Strategic Reading
Allen Renear and Carole Palmer have just published an article titled "Strategic Reading, Ontologies, and the Future of Scientific Publishing" in the current issue of Science (http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1157784). I'm particularly happy to see this paper published because I actually got to witness the genesis of these ideas in my living room back in 2006. Since then, Allen and Carole's ideas have profoundly influenced my thinking on the application of technology to scholarly communication.
Those who have seen me speak at conferences recently will have heard me do an awful lot of ranting about the how publishers and librarians need to help researchers practice the time-honored art of "reading avoidance" (or as Renear and Palmer politely put it- "strategic reading"). I even managed to squeeze this rant into a recent interview I did with Wiley-Blackwell.
The essence of my argument has been that our industries need not be bamboozled by the technical jargon and messianic hand-waving that typically accompany discussions of new technology trends like "web 2.0", "text-mining", "the semantic web", "micro-blogging", etc. This is because there is a fairly simple way for us to understand the relative import (or lack thereof) of new technologies to scholarly communication and that is to ask the following question:
"Can the application of this technology in the realm of scholarly communication help researchers to read less?"
If the answer is "yes", then you'd better pay very close attention to it.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say the history of scholarly publishing can be characterized by the successful adoption of conventions and tools that help researchers read strategically.
Now I have something to cite when I rant.
Anyway, congratulations to Allen & Carole.
Comments
The conversation in your Cowley Road living room was indeed the impetus that it was time to summarize what we saw happening. Thanks for your encouragement
Though as Todd Carpenter (NISO) noted on Twitter, we probably would would say "read more efficiently" or, even, "read more". All depending on exactly what one means by "read" (and "more"/"less"?)
Posted by: Allen Renear | August 20, 2009 8:57 AM
Are you seriously saying that if somebody came to you and said you
could save 10% of your reading time and still stay on top of your
field, you would choose to dedicate the additional time to reading
more instead of writing articles, writing grants, doing labwork, etc.?
Seems to me that the goal is reading less whilst simultaneously
staying on top of your field.
Posted by: Geoffrey Bilder | August 20, 2009 11:52 AM
Good point. As the query is constructed you've got me: I would have to answer yes, read less and do more.
But the empirical issue here, as I see it, is: if one reads more efficiently, what is the best use of saved time. Intuition may vary, and perhaps the ceteris paribus answer is, indeed: reallocate.
But arguably as shape of the benefit curve changes it might make sense to read (strategically) as much (measured in time), or even more. And presumably it can vary with many factors. My more empirical co-author (Palmer) would probably caution me on speculating beyond rehearsing the possibilities.
Posted by: Allen Renear | August 20, 2009 1:38 PM