Recently in scholarship Category
We are inheritors of this momentous victory, but it was not ours. The laurels properly belong to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and all of the other martyrs who died for civil rights. And to millions more before them who struggled across centuries and fell short of winning their freedom. And to those rare politicians like Lyndon B. Johnson, who stood up bravely in a decisive time, knowing how much it would cost his political party for years to come. We owe all of them for this moment.
Whatever happens next, Barack Obama has already changed this nation profoundly. Like King before him, the man is a great and brave teacher. Obama developed out of his life experiences a different understanding of the country, and he had the courage to run for president by offering this vision.
For many Americans, it seemed too much to believe, yet he turned out to be right about us. Against all odds, he persuaded a majority of Americans to believe in their own better natures and, by electing him, the people helped make it true. There is mysterious music in democracy when people decide to believe in themselves.
Presidents of major universities want more library materials distributed online, without prohibitive charges.
At the Universal Access Digital Library Summit, held on September 24 and 25 at the Boston Public Library, Mark Huddleston, president of the University of New Hampshire, Peter Nicholls, provost of the University of Connecticut, and Jack Wilson, president of the University of Massachusetts, called for new approaches to the digitization of library collections that will allow access for all. The presidents urged libraries to halt what they described as an assault on the public’s right to knowledge, done in the name of copyright.
The meeting, which was convened by the Boston Library Consortium, also included the presentations of “Free Our Libraries! Why We Need a New Approach to Putting Library Collections Online,” a white paper by Richard K. Johnson, senior advisor to the Association of Research Libraries. In the paper, Mr. Johnson argues that libraries need to come up with new financing strategies, coordinate their actions, and adopt “forward-looking” principles to guide book and journal digitization projects. —Josh Fischman
A group of tech-savvy professors are claiming punk music as inspiration for their approach to teaching. They call their approach Edupunk.
If your child has a life-threatening disease and you're desperate to read the latest research, you'll be dismayed to learn that you can't -- at least not without hugely expensive subscriptions to a bevy of specialized journals or access to a major research library.
The world has become increasingly “flat,” as Tom Friedman has shown. Thanks to massive improvements in communications and transportation, virtually any place on earth can be connected to markets anywhere else on earth and can become globally competitive. But at the same time that the world has become flatter, it has also become “spikier”: the places that are globally competitive are those that have robust local ecosystems of resources supporting innovation and productiveness. A key part of any such ecosystem is a well-educated workforce with the requisite competitive skills. And in a rapidly changing world, these ecosystems must not only supply this workforce but also provide support for continuous learning and for the ongoing creation of new ideas and skills.
In a characteristically provocative talk last week, Richard Smith, who is on the Board of Directors of PLoS, accused traditional subscription-based publishers of acting like slave owners. And he compared open access advocates to abolitionists.
Harvard University's arts and science faculty voted unanimously yesterday to post their scholarly articles and research online, where they would be available for free to the public, despite concerns that the move would affect the quality of research.
Dr. Charles Tittle writes:
Most criminologists endorse the scientific model. They recognize that knowledge is built bit by bit, as regularities are identified, tentative explanations constructed, hypotheses tested, bodies of empirical findings compiled, and theories developed and modified. Though partly routine, this process relies heavily on creativity and innovation, and it absolutely requires sharing, evaluation, and integration of information. Moreover, knowledge construction is enhanced when numerous scholars address the subject matter and share their findings in a timely manner. Yet, the culture surrounding contemporary dissemination of criminological work in many ways inhibits rather than enhances the scientific enterprise. My objective here is to identify some of those obstructive elements and to suggest an approach that might minimize their impact.
The process is clear enough: scholars conduct research and submit reports of it to journals for anonymous review by other scholars who presumably evaluate how well the submitted papers contribute to the scientific enterprise. Most of the time reviewers recommend against publication, sometimes with dismissive statements but usually with advice about modifications they think might make the paper publishable. In the few instances when reviewers do find merit, they almost always recommend revision. Anticipating this, would-be authors usually devote substantial time that might otherwise be spent in actual research in trying to write their papers to meet potential reviewer requirements or in revising for re-submission to the same or a different journal. As a result the scientific process has become distorted by efforts to hit upon advance formulas for satisfying critics who often disagree among themselves.
The conventional rationale--that the quality of research is enhanced as “experts” offer unencumbered advice in an anonymous framework that protects them from interpersonal backlash-- is not accepted by all. Some question whether, on balance, “revisionism” leads to the best possible outcome. I am somewhat uneasy about the process, myself. During a 43 year career in which I have followed and endorsed conventional practice, I have read no fewer than 5000 reviews, along with the papers they were evaluating. During a six year term as editor of Criminology, I processed over 800 manuscripts, involving three or more reviews each. In addition, I have acted as a selected reviewer for hundreds of papers submitted to various journals, ultimately, of course, examining the other reviews for those manuscripts. I have also received literally hundreds of outside reviews of my own papers.
Based on that experience I wonder whether the process by which knowledge is currently disseminated through journals is as productive to the scientific enterprise as it should be. The apparatus of publication sometimes seems to obstruct accumulation of knowledge rather than enhancing it; it often discourages creativity and innovation rather than encouraging it; it frequently hinders sharing of information rather than facilitating it; it thins rather than enlarges the work force of scholars; and it may not necessarily lead to the highest quality work.
Publish or perish has long been the burden of every aspiring university professor. But the question the Harvard faculty will decide on Tuesday is whether to publish — on the Web, at least — free.
What happens when online learning ceases to be like a medium, and becomes more like a platform? What happens when online learning software ceases to be a type of content-consumption tool, where learning is "delivered," and becomes more like a content-authoring tool, where learning is created? The model of e-learning as being a type of content, produced by publishers, organized and structured into courses, and consumed by students, is turned on its head. Insofar as there is content, it is used rather than read - and is, in any case, more likely to be produced by students than courseware authors. And insofar as there is structure, it is more likely to resemble a language or a conversation rather than a book or a manual.
