Stanford boosts scholar visibility on Google

based on press release from website for Online Information

http://www.online-information.co.uk/cgi-events/user_press.pl?press_id=10785&exhibition_id=79

draft text for OhmyNews

will.pollard@gmail.com //learn9log.blogspot.com

-------------------------

opening paras

There are now over a million scholarly journal articles available free through Highwire Press, a division of Stanford University Libraries.

Michael A. Kellner stated that the aim of Highwire since 1995 has been both to improve access to information and "to help nonprofit and responsible scholarly publishers compete as publishing entities in the Internet age".

Highwire also hosts free access to millions of abstracts, to the tables of contents for every online issue and to other scholarly references. Some of the 800 journals are only available for subscribers but most offer back issues for free after a variable time period such as six months or a year.

The effect of this is to gain attention for the content on search engines such as Google. There is a debate about the reliability of much information on the web and the status of search engine results as knowledge. Google Scholar tends to find results that restricted to journal subscribers. So although 'peer reviewed', the content of academic journals may have a limited audience and not be part of a widely based discussion.

At a recent Prolearn meeting in Madrid, Ambjörn Naeve spoke about the semantic web

-------------------

knowledge push to knowledge pull

http://www.semantic-web.at/10.36.9.article.vortrag-the-human-semantic-web-shifting-from-

knowledge-push-to-knowledge-pull.htm

http://kmr.nada.kth.se/papers/KnowledgeManifolds/KnowledgeManifold.pdf

free

http://www.idea-group.com/articles/details.asp?id=5051

charged article

http://www.sigsemis.org/articles/naeve/document_view

--------------

a move from knowledge push to learner centred.

My own experience includes discussion on Guardian talk and with academics at conferences in Lancaster. "Mode 1" and "Mode 2" are interesting as describing mostly abstract knowledge in tightly defined disciplines compared to multidiscipline projects with a practical aspect, involving companies or other non-academics aka "practitioners". My problem is that academics seem to change the meaning of these terms. So on Guardian talk I have tried out "Research Assessment Friendly" and "search engine constructed". Mode 1 is probably likely to be supported by Research Assessment. Most web searches start from a practical situation where someone is looking for information or knowledge.

see Guardian talk extract below

http://www.learn9.net/raf-sec.html

Previous article - Google Eyes Academia With 'University'

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=4&no=250780&rel_no=1

(You can mix in some comment as part of OhmyNews style citizen reporting )

So "knowledge push" and "knowledge pull" could be more useful terms to explore for a while.

Highwire seems open to finding common ground of some sort,

"The million articles in the HighWire Free Back Issues Program demonstrate that there is a third way between the extremes of prohibitively expensive publication and immediate, unmediated posting of content direct to the open web," said John Sack, director of HighWire Press. "New business models will likely emerge but must be seriously tested over time, not only evangelized, before we can accept as demonstrated fact that they meet the needs of research and society. We and the publishers we support are testing new models continuously; this experimentation includes open-access journals, 'open choice' decisions by individual authors, author manuscript publishing, free access to developing countries and to patients, as well as other models that address access problems and take advantage of the opportunities that the new technology allows."

what is the implication of this for definitions of knowledge?

------------------------

from Guardian talk

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?128@auricle@.7747911d

06:01pm Jan 21, 2005 BST (#14 of 48)

markgriffith

I am thinking again about what you said. It is possible that there is some extra use of jargon.

Have you come across 'mode 1' and 'mode 2' forms of knowledge? As I understand it, 'mode 1' is academic, a defined subject with narrow scope and peer-reviewed journals etc. 'mode 2' is multi-discipline and can involve 'practioners' in problem based work. I think the whole e-learning discussion is definitely 'mode 2' but there seems to be a move to establish it as part of learning theory. Apparently the Research Assessment Exercise has something to do with this. It is unclear what sort of knowledge is thought to appear on the web anyway. Some is from academics but maybe not from journals. The definition of 'mode 1' and 'mode 2' seems to shift

so I have started to think about 'Research Assessment Friendly' knowledge meaning text written to be assessed, and 'Search Engine Constructed' knowledge meaning pages that appear from problem situations.

What do you think?