I was very flattered to receive the offer to blog here, but I didn't accept immediately. On the positive side, I wanted to be able to communicate with scientists, particularly science bloggers. I study how scientists can use new communication tools and this sort of makes me a participant-observer.  I also wanted to be in a group - it's nice to be part of something, particularly something as cool as ScienceBlogs.  I was worried, however, about any conflicts that might arise and if some anti-scibling scientists would *not* talk to me or would treat me differently because I was on the network. I was also worried about feeling pressure to do the shenanigans necessary to get a ton of traffic.

Those negative things never happened. Everyone's been very welcoming - particularly the people who have left :(

Unfortunately, members of the Society of Scholarly Publishing and other people have used my SciBling status, and the fact that it's a for-profit company and I could be getting paid, to dismiss my words - both at in-person conferences and online. The vendors I work with in the information industry listen to these guys over me. Even if they are completely wrong.

But I've been shrugging that off for a while - anyone who has asked a scibling knows we have complete editorial control. If you look at my old posts on Blogger and this year's here, you'll see that they're basically the same.

The real thing is that I would like the community with a little less dysfunction and without being connected to a for-profit company. I'd like to be in a co-operative in which the members work together to resolve any differences. This is why I've moved to Scientopia. I hope you'll follow me there.

Once again, I want to thank all of the great people at Seed. Thank you for having me, I've had a good time. Thank you all for welcoming librarians here - that includes the readers as well as the other bloggers. I wish ScienceBlogs the best - I think these tough times will leave the core group stronger and will bring about some much needed changes going forward.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

APS ONLINE JOURNALS AVAILABLE FREE IN U.S. PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Ridge, NY, 28 July 2010: The American Physical Society (APS) announces a new public access initiative that will give readers and researchers in public libraries in the United States full use of all online APS journals, from the most recent articles back to the first issue in 1893, a collection including over 400,000 scientific research papers. APS will provide this access at no cost to participating public libraries, as a contribution to public engagement with the ongoing development of scientific understanding.

APS Publisher Joseph Serene observed that "public libraries have long played a central role in our country's intellectual life, and we hope that through this initiative they will become an important avenue for the general public to reach our research journals, which until now have been available only through the subscriptions at research institutions that currently cover the significant costs of peer review and online
publication."

Librarians can obtain access by accepting a simple online site license and providing valid IP addresses of public-use computers in their libraries (http://librarians.aps.org/account/public_access_new). The license requires that public library users must be in the library when they read the APS journals or download articles. Initially the program will be offered to U.S. public libraries, but it may include additional countries in the future.

"The Public Library program is entirely consistent with the APS objective to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics," said Gene Sprouse, APS Editor in Chief. "Our goal is to provide access to everyone who wants and needs our journals and this shift in policy represents the first of several steps the APS is taking towards that goal."

--Contact: Amy Halsted, Special Assistant to the Editor in Chief, halsted@aps.org, 631-591-4232

--About the APS: The American Physical Society is the world's largest professional body of physicists, representing close to 48,000 physicists in academia and industry worldwide. It has offices in Ridge, NY; Washington, DC; and College Park, MD. For more information:
www.aps.org.

He was also my husband's uncle. I only found two of his images online, the remainder are photographs of prints we have on our walls - intentionally poor quality for those. He was a member of the Lyme Art Association, so there may be more information on their site.

 The Courant (Hartford, CT) had this bit about him announcing a showing:

The LAA Elected Artist first studied art in Hanover, Germany, while in the Lysenko refugee camp from 1945 to 1949 with Ivan Kubarsky (Armashevsky), Vasyl Perebyinis, Volodymyr Balas, Anatol Jabonsky and others. In 1949, Pater immigrated to the United States. From 1957 to 1959, he studied art at the American Academy of Art in Chicago. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, R.I., from 1960 to 1962.

Rest in peace.

Update: I maybe should also mention that he was an engineer before he retired

Recent studies do show that scientists often don't mind talking to reporters and do so more frequently that one might think [1-2]. They do get kind of frustrated that their work is misrepresented - even if that misrepresentation is failing to include qualifying statements.  Newspapers in general covered a lot more science over time (as studied in the time period 1951-1971, I know). Fancy journals that issue press releases for papers find that those papers are more likely to be reported in the news media. The authors cite another study that some 84% of the newspaper stories originated from press releases.

