Dissemination & Disaggregation

Dissaggregation
Posters Presentations Datasets Workshops Collaborations Discussions Workflows

William Fyson Dr Simon Coles Prof Les Carr

The models that govern scholarly discourse have developed over hundreds of years to produce a rigid and stable system for exchanging research outputs. Whilst the mechanisms in place have served academia well, the Web presents an opportunity for a number of innovations. Yet despite potential benefits, change in academic publishing has been unforthcoming. Only by understanding the complex socio-technical dynamics that underpin the system are we able to determine why the Web may not have enabled a scholarly utopia.

Reward & Recognition

The system that drives research relies on researchers building their reputation as someone who contributes useful knowledge to their community. Thus to encourage an open and disaggregated scholarly discourse, it must be easier for researchers to prove the validity of their work to their peers, show the impact of their work to institutions and demonstrate their skills and experience to industry. An online portfolio of a researchers work may be one way to achieve this, aiming to elevate disaggregated research outputs to the level enjoyed by journal articles. Provenance metadata provides vital context to research outputs and Altmetrics could be used to help demonstrate a wide range of impact.

Thesis

Methodologies Contacts Ideas

Academic publishing serves a number of different roles beyond dissemination of research outputs, including: peer review, measuring impact both within academia and beyond, recognising academic contributions and allocating funding. At present this is mostly achieved through the single scholarly unit of a journal article, the success of which is typically measured via citations. Dissemination of research outputs online can be much more flexible however allowing us to disaggregate the bundle of research outputs that form an article or thesis. This in turn presents new opportunities for demonstrating our contributions to a field and measuring impact. Such issues have already arisen in other online markets and business models have adapted as a result; will the same innovative and disruptive forces take hold in academic publishing?

Provenance Peers AltMetrics

conte

xt

skills

Industry Community University

validation

knowledge
impa ct

isua

ns o i t lisa

Redactor Tool
The browser based redactor tool assists researchers with disseminating their work to the widest audience possible. It allows a user to disaggregate their work through the removal of any elements that may infringe copyright, producing derivative works that can be disseminated without concern. Redactor Features... Redacting sections of text within a document Replacing images with Creative Commons licenced alternatives Applying licence metadata to images within a document A jQuery plugin that can be applied to .docx or .pptx links Future work on the tool hopes to allow researchers to redact their documents and recombine disaggregated parts at a later date to provide users with more control over the access permissions of their document as it evolves over time.