Category: Education and Administration

A World Digital Library Is Coming True!

Robert Darnton has a great essay in The New York Review of Books titled, A World Digital Library Is Coming True! This essay asks about publication and the public interest. He mentions how expensive some journals are getting and how that means that knowledge paid for by the public (through support for research) becomes inaccessible to the very same public which might benefit from the research.

In the US this trend has been counteracted by initiatives to legislate that publicly funded research be made available through some open access venue like PubMed Central. Needless to say lobbyists are fighting such mandates like the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR).

Darnton concludes that “In the long run, journals can be sustained only through a transformation of the economic basis of academic publishing.” He argues for “flipping” the costs and charging processing fees to those who want to publish.

By creating open-access journals, a flipped system directly benefits the public. Anyone can consult the research free of charge online, and libraries are liberated from the spiraling costs of subscriptions. Of course, the publication expenses do not evaporate miraculously, but they are greatly reduced, especially for nonprofit journals, which do not need to satisfy shareholders. The processing fees, which can run to a thousand dollars or more, depending on the complexities of the text and the process of peer review, can be covered in various ways. They are often included in research grants to scientists, and they are increasingly financed by the author’s university or a group of universities.

While I agree on the need to focus on the public good, I worry that “flipping” will limit who gets published. In STEM fields where most research is funded one can build the cost of processing fees into the funding, but in the humanities where much research is not funded, many colleagues will have to pay out of pocket to get published. Darnton mentions how at Harvard (his institution) they have a program that subsidizes processing fees … they would, and therein lies the problem. Those at wealthy institutions will now have an advantage in that they can afford to publish in an environment where publishers need processing fees while those not subsidized (whether private scholars, alternative academics, or instructors) will have to decide if they really can afford to. Creating an economy where it is not the best ideas that get published but those of an elite caste is not a recipe for the public good.

I imagine Darnton recognizes the need for solutions other than processing fees and, in fact, he goes on to talk about the Digital Public Library of America and OpenEdition Books as initiatives that are making monographs available online for free.

I suspect that what will work in the humanities is finding funding for the editorial and publishing functions of journals as a whole rather than individual articles. We have a number of journals in the digital humanities like Digital Humanities Quarterly where the costs of editing and publishing are borne by individuals like Julian Flanders who have made it a labor of love, their universities that support them, and our scholarly association that provides technical support and some funding. DHQ doesn’t charge processing fees which means that all sorts of people who don’t have access to subsidies can be heard. It would be interesting to poll the authors published and see how many have access to processing fee subsidies. It is bad enough that our conferences are expensive to attend, lets not skew the published record.

Which brings me back to the public good. Darnton ends his essay writing about how the DPLA is networking all sorts of collections together. It is not just providing information as a good, but bringing together smaller collections from public libraries and universities. This is one of the possibilities of the internet – that distributed resources can be networked into greater goods rather than having to be centralized. The DPLA doesn’t need to be THE PUBLIC LIBRARY that replaces all libraries the way Amazon is pushing out book stores. The OpenEdition project goes further and offers infrastructure for publishing knowledge to keep costs down for everyone. A combination of centrally supported infrastructure that is used by editors that get local support (and credit) will make more of a difference than processing fees, be more equitable, and do more for public participation, which is a good too.

Research Data Management Week

This week the University of Alberta is running a Research Data Management Week. They have sessions throughout the week. I will be presenting on “Weaving Data Management into Your Research.” The need for discussions around research data management is described on the web page:

New norms and practices are developing around the management of research data. Canada’s research councils are discussing the introduction of data management plans within their application processes. The University of Alberta’s Research Policy now addresses the stewardship of research records, with an emphasis on the long-term preservation of data. An increasing number of scholarly journals are requiring authors to provide access to the data behind their submissions for publication. Data repositories are being established in domains and institutions to support the sharing and preservation of data. The series of talks and workshops that have been organized will help you better prepare for this emerging global research data ecosystem.

The University now has language in the Research Policy that the University will:

Ensure that principles of stewardship are applied to research records, protecting the integrity of the assets.

The Research Records Stewardship Guidance Procedure then identifies concrete responsibilities of researchers.

These policies and the larger issue of information stewardship have become important to infrastructure. See my blog entry about the TC3+ document on Capitalizing on Big Data.

Research Collaborations: Where to start?

Today, I have to say a few words about collaboration at a lunch-time Arts Research Group gathering. I thought I would gather them here:

  • First, collaboration needs to be explicitly discussed to go well. Don’t assume that everyone knows who is doing what or that they share your sense of the goals. Err on the side of saying too much too often.
  • In some cases a formal charter is a good idea. The iterative design of a project charter for interdisciplinary research.
  • One thing you need to work out explicitly is how credit will be apportioned. Discuss it and then follow what you agree to. Always be generous with those with less power than you in the collaboration.
  • Collaborations are not necessarily friendships between like-minded folk. Collaborations often cross disciplines and research practices. Collaborations are often between people with different levels of support, power, and engagement. Try to share support with collaborators (if, for example, you get a grant.) Be ethical in your collaborations with those with less power. Be careful not to ask too much of those not engaged in the whole project.
  • If you want to collaborate with someone ask them. Invite them out for a coffee and explain what you want to do. Try to figure out how this would be useful for them and build that into the collaboration.
  • There are lots of tools you can use for managing communication and collaboration, but none of them are a substitute for regular attention. I frankly find a weekly meeting is the best way to keep things on track.
  • There is lots of advice our there on collaboration and even grants to facilitate developing collaboration. Developing a collaboration takes time, so avail yourself of support to do it.

