ScholRev

= community in favor of the Open Scholarly Revolution

URL = [1]

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 scholrev@gmail.com
2. The Force 11 Manifesto: Improving Future Research Communication and e-Scholarship
3. Force 11
4. Beyond the PDF 2
5. Scholarly Revolution