EXCEPTIONAL COLLOQUIUM : Digital scholarship and the changing nature of scientific publication

by Dr. Richard Holliman & Prof. Eileen Scanlon (Open University, UK)

Thursday 16 Sept 2010, 10:00 → 11:00 Europe/Zurich

222/R-001 (CERN)

Digital media have extended the number of channels that scientists (and other academics) use to communicate and share information. Digital technologies have the potential to make all stages of the research process more visible in the public sphere, and to audiences that have, on occasion, opportunities for interaction and engagement. But digital technologies also are introducing novel demands on researchers, requiring skills and competencies on the part of scientists that are encapsulated by the concept of digital scholarship. In this presentation we explore this developing context via a case study: the publication of emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (also known as ‘climategate’). The findings of three reviews of ‘climategate’ will be discussed in terms of their implications for science communication. This episode may indirectly influence the ways that scientific knowledge is produced and verified, and what information and data are required to be archived for circulation in the public sphere when a peer reviewed paper is published. In the light of this, we argue that there is a need to develop norms to inform scientific publication in the widest sense of the term, to include all forms of science communication that are available in the public sphere.

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