 

In the Name of Love

From the Jacobin, an article critical of the “Do What You Love” (DWYL) mantra, In the Name of Love. As the MLA wraps up, there have been a lot of articles about adjunct labour in the academy. Graduate students and recent PhDs take on part-time piece work (sessional positions) just to keep alive the dream of a tenure track job. DWYL advice hides the large scale changes that call for political action, not rugged individualism. Who benefits if we all think we are doing what we love? Who is not doing what they love so some of us can?

Finding Life After Academia — and Not Feeling Bad About It

The New York Times has a good story on Finding Life After Academia — and Not Feeling Bad About It. The beginning of the article goes over the usual depressing factoids like

According to a 2011 National Science Foundation survey, 35 percent of doctorate recipients — and 43 percent of those in the humanities — had no commitment for employment at the time of completion. Fewer than half of Ph.D.’s are expected to land tenure-track jobs.

The articles then shifts to moves to try to define careers beyond the tenure track job for Ph.D.’s. For example they mention Katina Rogers Humanities Unbound: Supporting Careers and Scholarship Beyond the Tenure Track (PDF). This report from the Scholarly Communication Institute concludes with,

Equipping graduate students with the skills and literacies needed for 21st century scholarly work—from technical fluency to an understanding of organizational structures—is critical to ensuring continued rigorous and creative research and other work products. Remaining wedded to outmoded systems, including a model of apprenticeship in higher education that reinforces the false assumption that professorship is the only meaningful career for humanities doctoral recipients, does a tremendous disservice to all individuals and organizations that benefit from humanistic perspectives. (p. 21)

The article also mentions a white paper from Stanford on the The Future of the Humanities Ph.D.at Stanford that argues for reduced time to completion and “Redesigning graduate curricula to prepare PhD’s for a diverse array of meaningful, socially productive and personally rewarding careers within and outside the academy.” (p. 1) Finally they mention the Praxis Network which is focused on rethinking graduate training.

Supporting Digital Scholarship

The Tri-Council Agencies (Research councils of Canada) and selected other institutions (going under the rubric TC3+) have released an important Consultation Document titled Capitalizing on Big Data: Toward a Policy Framework for Advancing Digital Scholarship in Canada. You can see a summary blog entry from the CommerceLab, How big data is reshaping the future of digital scholarship in Canada. The document suggest that we have many of the components of a “well-functioning digital infrastructure ecosystem for research and innovation”, but that these are not coordinated and Canada is not keeping up. They propose three initiatives:

  • Establishing a Culture of Stewardship
  • Coordination of Stakeholder Engagement
  • Developing Capacity and Future Funding Parameters

The first initiative is about research data management and something we have been working on the digital humanities for some time. It is great to see a call from our funding agencies.

The end of the Digital Humanities Observatory

As of August 30, 2013 the activities of Digital Humanities Observatory have ceased.

I just got an email today announcing the end of the Digital Humanities Observatory of Ireland. The DHO Home Page has the same text. As I was on the external board for a few years I’m sorry to see this neat Observatory end. (No more two day trips to Ireland in December.) Like many units set up with grant funding it was probably inevitable, but it is still a shame, especially since they were running useful infrastructure for the discovery of Irish projects, DHO:discovery and DHO:DRAPIer.

Others have noted the importance of learning from endings in a field where we make a lot of noise when starting things. Honest appraisals of why things ended are few and far between. This summer I heard Quinn Dombrowski talk about “What ever happened to Project Bamboo?” at DH 2013. (You can see my conference notes on DH 2013 and her talk here.) What can be learned from the spectacular rise and now closing of the DHO? Here are some lessons:

  • Anything funded by a time-limited grant as the DHO was is bound to run out of money. Units on soft money can survive over time, but they have to find new revenue streams.
  • Grant funded units that build things (like DHO:Discover and DRAPIer) that are meant to be useful over the long term should build succession planning into their development. Don’t count on getting more money just because you built something neat. There is a neat paper waiting to be written about how one can build for succession or hand-off.
  • Give yourself time at the end to properly archive what you have done. Make sure that the useful knowledge gathered is saved and accessible.
  • Tell people that the project is over, as the DHO has done. Don’t just close the site – put an announcement up.
  • Write an obituary, if you can, so that others can learn from the project.
  • Grieve don’t hide. We often want to slink away when something closes, but we should be allowed to grieve the passing of centres, projects and so on. I’m sad that the DHO is closed, even though I was only looking in from the outside.

