The Open Scholar

In the spirit of my earlier post, "Scholar or Public Intellectual?," I'd like to explore the concept of what it might mean to be an "open scholar." The traditional scholar, like the scholarship he or she produces, isn't open--open-minded, hopefully, but not "open" in a public way. No, a typical scholar is very exclusive, available only to students in specific academic programs or through toll-access scholarly publications that are essentially unavailable to all but the most privileged. In the digital age, the traditional barriers to accessing scholars or scholarship are unnecessary, but persist for institutional reasons.

To put that another way, institutions of higher education are invested in keeping their scholars and those scholars' intellectual products limited and cloistered. This is a profoundly poor use of valuable resources, but it's bound to continue until institutions decide to reward scholars for doing more than contributing to niche knowledge communities. Think of the many publicly funded institutions of higher education, then think of the way those colleges and universities only reward their scholars if they are willing to conceal their expertise from the broader public that funded the institutions they work at. It's as unethical as it is unnecessary, but it will continue until institutions learn to be more publicly responsible with their intellectual resources, or until scholars reject the restrictive identity they are held to through the traditional reward system.

There have been some exceptions along the way, but generally speaking, the traditional scholar truly doesn't care about reaching anyone except those peers whose judgment determines his or her reputation. I reject this identity and the coterie knowledge it promotes. Scholars should be public intellectuals, responsive to multiple audiences, engaged in meaningful interchange across disciplines and boundaries of all kinds. And their knowledge products can and should extend well beyond the scholarly article, the monograph, or traditional measures of teaching.

At this point it would be tempting for me to speak about Open Access publishing, the important alternative to toll-access scholarly journals. And as so many of my posts have indicated, I'm a big proponent of Open Access. But I am also its critic. As I said before, I see Open Access as a kind of Middleware. My great concern is that the agents of change today have set their sights too low. The current Open Access model is provisioning for legacy genres and formats of scholarly communication. That's great for archival purposes, but this is not the next real destination for scholarly discourse. Why? Because consequential intellectual work takes place in myriad ways outside of traditional scholarly genres, that's why, and the digital realm is ready to capture, organize, value, and disseminate those other ways of generating knowledge.

The Open Scholar, as I'm defining this person, is not simply someone who agrees to allow free access and reuse of his or her traditional scholarly articles and books; no, the Open Scholar is someone who makes their intellectual projects and processes digitally visible and who invites and encourages ongoing criticism of their work and secondary uses of any or all parts of it--at any stage of its development.

Those pursuing the Open Science model are on the vanguard of this effort, and I wish to give special mention of Jean-Claude Bradley and the Open Notebook approach he has used in the classroom. Give this podcast episode a listen (from IT Conversations) to catch the vision of this, or check out the lab notebooks from OpenWetWare (which is an Open Science portal for biology and biological engineering). 

It's like this: there is great value to others to see the methods used in pursuing knowledge, the various attempts in pursuing solutions (failures as much as successes), the data generated (especially beyond the subset of data used for drawing conclusions in the study at hand), and the various resources used to mount the investigation (whether that is lab equipment, social resources, bibliography, theory, or protocols). Again, there is great value in others being allowed to see this whole context of inquiry, not just the final outcome for the specific study at hand.

Let me give you an example. I met some people recently who are doing studies of tabacco harm reduction. In their research they have, of course, looked up any and all studies that have to do with tobacco harm. But it turns out a lot of studies exist that only bring up tobacco incidentally (such as studies of occupational hazards in general). Now, if these epidemiologists had had access to the data  from the occupation hazards studies (including the statistical models for crunching the data), then they could have drawn additional value from the occupational hazards research.

That's a simple example of how having open data is in fact provisioning for serendipity and how profoundly it respects the broader goals of knowledge building on knowledge. Traditional scholarship shuts down the many possible re-uses of scholarship by not keeping the processes and data open as part of the publication. It would be better to adopt the Open Science catchphrase, "no insider information."

Because the Open Scholar reveals his or her processes, data, and procedures, this can bridge the great divide between research and teaching. Not only does the whole model invite collaboration (including drawing upon students and uncredentialed participants), but it allows the modeling of best practices that can help newcomers understand the whole field in question, not just the specifics of a given study. In that podcast I mentioned above, Bradley comments on how people consulted the open notebooks of his class's project to learn to do simple things like precipitate solutions. I am not a chemist and am out of my depth here, but at least I understand how something which Bradley and his co-workers saw as an incidental means to a more important end proved to be the destination point for others. And there we go, the Open Scholar respects this sort of potential secondary benefit of his or her work. There is always the chance that others will not take for granted something that is just a given within your own work.

It is exciting to think of the many benefits of being an Open Scholar, but it does of course clash with traditional ways of publishing knowledge. It invites those into the laboratory, as it were, who might be unschooled or simply ignorant of the discipline one is working in. It could reveal secrets about proprietary data or threaten privacy laws. These are important concerns to consider. But they are not sufficiently troublesome to stick with the closed system and its "dark data."

I refer you to an earlier post in which I discussed the "lost assets of academia"--many kinds of valuable output generated (by students as well as faculty) in the teaching, learning, and researching processes are needlessly going to waste while universities insist on measuring the value of their scholars only in terms of print paradigm commodities: the scholarly article or monograph. The Open Scholar does not wait for the university to wake up to the great value of documenting and narrating his or her research--too many other people could benefit from what he or she is doing to keep all that good stuff hidden from view.

The Open Scholar is also open in the sense that he or she is reachable and responsive--open to input from those outside of the project, the institution, or even academia. He or she is not impatient with amateurs. And I think this sort of openness does require some facility with the new tools of social media--a blog, a wiki, etc. Why not microblog one's progress via Twitter? I'd love to hear about those attempting to do this and whether they have seen a benefit from exposing and narrating their scholarly projects or research.

