UKSG Conference Summary

This is the summary I put together for my SAGE colleagues. I am reposting here in case it is of use. Comments on theme omissions welcome.

The 33rd Annual UKSG Conference was held in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago, with a varied programme and over 850 attendees. Themes gleaned from the sessions and discussions I attended are summarised below. The very active twitter stream from the conference can be found here. I was amazed at the ability of delegates to listen, assimilate and then tweet or blog all at the same time!

Social Media

An increase in focus on Social Media and new ways of sharing information and research was very evident. There was a much higher engagement and understanding of newer communication channels. Interestingly, it was not younger researchers quoted as spending more time blogging or commenting online but more established researchers who have already secured a reputation and can afford to spend time in this way. They are contributing to knowledge and growth in their field but not just in the tradition of peer-reviewed high impact journals. An interesting development would be a unique researcher identifier such as ORCID which would help tie all researcher output together.

Researchblogging is interesting, its focus is on serious posts about peer reviewed academic research. It has over 1200 blogs and has doubled in the last year. Adam Bly from Researchblogging explained that more collaborative science and the creation of new knowledge has the scientific information industry running to keep up. We’ll be contacting them to ensure posts on Sage content can be linked back to the original research.

Open Access

OA feels like it is slowly gaining traction as a publishing model. The vibe from various sessions was less if than when. Tony Hirst was emphatic on the new openness of communication channels. Why use traditional journal articles to share ideas he asked? If he or his colleagues do decide to publish an article it will be in OA jnls. However, no clear wide-ranging path for institutions to fund OA was apparent yet.

Usage

JISC Collections have secured funding to progress with the JISC usage stats portal or “make it real”. We'll be contacted for our input, the prototype involved data from Elsevier, OUP and Springer. Its aim is to present usage data in user-friendly ways for librarians and include new ways to benchmark usage. There is not clarity on confidentiality issues and was no resolution proposed on the question of the confidential nature of usage data. It’s early days.

Big Deals, Value & Pricing

An interesting session on value had Ted Bergstrom from UCSB explaining that he is securing information about big deal pricing so he can publish information about outliers in the public domain. His reason: “as citizens of the academic community, we are interested in helping librarians to understand the dynamic economic problem that they face and aiding them in negotiating effectively with large publishers. We plan to release a collection of information and analyses that will serve this purpose.” See his Big Deal Contract Project page.

As in previous years the mood seemed to be that the Big Deal bubble must burst, as it is unsustainable for many institutions, but there was no clear way forward proposed still.

Carol Tenopir talked about developing real tools for librarians to demonstrate value of their collections. She pointed us to the ARL website for more information.

Jill emery from Texas talked about patron-driven ebook and journal article acquisition stating 'the age of the article is here'. She explained they need “aggregated article access”. She wants publishers to listen as they have to purchase “Just in time not just in case'.

Quality Metrics

Frustration with the reliance on the Impact Factor and the fact it ranks journals and not articles was apparent. There is a desire to produce new ranking metrics. the Australian Research Assessment is no longer using the Impact Factor we were told.

Pete Binfield (PLOS) ran a session on how they have introduced article-level metrics - it’s worth a look if you haven’t seen. They recognise they are very much at the beginning but are very keen to do whatever they can to help users decide which content is highly valued by the community. Also, these metrics not just about evaluation but to help users filter and discover articles of value.

Pete talked about how they have work to do on working out how to measure “influence”. It’s important to demonstrate influence beyond the scientific community. This ties in with our work to show the value of social science research. How do we ensure the research we publish is credited appropriately when it influences Government policy for instance?

As Hannah Whaley says on her blog: The discussion around these issues is healthy, as is the growing volume with which librarians and researchers are willing to speak them out loud. However these key themes are notable for representing problems, not solutions. It is clear that licensing models, researcher metrics, electronic and open access still have some way to evolve to meet the growing needs and expectations of the community.

Cocktails the Morning After

Slawomir Gorniak's title of Security at the Cocktail Party will probably be a bad reminder for many of the delegates who were at the conference dinner last night :-) His focus on social networking as an identity management system is an interesting topic for a conference where engaging with the user has been raised as a key issue through all the presentations.

He highlights that Social Networks can create great business benefits through increasing interactivity. Those twittering throughout the conference would agree on this point I think, and I have been happy to make new contacts with several key publishers through tweets.

Social Networking also lets you know your user - there is lots of information about users available but issues of personal data protection need to be considered. Controls for protecting information are important.

At the moment, social networking is proving to be a bad identity management system in lots of ways - users aren't good at thinking about the consequences, such as answering a quiz saying that you have been arrested in the past and openly publish on Facebook - this will damage your career prospects. It happens in professional networks as well, such as inappropriate disclosure of information on LinkedIn profiles. In a trial, 41% of randomly selected profiles on Facebook were willing to make friends with a plastic frog (fake profile)

The value of social networking is not in the tools, it is in the personal data and the ability to profile people for advertising. The sector is currently estimated to be worth $15 billion. Making the tools more secure is not in the interest of the tool providers, but there is a need to break data monopolies to improve privacy and security. What is the business model? Some of the big players have started to embrace data portability - such as Google Friend which is based on identity and access management standards (however Facebook would not particpate in Google Friend).

We need to create clear corporate policies on social network usage and consider both your personal and professional needs when using the networking sites. This is something we have raised several times over on the JAM blog.

Social Networking is like the Hotel California, you can check out but you can never leave. Nipon Das, New York Times.