Scholarly Communication

Ithaka's research group studies how new technologies are affecting higher education and how colleges and universities can best manage these changes in four discrete program areas: providing academia with the policy basis needed to transition effectively and responsibly away from print collections and toward increasingly electronic-only collections; helping information-services organizations meet the needs of scholars by understanding their changing attitudes and practices; improving the community's understanding of how new information resources drive teaching and learning practices; and analyzing strategies for the most effective possible dissemination of knowledge from colleges and universities to researchers, students, and other learners.

The Gutenberg-e project was created as a bold experiment to explore whether peer-reviewed, born-digital monographs would alter the way historical scholarship is presented, whether scholars would receive the same professional credit for these publications as they would from work published in print, and whether the project would enable the publication of monographs that would otherwise be turned down for financial reasons by university presses.

In this free August 1 EDUCAUSE Live! web seminar, The Gutenberg-e Project: Opportunities and Challenges in Publishing Born-Digital Monographs, presenter Kate Wittenberg, consultant, scholarly communication and e-publishing, Columbia University, will discuss the project’s findings and cover both the breakthroughs and obstacles encountered during the course of the project’s development.

This podcast features an interview with George B. Adams III, Associate Director for Programs, Network for Computational Nanotechnology at Purdue University. Our interview was recorded at the CNI 2008 Spring Task Force Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

nanoHUB provides users with “fingertip access” to over 70 simulation tools for research and education. Users not only launch jobs that are executed on the state-of-the-art computational facilities of Open Science Grid and TeraGrid, but also interactively visualize and analyze the results--all via an ordinary Web browser. nanoHUB middleware hides the complexity of Grid computing, handling authentication, authorization, file transfer, and visualization, and letting the researcher focus on research. This approach also helps educators bring these tools to the classroom, letting them bypass the difficulties of Grid computing and focus instead on learning science and engineering.

This 16 minute podcast features an interview with Karla Hahn, Director of Scholarly Communication for the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). It was recorded at the CNI 2008 Spring Task Force Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Surveys and interviews of members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) have revealed that a majority are now developing publishing services. Publishing centered in research institutions has a long history. Departments, institutes and other campus publishing have complemented university press publishing, collectively producing a wide range of high-quality works. Research libraries are positioned to transform university publishing as they create organized publishing services.

Libraries launch publishing services in response to needs for new kinds of support for scholarly publications. Services focus on the local constituency, although much of the content they are publishing comes from outside the institution. Journal publishing is the most common genre supported, although a majority of programs also support monographic publishing.

This 31 minute podcast, recorded at the CNI 2008 Spring Task Force Meeting, features an interview with Tara McPherson, Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Critical Studies at the University of Southern California, and Editor of Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular.

On this podcast we feature an interview with Clifford Lynch, Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information. He spoke to us from the CNI 2008 Spring Task Force Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Clifford Lynch has been the Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) since July 1997. CNI, jointly sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries and EDUCAUSE, includes about 200 member organizations concerned with the use of information technology and networked information to enhance scholarship and intellectual productivity.