Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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Abstract
The development of digital publications is making headway due to increasing
data-intensive research activities and may also be noticed in subject areas
like the humanities where this empirical approach is completely new and
driven forth by the new technologies. At the same time, the decline of hermeneutical research can be observed. This is closely connected with the role
of documents and texts in scholarly communication. Accordingly, future
publications are likely to turn into objects which might be enhanced by the
integration of different materials like data sets, digitized texts, pictures,
audios, videos etc. The crucial point is the question which format will allow
the aggregation and publication of the very complex findings of data-intensive research.
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tinue with the following assessment: We have found that even though publishers and repositories have the building blocks and tools available, they
generally do not use them to create an enhanced publication for all three
categories. Instead, (1) publishers offer only one or two of these categories
with their publications; (2) publishers publish extra materials (such as movies) separately from the publication, without even a link between these related objects; (3) the option to add post-publication data is rarely supported
by publishers; in contrast, (4) many repositories offer the options of linking
publication and research data, adding commentaries, rankings, trackbacks,
etc. Only one publisher, PLoS, provides all three enhancement services for
their publications. The need for enhanced publications that are embedded in
the publisher or repository environment is urgent, as the number of digital
scholarly objects on the internet (such as multimedia materials, data sets, and
blogs) is growing enormously.
What is the background for these statements? Knowledge and media are
very closely connected and influence each other: Media indicate the understanding of knowledge. Paradigms of knowledge determine media formats.
Against this background, the design of media is not only driven by technology but it is also related to the disciplinary cultures of knowledge. For centuries, the tradition of European knowledge has been aggregated and published
in different formats of printed texts. The knowledge paradigm of printed texts
has been closely connected with the hermeneutical and theoretical research.
The potential of information technology is changing the knowledge paradigm
into an empirical data-based knowledge (Hey/Tansley/Tolle 2009). This is
the essence of the transition from the printed to the digital world. The new
media bring forth a changed understanding of knowledge, which is databased and transforming the hermeneutical or theoretical paradigm of research
into an empirical research approach.
This process is changing the distribution of knowledge as well. The textbased formats of publications become less important for the publication of
research results. For several years, data-based research and publications have
been on the increase. These developments and the technical developments of
digital publishing include on a larger scale than printed formats the possibility to enrich publications with data sets to link and process the published
research results with different apps and tools: Future publications will be
enhanced publications. Hence there is a demand for future publications with
a significantly wider range of options printed materials have never had.
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Projects of all sizes are still seeking paths to sustainability. For open
access sites the vast majority of the resources studied here the challenges can be great, since subscription fees are not an option
The ongoing technical developments are changing this situation. The acceptance and implementation of digital publications for scholarly communication is increasing significantly. In 2008/2009 two papers of the DRIVER-IIProject were published, which concern a number of functional and technical
requirements for enhanced publications. The State-of-the-Art-Report about
enhanced publications provides an overview of the development of enhanced
publications until 2009 and summarizes the different approaches of commercial publishers and open access repositories in dealing with this issue (Woutersen-Windhouwer/Brandsma 2009). In the paper on object models and functionalities, the technical structure (Verhaar 2008) and the functional requirements of enhanced publications are explained in depth and related to the
standards of the Open-Archive-Initiative Open Reuse and Exchange (OAIORE). Both papers refer to publications in the subject areas of the natural
sciences, technology and medicine, where enhanced publications already
existed in 2008/2009. The recommendations and requirements these both
papers contain are very useful under organizational and technical aspects in
order to produce enhanced publications and to make them available as the
presented resource maps may demonstrate (ibid.: 30 ff.). But the enhanced
publications themselves are definitively more than purely organizational or
technical challenges or solutions. Any kind of publication has its functional
origin, but is not limited to it. The importance of printed books or journals is
going beyond the results of a technical process. Printed materials also have a
cultural impact, which enhanced publications are supposed to make as well.
We are going to discuss this point later.
In 2011 and 2012 the German Research Society (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft)2 and the German Research Council (Wissenschaftsrat)3 published their recommendations for the further development of academic infrastructures to improve research conditions towards digital research environments in the current decade. The general topics of these papers are national
licenses, hosting and long term archiving of materials, open access publicshing and repositories, digitization of cultural heritage items, research data
2 http://www.dfg.de/download/pdf/foerderung/programme/lis/positionspapier_digitale_tr
ansformation.pdf <February 12,2013>
3 http://www.wissenschaftsrat.de/download/archiv/2359-12.pdf <February 12,2013>
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The goal of scientific publications is the presentation and distribution of research results. The focus of these publications is consequently on aggregating
findings, abstracting processes and activities, drawing conclusions and summarizing results. Publications basically reflect an interim state of knowledge
or research work. Therefore, the static and/or defined status is a basic feature
of publications. Printed books might illustrate this better than digital documents, which tend to produce less static but more dynamic processes and
research work results. Furthermore, digital publications can be changed or
revised any number of times, they may be locked and opened to different
users or groups and they can be deleted or enriched in many ways. Basically,
digital publications can be edited in different data formats and processed for
different purposes. At each point in time, the digital means allow the authors
to include and integrate processes of their work into their published results.
This means that the different procedures and steps of the research work can
be much better illustrated or mapped in digital publications than this could
ever be accomplished in printed materials.
The procedures of the pre-publication phase (= research process) include
the search for the latest state of the art, the collection and the evaluation of
data, the aggregation of findings the description of conclusions and the
preparation of the final results publication. The post-publication phase covers the later enrichment of a publication, the communication about the published material and the follow-up processing. The crucial question is: which
contents or processes of the pre- and post-publication phases should be pub-
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lished and must be integrated in the final document? In 2013 we may take it
for granted that the vast majority of researchers use their desktop devices and
the internet for their work. We may also assume that the services which are
necessary to produce, distribute, collect and make digital publications available provided by libraries and publishers are basically known.
However, the objectives for the production of digital publications in
scholarly communication are diverse depending on the knowledge cultures of
the different disciplines: Is the presentation of the research results only possible with the help of digital means and consequently requires digital publishing for its performance? Are there any virtual research environments which
explicitly need the digital distribution of publications? Are there any changes
in the understanding of knowledge, which can be clearly identified? How do
researchers deal with the different data and media they use or produce during
their research work? These questions concern the disciplinary cultures of
knowledge and should be answered in respect of the enhanced publications
further development.
Social networks play an increasingly important role in scholarly communication either they distribute intermediate results or they create collaborative work platforms. The influence of social networks on digital publications
has not been completely explored yet and must be monitored (Purdy 2010:
50 ff.). In other words: What is the self-understanding of scholarly communication in social networks? Science communication is eventually becoming an
increasingly more important medium for the distribution of research work
results. Science communication may also be a part of scholarly communication, but it occurs mostly beyond the scientific context. Scholarly communication and science communication have the same objectives in some respects
i.e. to raise decision makers awareness and/or explain scientific results to the
public. An additional effect may also arise from amateur scientists contributions which may be remarkable. This suggests that science communication
must also be accepted as part of future publications.
Considering the research practice in the humanities and generally all
hermeneutical and/or theoretical approaches the understanding of documents and texts plays an important role. Considering the technical potential
of enhanced publications, entities like documents or texts are not necessarily
provided or needed anymore. Will future publications even abolish the traditional understanding of documents? In 2006, a group of French researchers
started to discuss the notion of document and text in digital times. One of the
most important consequences they drew was the re-conceptualization of the
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References
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