International Faculty, Universe of Universities

A major aspect of this project is going to be the association of university faculties from around the world. Essentially these would be online International Faculties. We would start inviting a few local Faculty's and departments to register using the plebisite.net software, and using the existing connections between schools, gradually build a credible and legitimate newtwork of faculties and departments in the same fields. This would allow a level of research and knowledge sharing that has up until now barely been explored.

For example a student or professor in the field of biochemistry might log into the "International Department/Faculty of Biochemistry". From there they could browse forums, issues, research papers and resources from the field of biochemistry. These would all be submitted by users registered in the appropriate groups. There would be an intuitive and dynamic listing and navigation/linking system to all of the biochem departments from colleges and universities around the world who are on the network.

This is one aspect of the grouping system at the heart of the plebisite project, but the world that this could open up for academics is potentially profound.

Criticisms?Thoughts?Suggestions?



This post has been edited by jschroder on Sep 29 2004, 08:18 PM

You gotta have some way to make sure certain articles or submissions are actually verifiable. You wouldn't want people searching a bunch of research papers with anything in it that isn't true. All around though that'd be an awesome idea if someone was there to verify the contents.

I agree completely. The idea is to encourage smaller academic journals and newsletters to actually start publishing through the network. That way we can ensure credibilty in the way that we get organizations signed up, in addition to the verification process of registered members when they sign up.

That is to say lets say professor X signed up to the plebisite.net system, and in the registration process, selected that he was an editor of The Canadian Journal of Science. In addition to any other groups that professor X selected, ( i.e. his local faculties, alumni groups, and institutes or foundations he was a part of), we would verify against the electronic members list of the Journal and /or contact the administrator of that group to verify professor X's position.

It gets slightly more complicated if that particular journal hasn't been submitted to the system yet, but fax machines can do wonders.

Thoughts?

This post has been edited by jschroder on Sep 27 2004, 02:56 PM

I think that would be a great resource for students, teachers and researchers.

There's nothing like sharing infornmation and getting heads together to stimulate discussion and new ideas

Yeah there's already NEOS and other databases, but this is about getting all of them linked into one place for free and public consumption.

Great idea-I thought I would expand on what whodini said-bear with me as I think this through-
There already exists these large databases of writing and research journals. The journals gain their credibility by painstakingly having experts in the field check every single article contributed for accuracy, sound research methods, and validity. They trade the credibility of their information for money when they publish and the publishing companies package the electronic version of the journals into searchable databases, developing interfaces etc. The databases are then sold to associations, universities etc, who wish to make this information available. (you probably already know this:) There is a lot of money made by the publishing companies off of this process, and a little made by the actual researchers.
To have a free and credible system you would have to convince writers to give their hard earned research up for free and find a credible staff to screen them that would either work for free or be paid by an outside source demanding no return on their contribution.

Possibly a system where everyone who does not contribute to the pool pays a small access fee and those who do contribute have access for free might work. There by creating enough funds to have a screening and managing staff while creating an advantage for contributors.

What I am not aware of is a database that offers a discussion component in addition to its content and search features. This market is very small right now in North America and it would be very easy if a discussion type component was developed and became popular to have all the major publishers incorporate it into their database packages. The main barrier to free access to the world knowledge is that establishing credibility is expensive and so the publishing companies need to cover those costs, but also there is a greater demand then supply and that means that there is a profit to be made, and too often things go from free to costing, not the other way around.

Thanks for that reality check mking!

Another problem is that even if anyone could just check a site to read up in the latest journals who is going to understand the technical jargon?
I've lived with my dad almost my whole life so far and i still barely understand what he does in his field of research let alone read one of his papers and be able to decipher it.

ghostorchid-I sometimes wonder if reality is the enemy of change.

You bring up one of the largest issues in the information age-we are taking out the mediators and de-specializing so that the average joe books their own travel, fixes their car, renovates and decorates their home themselves, does their own secretarial work, designs their own website. Who has time to do everything themselves? That is why we specialized in the first place.