This study was just about how much makes it to the media and is that percentage staying steady as the number of papers increases. When they actually did the work, they only looked at parts of 2 years, 1990 and 2001, and two media outlets, Time and NBC News. They didn't use the WaPo or NYT because better educated people read them (???). Plus, they found that only 25-50% of news pieces actually mention the article's author and venue, so they probably missed a ton.

So this is quite disappointing, really. The study narrowed the coverage of the search so much, that I don't think it's really representative of anything. Of course only a few articles get discussed in the media, but if you want numbers, this paper won't help. These articles also need to start discussing things like Nova and National Geographic and Discovery Channel. We watch that stuff all the time and so do a lot of people we know (of course I'm pretty well educated, I guess).

They mention journal press releases, but for big science there are also lab press releases and media officers. There are also scientists talking directly to the public on blogs.

One thing you can probably take away, if you work outside of biomed and/or are not publishing in Science or Nature and have a really cool result, don't wait for the press to come a knockin' - get it out there another way.

Here's the citation:

Suleski, J., & Ibaraki, M. (2010). Scientists are talking, but mostly to each other: a quantitative analysis of research represented in mass media Public Understanding of Science, 19 (1), 115-125 DOI: 10.1177/0963662508096776

[1] Peters, H. P., Brossard, D., de Cheveigne, S., Dunwoody, S., Kallfass, M., Miller, S., & Tsuchida, S. (2008). Science-Media Interface: It's Time to Reconsider. Science Communication, 30(2), 266-276. doi:10.1177/1075547008324809

[2] Dunwoody, S., Brossard, D., & Dudo, A. (2009). Socialization or rewards? Predicting U.S. scientist-media interactions. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 86(2), 299-314. Retrieved from http://aejmc.org/topics/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/3-Dunwoody-et-al.pdf

The data I needed were not the focus of the paper - they were there sort of as a calibration or reference type thingy - to show what the setup would do with no alcohol. So it's absolutely right that the document wouldn't have come up in my search, because technically the article didn't match. That's why the full text search worked.

It could be that I could locate the info using SpringerImages (but it's an ACS article) or using CSA's deep indexing (is illustrata still around? I did try Aerospace & High Tech).  Lesson learned.

The twitter tag is #sigir2010 and there’s some bloggy coverage. (heh, today’s keynote – is the Cranfield paradigm outdated – um, yes, if it was ever dated!). Danield Tunkelang is blogging (I think he’s at Google now).  A search on Google blog search yields a few more.

Kim, J. (2010). Faculty self-archiving: Motivations and barriers Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology DOI: 10.1002/asi.21336

The author went through a complicated process to identify 1,500 faculty members at 17 research institutions with DSpace IRs (not immediately clear why only DSpace IRs). The faculty members were at all levels (associate, assistant, full) and from several areas of science (includes math), several areas of engineering (includes CS, hm), several areas of social science, and several areas of the humanities. Some had items in their IR and some didn't. There was a web-based survey and with a 45% response rate (sounds good, but the author mailed the people and e-mailed them a bunch of times, so she worked for it).  The survey is included in the appendix. It has a bunch of likert scale questions, some yes/no, some multiple choice, and some open questions. Forty-one telephone interviews were done with survey respondents to get more in-depth information.

So what did she find?

• Altruism - but this isn't exactly what you think. It's more like generalized reciprocity combined with quid pro quo combined with access for those in less developed countries.
• Coming from a self-archiving culture. Some actually mentioned peer pressure - if it weren't expected of them, they wouldn't do it.
• Copyright concerns. Some don't self archive because they believe they don't have the right. The nice part is that at least a few knew that they could amend the publication agreement. This sort of counteracts the idea that faculty don't know about or get copyright. These folks were pretty clear on it.
• Technical skills and age. Younger and those who rated their technical skills more highly were more likely to self archive.
• Impact on tenure or promotion. They all seemed to think there would be a positive or no impact on promotion and tenure.
• Time and effort. It's too much of a PITA for its priority.