What do you think of the concept of the "Open Scholar"? If you are an academic, does this appeal to you? Would you dare publish your preliminary thinking, your drafts, your experiments, your data, your false starts and failures? If you are not an academic, does Open Scholarship sound like it would be a greater benefit for the advancement of knowledge or the improvement of teaching? I think you know where I stand. I'm going to try to be more public about those various back-burner projects, as well as the ones I'm currently in the middle of. Maybe I'll change my mind as I make my own scholarly investigation as public as any finished "publication." But based on my other online projects that have generated so much helpful feedback for so many years, I know better than that.

Comments

[Lisa]

I'm not sure this would quite fall under the category of serendipity, but...http://openphd.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/the-open-phd-what-a-concept/

I look forward to your thoughts.

[Mark]

I feel an intutive resonance with these ideas how is it done - how does one become an open scholar

[Martin]

Hi Gideon, this is just to say hello and that I've been thinking about similar issues and 'digital scholarship' over at edtechie.net - I'm giving a presentation soon on openness in education, and I'll reference this post, so thanks for sharing.
Martin

[blog.informalethnographer.com]

One way to put it is that there's room, in this world, for the Open Scholar. S/he can in fact be employed as an Open Scholar. But maybe not make her/his way very easily within the Ivory Tower.
So, in a way, Open Scholarship and Public Intellectualism are parallel career choices to the Tenure-Track Professorship and other parts of the "Publish or Perish" system. It's a bit sad that there aren't more contact points between the Open Scholar and academia. But it's probably easier to remain sane by separating the two, for the time being. After all, it's possible (though a bit rare) for an academic to have projects and even contracts outside of her or his academic institution. There are even some tenured professors who have side-careers in fields which have little to do with their academic work. It wouldn't be too strange to have academics who have side-careers as Open Scholars, with some degree of controlled overlap.
In this case, I'm merging the Open Scholar figure with the role of the Public Intellectual. They can be separated, with the Open Scholar being a professional scholar working in the Ivory Tower who also happens to do OA and other "openny" things. But having the OS figure and PI role together, we can more easily talk about differences in terms of contexts. One context, the university (college, institute, research hospital...) is constraining. The other context, the public sphere (the Internet, social networks, non-political organizations...) is as broad as an open field. There's more room for developing oneself as an Open Scholar in the Open Field than within the walls of a given institutions. But the Open Field also necessitates that one brings her or his own structures.

It's frequent for professors to blog anonymously. Those who do so tend to complain the current state of their world. What it tends to show is a perceived incompatibility between working for a given institution and speaking openly. If tenure is supposed to protect academic freedom, these blogging professors seem not to feel much in terms of other forms of freedom.

Oh, BTW, though I signed in using a blog having to do with my semi-, pseudo- and fully-academic work, I have no qualms about discussing things under my own name (Alexandre Enkerli) and identity (e.g. Facebook.com/enkerli). Call it "radical transparency," if you will. Though it's probably not required of the Open Scholar, I find that it facilitates my work outside the university without hindering my university work.

[Paul Left]

I absolutely agree that making the scholarly process visible would be of great benefit - and would help enhance and extend professional communities.

It would be a little threatening of course for many to be that open about the process. And I think that inquiry tends to be not valued as highly as information.

Great post...

[Gideon Burton]

Great points, Jon and Jon. And thanks for the clarification, Bill. I'd like to learn more about Open Notebook Science and whether this is a model that can be imitated in the social sciences and the humanities.

Jon W - I've made my next post in answer to your question.

[bill]

The motto "no insider information" belongs with Open Notebook Science. "Open Science" is such a broad term that it's already being used in multiple ways and is pretty much impossible to define. ONS, on the other hand, is easy to define: "no insider information". It's the far end of the Open spectrum, as it were.

Regarding JonW's question, it's not an all-or-nothing choice. You can run some projects with an Open Notebook and others in a traditional fashion, you can use a partly open approach (e.g. require registration, embargo the data for a certain period, etc), or any other variation that suits you; e.g. http://onsclaims.wikispaces.com/.

[Jon Ogden]

I think Jon's question is poignant, and hard to answer.

Open scholarship would be ideal, but it's clear the current system is resistant to it. The best way I can see to combat the current situation is to find a host of respected scholars in the field who seem to be in favor of open-access scholarship.

To this end I found this quote from Wayne Booth, said when he was president of the MLA: "When we fail to test our scholarship, by making its most important results accessible to non-specialists, we also lose our capacity to address, and thus recreate in each generation, the literate public who can understand its stake in what we do."

Fantastic.

That said, I cannot help acknowledge that Booth himself never fully crossed over to become a public intellectual, as much as he tried, especially near the end of his life. So I'm still at a loss to know for certain whether one can completely satisfy both worlds.

Are there more quotes like this one from Booth out there?

More on Booth's commentary and my recent views on public intellectuals here: http://guildysticks.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-alain-de-botton-can-change-literary.html

[Jon Wallin]

What would you say to an assistant professor approaching his third-year review? His job and way of life are on the line if he can't demonstrate his contribution to academia in the old, closed-access paradigms (scholarly articles and monographs). This isn't a rhetorical question, but one asked in earnest. Would you suggest they pursue publication in journals, but do so in the manner of an open scholar? Or should they pursue their scholarship openly, with the goal to publish them via the new mediums that make open access possible, even if it means rejection and possible termination? Is this a case of casualties in the name of the revolution, or can you satisfy both worlds?