Martina, thanks again for the detailed post. I think we should be able to hash out something equitable in terms of the academic component of the plebisite.net project. If 10,000 U of A students pay 4 bucks a month to access this system, the numbers add up pretty quick when you extrapolate them accross western canada, the nation, south of the border and beyond.

The disposable income will be there. The trick is getting some researchers and departments to start using the system that we design here.

There is a better way. Let's keep this discussion going.

What if the researcher's research is paid with public funds and they have salary with their faculty/institution? In that case wouldn't it be a simple matter of posting online the papers they would normally release after a study anyways?

This post has been edited by jschroder on Oct 15 2004, 03:24 PM

I think there are movements in this direction, and there is already a considerable body of scholarly research that some schools have made available online. More importantly, certain of these schools have gone so far as to create the necessary technology to capture and disseminate the material. MIT has created an open-source software package called D-Space that is designed to help institutions capture and organize data and research that is produced by their faculty members. There is also the Open Archives Initiative that provides a protocol for institutions who want to make their documents available (and not only available, but searchable) over the Web. There is a service called the OAISter that uses the protocol to search hundreds of thousands of documents. Check it out: it's pretty cool. One drawback: a lot of the literature published in these archives tends to be "grey literature"; that is, stuff that didn't make it into the peer-review process for whatever reason.

Anyway, it's clear there are movements in the direction you want to go: perhaps there would be a way to join what is already happening, rather than try to reinvent the wheel. I think there is a long road ahead, though, because, as Martina mentioned, there is a great deal of inertia to overcome.

The current system is flawed, to be sure, and a big part of the problem is that professors' reputations tend to be based, not only on how many times they publish, but on how many times their work is cited by others in the field. Thus, the best way to ensure a continuing good reputation is to continue to work within the current system. It's too bad, because the prestige of the researcher can, at times, appear to be more important than the research itself, and this does a disservice to all of society, not least those of us who fund the system through our tax dollars. Anyway, all this to say that the system is due for an overhaul, but the democratization of the process is going to be tricky, because there is a great deal of power, prestige, and money at stake. Interestingly, the straw that might break the camel's back is what's known in library circles as the "periodical pricing crisis," where the very institutions that produce the research can barely afford to buy it back from the publishers. There may come a time when publishers go to shop their product around, and there will be no takers! And that's where an idea like the one being discussed here becomes very exciting.

C.

I remember ghostorchids father mentioning something like that when I first started talking about this project, but didn't know it was so wide-spread that it was actually a coined term. In any case I certainly do not want to re-invent the wheel here with giraffe. As you've outlined, (and I'll certainly take a browse through those links), there are already some projects taking place. Essentially what we have to try and organize is which of those external existing projects output we can data mine and include within giraffe.

What we will be doing very soon is outlining a series of common-sense incremental phases where we start by indexing institutions and expand slowly on top of that foundation.

Mking and I developed a ton of notes on specific steps we can take to develop those phases, but I just haven't found ample time to organize them in a meaningfull way on the forum yet.

Look for them soon, and in the meantime, please feel free to continue brainstorming and developing what we've already got here.

This post has been edited by jschroder on Nov 15 2004, 10:20 PM

I don't think I explained myself very clearly here: what I meant to say is that the current peer-review system rewards quantity of research over quality, and fosters an environment where cronyism is common, and competition and knowledge-hoarding hinder innovation. It seems like a big house of cards, in a way, but that house of cards supports a lot of tenured faculty and millions of dollars in research grants. Hmmm...I'm still not getting at what I want to say. I guess I just think it's time that research came to be recognized for its intrinsic value (or lack thereof), rather than simply being a notch on the belt of the researcher. I know I'm not being totally fair, but studies of the world of academic publishing will back me up to some extent. I'll try and find the study I'm thinking of.

Anyway, I think we're on the same page. As far as helping out with the project, sign me up: it's an exciting project. I'll contribute whatever I can in the limited spare time that I have available to me.

C.