ScholRev

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= community in favor of the Open Scholarly Revolution

URL = [1]

Video presentation via http://vimeo.com/62497728


Description

Mission statement draft crafted by Eugenio Battaglia et al.:

"#ScholRev is a decentralized union of scientists, educators, programmers and digital enthusiasts which share the vision to deliver a series of open tools in order to create, disseminate and evaluate scholarship according to the digital transition that scholarly publishing is facing nowadays.

  1. ScholRev was born on March 20, 2013 in Amsterdam during a break-out session at the

conference Beyond the PDF 2 created by the FORCE11 group. You can read the manifesto of the FORCE11 group here, and information about the outcomes of the conference here. In this conference many of us felt that we needed a radical approach to scholarship and its communication. This wasn’t planned, but 25 of us met at lunch and decide we wanted to DO something different.

We aim to deliver new open tools to solve the major issues in current scholarly praxis. Data-driven systemics is replacing Hypothesis-driven science, blogs and metrics algorithms are replacing journals and the peer-review system. We argue that present models of publication/ dissemination are not adequate in presenting content and context of scholarly research in ways that take full advantage of the capabilities of the Web, and new digital transformations.

“Now we are witnessing the transition to yet another scholarly communication system — one that will harness the technology of the Web to vastly improve dissemination. What the journal did for a single, formal product (the article), the Web is doing for the entire breadth of scholarly output. The article was an attempt to freeze and mount some part of the scholarly process for display. The Web opens the workshop windows to disseminate scholarship as it happens, erasing the artificial distinction between process and product.” -- Jason Priem in Scholarship: Beyond the paper on Nature

While the majority of the members have a science background, there are also people interested in humanities. We believe that both communities can learn a lot from each other, and "synergy" is a word that we hear a lot in this community. For example, humanities scholars can learn from the way scientists work collaboratively, and data intensively. Conversely, scientists can also

learn from the way humanities scholars do close reading of the material, developing digital editions that are alternatives to traditional publication models." (Google Drive doc, April 2013, draft status)


History

An informal account by co-founder Amalia Levi:

"A bit of history about the group: People interested in scholarly revolution (hence the name) came together in a break-out session at the 2013 BtPDF2 conference this past March in Amsterdam. You can read the manifesto of the "Beyond the PDF" movement here, and information about the outcomes of the conference here. The group was formed through the initiative of Dr. Peter Murray-Rust.

In a nutshell, during the initial meeting, and correspondence thereafter, #scholrev members stressed their interest in new forms of scholarly publishing (or more largely, dissemination of ideas and research). We argue that present models of publication/dissemination are not adequate in presenting content and context of scholarly research in ways that take full advantage of the capabilities of the Web, and new digital transformations.

While the majority of the members have a science background, some people are interested in humanities (like myself). I believe that both communities can learn a lot from each other, and "synergy" is a word that we hear a lot in this community. For example, humanities can learn from the way scientists work collaboratively, and data intensively. Conversely, scientists can also learn from the way humanities scholars do close reading of the material, developing digital editions that are alternatives to traditional publication modes." (email, April 2013)


Launch Discussion

Peter Murray-Rust:

"#scholrev: Planning the scholarly revolution

At Beyond the PDF2 www.force11.org/beyondthepdf2 a number of us felt that we needed a radical approach to scholarship and its communication. This wasn’t planned, but 25 of us met at lunch and decide we wanted to DO something different.

There are very few ground rules but the basics include:

  1. It must be Open (source, data, content, processes, mentality)
  2. It must be universal and inclusive
  3. It must address problems of the human race
  4. It must be part of modern culture and practice
  5. It must be protected from going down the stale processes of the last umpteen years

And more – this post must be short

So we grabbed our lunch and moved the chairs and tried to get everyone a chance to contribute but also with the real promise of getting something done by the end of 40 minutes. So far we have:

  1. A hashtag “#scholrev” (this seems to be fairly free) under which we can group.
  2. About 6 concrete realisable subprojects. Ranges from an collection of Open metadata (2 variants) to platforms, to textbooks.
  3. A commons.
  4. A communications platform, offered by @onelaboratory.com. Thanks. But you must remain open.
  5. A list of initial members.
  6. Ideas for how to spend 1K from #btpdf
  7. Plans to meet AND HACK at #eswc European Semantic Web Conference at Montpelier this summer.
  8. Invite people that we know would be interested.

I know how hard it is to keep this excitement going. But it’s critically important. So at the very least I am going to blog under this hashtag.

The challenge is to build something as world-changing as Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap. It can be done. And it involves everyone." (http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2013/03/20/btpdf2-scholrev-planning-the-scholarly-revolution/)

More Information

  1. Contact via [email protected]
  2. The Force 11 Manifesto: Improving Future Research Communication and e-Scholarship
  3. Force 11
  4. Beyond the PDF 2
  5. Scholarly Revolution