Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet

The words, “only connect”, from E.M. Forster's Howards End form an appropriate motto for the IT world. His subsequent exhortation, “Live in fragments no longer”, might well be seen as a further endorsement of our hopes for electronic communication. The problem is that, in the sphere of scholarly communication, the application of his injunction is far from straightforward. Scholarly communication in the print era may not have been perfect, but it was organised and integrated in a way that was generally understood. So the question in going from a print‐based to a digital environment is how to move from one connected scenario to another different, but also connected scenario without passing through a period of fragmentation in between. What happens now, during the current transition period, will determine whether the emerging form of scholarly communication works as well as the model it is replacing. As Christine Borgman says in the Preface to her new book: Every Stage in the Life Cycle of a Research Project now can be Facilitated – or Complicated – by Information Technologies. Therein lies the heart of the problem: how can we ensure that IT developments over the next few years facilitate research and its communication, rather than complicate them?

As Dr Borgman makes clear, the important factors in answering this question relate to the scholars, rather than to their systems. She quotes the computer scientists' blessing: “May all your problems be technical ones”. (It is a blessing, rather than a curse, because technical problems are typically easier to solve than human ones.) Nevertheless, she starts with the technical side, since human problems are frequently triggered by technological changes. The obvious example of this is the internet. A decade ago, the internet still reflected the research environment out of which it had evolved, and was relatively scholar‐friendly. Since then, it has become a messier and more problematic place from the scholar's viewpoint. Exactly how the scholar and the electronic environment interact varies from one research field to the next. A major feature of this book is the careful analysis of the activities and proclivities of different groups of scholars. Scholars typically play several roles in the communication process – author, referee, editor and so on. Particular attention is paid here to the activities of authors, and to the range of tasks – such as selecting which documents to cite and which publication outlet to use – involved in making their work public. These activities are examined across the sciences, social sciences and humanities in order to compile a scenario for a scholar‐based approach to IT. The reason for doing so is that scholarly needs and activities are likely to remain the same whether the environment is print or electronic. Hence, their examination can provide input in planning for the future. At the same time, allowance has to be made for the changing nature of information. Compared with print, digital information is, as the author says, more malleable, mutable, and mobile.

Hardly surprisingly, the survey raises questions which, in the famous phrase, will “require further research”. Some are not specific to scholarly communication, though they will affect it greatly. One example is the importance of wireless communication for internet access. I remember talking to an engineer from one of the former Soviet Republics. His home terrain was such that cable laying was almost impossible, but his collaborative investigations were going well due to a wireless connection to the internet. So, will a move to wireless connections affect global research collaboration? Another vexing problem is the question of long‐term support for electronic depositories, and who should provide that support. Clearly, it needs an institution which has long‐term stability; yet publishers are sometimes reluctant to accept that this may not describe them. What is the best way forward? One problem of immediate concern to scholars is the “data deluge” – the twenty‐first century follow‐up of the twentieth century “information explosion”. The latter problem now extends up‐stream, as researchers in a range of fields are inundated with data requiring analysis. Can existing information handling and retrieval methods keep up? Equally, theoretical problems are arising in this transition period. For example, do Merton's norms need revisiting in today's context of technology‐driven research environments? (This question must be phrased with care. A contribution to the discussion some years ago was entitled “Merton revisited”. It was classified by secondary services as a guide to Merton College, Oxford.) Similarly, should a cradle‐to‐grave description of the information flow in scholarly subjects, of the sort that Garvey and his colleagues mapped out forty years ago for a print environment, be repeated for the digital world? (And would anybody provide the continuing funding over a number of years that is required for such a project?)

Needless to say, a broad survey of the type provided in this book evokes a range of queries in any reader's mind. Here, are some that occurred to me. Many libraries possess manuscript materials along with their printed stock. Not very much is said here about how they will slot into a digital world. But electronic presentation, besides protecting them physically, may also enhance their use. An obvious example is the Beowulf manuscript at the British Library, where online ultraviolet images allow damaged pages of the original text to be read. So maybe the future of manuscript material is also worth some discussion. We are told that a firm division between pure and applied research can be traced to Vannevar Bush's report to President Roosevelt in 1945. In fact, the history of the division is both older and more complicated. Thus, by the end of the nineteenth century, the division between pure and applied research was sufficiently firm that separate societies were sometimes founded for the different aspects. For example, in the UK, the Physical Society was established for pure researchers and the Institute of Physics for applied researchers. In the latter part of the twentieth century the two streams actually reunited (and, to the annoyance of some, eventually adopted the name of the applied side). One final example, relates to digital books. It is noted that appropriate business models have yet to be established for such books. But the question is whether business models can be settled before the alternative methods of presentation (e.g. hand‐held virtual book, computer screen) have been fully assessed.

One invaluable aspect of this book is Dr Borgman's wide experience of the information world outside North America. As the extensive list of references demonstrates, this allows her to provide a balanced overview of scholarly information activities internationally. (The sources of her references also nicely reflect the current balance between printed and electronic media in the scholarly world.) Her comparative view of developments is helpful even in such nitty‐gritty matters as terminology – for example, in noting that the US tends to prefer the prefix “cyber” (as in “cyberinfrastructure”) whereas in other countries the tendency is to use “e‐” (as in “e‐science”). The author is well‐known for her studies of the problems of scholarly communication in a changing technological world, and her new book provides an excellent and up‐to‐date survey of the field. A quotation towards the end of the book sums up the current position concisely: “Predicting the future is easy. It's trying to figure out what's going on now that's hard”. The great value of Scholarship in the Digital Age is that it provides an analysis of what is happening now in a way that aids extrapolation into the future.