Applications/implications for librarians: If concern about copyright is preventing a lot of self-archiving, then there's real education that can be done. Also - the fact that it's a hassle. If they can populate their website by using a badge or widget from the IR, that would make things easier, eh?

A couple of trivial things about the article: it seems really redundant - it repeats itself a lot. Some good editing would make it a bunch tighter. It has a great reference list - this might be a useful collection for anyone writing or presenting on the topic.

What we can expect from this is that those other databases will no longer be available on multiple platforms. Folks who aren't librarians might not know that there are database producers and then those who sell the interfaces. The producer gets the articles and then has humans read them and assign terms from controlled vocabularies ( or has machines do the same). In the past, you could pick both - there might be two or three, say, kinesiology databases, and these might each be available on 3-4 platforms. The platforms were like DIALOG, FirstSearch, Ovid (SP and others), EbscoHost, Illumina (from CSA), Web of Knowledge, and maybe some others. 

There would also be a couple different research databases on the same subject, so you could get the one with the best coverage, the best indexing, and the get it on the platform that worked the best. Ebsco has been pulling the things they've purchased from other platforms, first of all. Second, they are buying multiple databases covering the same area, so there's some thought that these will probably be combined at some point. So we're left with one database on one platform. Ebsco host seems to be doing *all* the buying - so if we can't get along with them, then we're screwed. If they want to jack their prices up. Well guess.

Ben Wagner maintains and others ask if this is a death spiral for Abstracting & Indexing services. We *know* that these tools are necessary for a thorough search of the literature - Google is ok for a few good items, but you can't be comprehensive with it.

Or, is this a necessary down-select to separate the strong from the weak? Will the few that make it through this be enough and will this enable them to consolidate and persevere?

Proctor,R., Williams,R. & Stewart, J. (2010). If you build it, will they come? How researchers perceive and use web 2.0. London: Research Information Network. Retrieved July 6, 2010 from http://www.rin.ac.uk/system/files/attachments/web_2.0_screen.pdf

It often seems like people are very negative about the adoption of web 2.0 stuff in science; that is, when they're not hyping it way out of proportion. This report seems carefully written and overall quite positive. They did surveys (n=1308), interviews (n=56, stratified sample), and case studies of selected web 2.0 tools (n=5) - so lots of data.

Some background definitions. They include formal and informal scholarly communication as part of scholarly communication and they also add in coordination-type communication as well as popularizations. In other words, anything a "scholar" might communicate.  They also define web 2.0 more broadly. It's not just the technologies that enable the sharing of user-generated content, but the practices surrounding the use of these technologies.

About an eighth of their sample were frequent users of at least one of the technologies (13%). Almost half were occasional users (45%). It wasn't the youngest who were most likely - probably, as many people have mentioned - because more junior researchers have to play by the rules to graduate, get a job, and then get tenure. For blogging, a combined 16% write a blog occasionally or frequently and 23% comment on blogs either occasionally or frequently. With the fact that the arts and humanities had fewer frequent users, they were more likely to maintain blogs.

The researchers asked about encouragement and of course the institutional part is high, but the impact of library & information services as well as conference organizers is notable.

One frustrating thing about this report is in the section on dissemination choices for scholarly content. Why oh why are "online subscription journals" different from "print-based subscription journals"?  What's the difference? Why are "open-access, online-only journals" listed separately? ergh.

As far as reasons why not, some were too busy, some were worried about how they would be valued.

There's a small piece on open science, but not too much.

As for information seeking - blogs really aren't the first place people go, but they're not last. That's open notebooks (to be fair, if there are so few, then they really can't answer all that many questions, even if they are wonderful).

The participants found these tools useful for filtering, meeting new people, the speed of communication.

The proliferation of resources make it difficult for newbies to get started. There needs to be more support and encouragement locally as well as technical support. Attribution and credit need to be worked out. All this without disturbing the traditional ecosystem.

All in all a useful report and worth a read.

Zuckerman, H., & Merton, R. K. (1971). Patterns of Evaluation in Science: Institutionalization, Structure and Functions of the Referee System. Minerva, 9(1), 66-100. (I believe this might be in JSTOR if you're at an academic institution, but it's also reprinted in Merton, R. K. (1973). The sociology of science: theoretical and empirical investigations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Find in a library.)

