Academic Evolution

Scholarly Inquiry Optimization (SIO): Personally Configured Discovery

In my overview of Scholarly Inquiry Optimization (SIO), I claimed the future of scholarship lies not merely in Open Access publishing but in fitting research methodologies to the new cyber environment. I outlined several aspects of SIO that I would be covering. This post focuses on personally configured discovery in the research process.

Scholarly Inquiry Optimization (SIO) - Overview

Open Access is essential to the evolution of scholarly communication, but it's incomplete on its own. It's true that Open Access aims at maximizing the exchange and growth of knowledge, but in practical terms it manifests itself as a defensive effort intent on removing restrictions--as though all that is needed to usher in a new golden age is to untrammel academic publishing from the print worlds' scarcity economics. If the zenith of Open Access is a future in which electronic versions of print articles and books are not inaccessible, then the whole movement is merely in the business of preserving a legacy knowledge system. What if every document since the dawn of writing were digitized and freely available online today? Would we have our utopia? Not yet. That's why we need more than Open Access; we need Scholarly Inquiry Optimization.