The full text of the message continues:

Over the past five years, the Digital Humanities Observatory (http://dho.ie) has been a crucial component of the Humanities Serving Irish Society initiative funded under PRTLI 4. The DHO has carried out an extensive programme of lectures, workshops, summer schools, symposia and public lectures. These have been eagerly received and we have hopefully contributed to raising the level of digital humanities scholarship amongst Irish scholars, enhancing skills and reputations not just in Ireland, but also in Europe and around the world. We have developed and deployed creative, and innovative digital platforms such as DHO:Discovery (http://discovery.dho.ie) and DHO:DRAPIer (http://dho.ie/drapier) that have embraced the needs of HSIS scholars and established a strong and respected Irish position in the Digital Humanities leading to Irish participation in exciting new European initiatives such as DARIAH. In an effort to explore the possibilities of Digital Humanities online, and in collaboration with our HSIS partners, we have also built many cutting-edge digital editions and catalogues such as Saint Patrick’s Confessio Hyperstack (http://www.confessio.ie/), the Doegen Records Web Archive (http://dho.ie/doegen/) and Reading East (http://www.ucd.ie/readingeast/).

In the immediate term the assets of the DHO will be maintained directly by the RIA. Please use the contact form (http://dho.ie/contact) should you need to be in touch with the those maintaining the DHO assets.

Strong Irish engagement and participation in European projects is one of the many testaments to the success of the DHO and of the HSIS consortium. In the future the newly formed Irish Humanities Alliance (https://www.ria.ie/about/our-work/policy/irish-humanities-alliance.aspx) will be fulfilling a role of humanities advocacy on behalf of Irish higher education institutions. The investment in HSIS and the DHO has put Irish humanities scholars in a solid position to continue to grow this valuable community and allow it to flourish in the future.

CIFAR: Do you have a question?

Back in the Spring I blogged about how CIFAR was launching a new programme that might be open to humanists called, Do you have a question with the potential to change the world?. CIFAR doesn’t have much of a track record supporting arts or humanities research as their own reports note. An open call for questions would surely attract some questions that humanists would recognize. Alas, no.

Despite getting 280 Letters of Interest not one of the seven selected comes from the arts, humanities or social sciences. The closest is the Brain, Mind, and Consciousness project which is based in neuroscience and will apparently involve philosophers and ethicists. Here is the list of the seven selected for the next round:

  • Biology, Energy, and Technology
  • BrainLight: Cracking the Sensory Code
  • Brain, Mind, and Consciousness
  • Life in a Changing Ocean: New Perspectives on Marine Functions and Services
  • Making a Molecular Map of the Cell: Towards a Direct Determination of the Structure-Function Correlation of Biological Systems
  • Microbes and Humans
  • The Planetary Biodiversity Project

It is time to ask the question, Why doesn’t CIFAR support the arts and humanities? (In previous programmes they have supported the social sciences.) It is unbelievable that they did not get interesting questions from the humanities. Either no one bothered to submit an interesting question (which I happen to know is not true) or they aren’t interested in the questions we ask. Here are some of the some of the possible explanations I can think of for CIFAR’s ignorance:

  •  None of the 280 LOIs were of the quality of the seven selected.
  • The panel was composed primarily of scientists and engineers. The one humanist was Pauline Yu.
  • The type of questions they were looking for were not the sort we ask in the humanities. They were looking for questions that could be answered with a bit of money rather than the questions we deal with that may never be answered.
  • Their idea of “questions with the potential to change the world” does not include questions about government, race, democracy, culture, art, education or literature.
  • This programme wasn’t really intended as a way to bring in new areas of research as I was told when I asked about the dearth of humanities support.

I think it is time CIFAR be honest with the larger community and admit that they are focusing on support for research in Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine with some forays into the Social Sciences. No one would blame them for focusing their support. Deep in their reports they admit that “the growth of its programs in the social sciences and humanities has not kept pace with growth in the natural sciences” (Final Report CIFAR Performance Audit and Evaluation) though I frankly don’t see any growth at all.

Lessons Learned from Vanderbilt’s First MOOCs

Derek Bruff of the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt has posted a nice essay on the Lessons Learned from Vanderbilt’s First MOOCs. They have run three MOOCs starting with one on Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture for Concurrent and Networked Software. With this one they found only 7% were awarded some sort of statement of accomplishment (which is a measure of how many finished the course in some fashion.) They had better luck with the next two MOOCs on leadership and nutrition.

The essay then discusses a number of lessons learned (which I quote):

  • Teaching online is a team effort
  • There’s more to MOOCs than lecture videos
  • Open content is our friend
  • The cognitive diversity seen in MOOCs is far greater than in closed courses
  • MOOC students are well-motivated students
  • Cognitive Diversity + Intrinsic Motivations = Crowdsourcing Success
  • Accommodating students on different time tables can be challenging
  • Instructor presence is important

They have a MOOC coming up on Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative which I think I’m going to take. This raises the question of how many students of MOOCs are other pros wondering how MOOCs work.