Table 1 (p 471 in the book)

Rates of Rejecting Manuscripts for Publication in Scientific and Humanistic Journals, 1967

from page 472

The pattern of differences between fields and within fields can be described in the same rule of thumb: the more humanistically oriented the journal, the higher the rate of rejecting manuscripts for publication; the more experimentally and observationally oriented, with an emphasis on rigor of observation and analysis, the lower the rate of rejection.

These variations in the institutional behavior of learned journals may in part reflect differences in the extent of agreement on standards of scholarship in the various disciplines.

So what explains the high rejection rates of the mega glamour mags? Obviously requires more analysis, but they're more about attention than communicating within a particular community so they work differently. You might say that it's appropriate to compare PLOSone with a mega glamour mag, but clearly based on the stated editorial philosophy, that's not the way it is envisioned or how it's actually being run.  There's a lot more in the Zuckerman and Merton piece on this, but I'm supposed to be writing my proposal... so you'll have to read it yourself.

Oh, and yes 1967 was a long time ago, but I think this still holds.

How do zombies seek and use information?  What are their information needs?

Their information needs primarily consist of finding brains. They pretty much search by geographic proximity and pattern matching. The type of browsing they do doesn't seem to be well supported by information systems.

How should a reference interview with a Zombie go?  No studies have been published on walk-up reference, but there are some ideas on doing phone or virtual reference. The zombies aren't really good with a mouse, so in virtual reference it's best to send images. In telephone reference, screaming doesn't seem to help, just repeat back their question and then slowly repeat the instructions on how to locate brains.

Other Zombie information you might find useful:

• A bibliography of zombie lit from Jeanne Bogino
• University of Florida's Zombie survival LibGuide
• If your computer has become a zombie (part of a botnet), this might help, although you should probably blow it away and start fresh.

The picture on my profile is somewhat out of date, here's a more recent picture:

(Picture courtesy Joseph Hewitt, http://ataraxiatheatre.com/, and you should take a look at his current project at http://www.gearheadrpg.com/)

The book:

Skloot, R. (2010). The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Crown Publishers. Find in your library: http://www.worldcat.org/title/immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks/oclc/326529053

The audio version is available on CD and also via Overdrive, as a downloadable audiobook.  It was performed by Cassandra Campbell with Bahni Turpin. Westminster, Md: Books on Tape.

Campbell’s voice is quiet and clear and moving. The tone of her voice causes you to listen more carefully and you’re quickly drawn into this amazing story. There’s an interview with the author at the end, and it’s almost surprising that she doesn’t sound like Campell, because you believe the narrator.

Bahni Turpin reads a few passages that are direct quotes of Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah. I’m not entirely sure this was necessary, but it did add to the telling.

It is a truism that academics seldom read articles (not to speak about books from the first to the last paragraph, that is, literally "linearly." What they do is the following:

Instead a particular set of interest will lead a reader to an index, then to the selection of an item in print, then (perhaps) to a graphic, or to a cross-referenced item, back to the index, to a different source text and so on. (McHoul and Roe, 1996, p.9)

There are certainly lots of articles on how scientists look at the authors, title, abstract, then maybe the tables and images, before reading the text. And the text isn't read linearly either (update - citation for this Bazerman, 1985). For my own reading of scholarly works, the most helpful platforms allow you to hover over the in text citation to preview the full citation so you don't have to flip back and forth. My argument - and I'm certainly not a cognitive psychologist, is that hyperlinks in articles are helpful - they help you judge what you're reading by providing context and authority through citation.

There's a difference, too, in immersive reading of fiction or probably essays in the humanities, and reading for content, meaning, and utility in the sciences.

Now back to my regularly scheduled dissertation proposal typing :)

Nentwich, M. (2003). Cyberscience : research in the age of the internet. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press.

Bazerman, C. (1985). Physicists Reading Physics: Schema-Laden Purposes and Purpose-Laden Schema. Written Communication, 2(1), 3-23. doi:10.1177/0741088385002001001 (this is just one of many citations to support not reading linearly)