The diffusion of scientific knowledge is a complex process, like most diffusion processes. The idea that scientists frequently need to communicate their findings directly with large numbers of non scientists is questionable in my view.

The system I suggested was for disseminating and communicating research among researchers. I see the narrative (or story) as the primary method of conveying to non-specialists.

Regards
Kaveh