SECOND BLOOMSBURY CONFERENCE ON E-PUBLISHING AND E-PUBLICATIONS,
26 & 27 JUNE 2008

THE VIRTUAL SCHOLAR

An independent conference organised from the Centre for Publishing/ School of Library, Archive and Information Science at University College London


Theme of the Conference:

This year's conference will concentrate on the scholars themselves, what they want as authors and readers, what they are being provided with and what they may be need to be provided with in the future – all in the context of the digital environment and the broader revolutions in progress. In many scoping conferences attended by publishers and/or librarians it is a truism to say that it is the scholars themselves that are routinely ignored in favour of discussions about business models and current ideological battles.

The core of this second Bloomsbury Conference will be an analysis by the top researchers of what their work has thrown up concerning the actualities of research. The emphasis will be on formal scholarly communication and what publishers provide. However, how authors publish and how readers use this content cannot be understood without a wider context covering researcher work flows. The research presented will have made use of a wide variety of different methodologies from surveys, focus groups, log analysis and direct observation and insights derived from specialist projects and wider analyses of web behaviour will bring other perspectives to bear.

Audience:

This conference is unique. All those working with researchers especially publishers and librarians and of course scholars themselves will find an unprecedented bringing together of research on the scholarly communication process

Location:

The J.Z.Young Lecture Theatre at University College London – London’s Global University – and associated facilities.

Conference fees: see the full conference fee schedule.

Registration: please apply using the downloadable registration form.

For further information and pre-registration enquiries please email: infostudies-conferences@ucl.ac.uk


Programme

DAY ONE: THURSDAY 26 JUNE 2008

09-00 Registration and Coffee in the Gavin de Beer Lecture Theatre

10-00 Welcome and introduction to the conference by the chair and organiser Anthony Watkinson (Senior Lecturer, Centre for Publishing, University College London)

10-15 to 13-00 SESSION ONE: THE VIRTUAL SCHOLAR – CONTEXT AND SPECIFICS 1.
Individual commentators and academic researchers will bring their insights to bear on some basic themes of online scholarly communication.

10-15 to 11-00 Geoffrey Bilder, Director of Strategic Initiatives at CrossRef
This keynote presentation will provide an alien’s overview, looking at scholarly communication from the outside. In particular Mr. Bilder will provide a new take on the well-known differences between the scholar as author and the scholar as reader.

11-00 to 11-45 Dr. Jenny Fry, Lecturer in the Department of Information Science at Loughborough University
Dr. Fry, formerly of the Oxford Internet Institute, will provide further context. She will give a background on disciplinary cultures and scholarly communication from the sociology of science, draw on a quantitative study that related patterns of digital library use to research cultures, and then talk about current trends in 'open science' (including social sciences and humanities), in the context of e-Research, and what these trends may signify for scholarly communication.

11-45 to 12-30 Dr. Ian Rowlands, Director of Research, Centre for Publishing
Dr. Rowlands will draw upon his recent and much-acclaimed work for JISC and the British Library on the Google Generation (see http://www.bl.uk/news/2008/pressrelease20080116.html) to examine the various assumptions about the alleged differences in behaviour between younger and older scholars in their online research behaviours.

12-30 to 13-00 Questions for the session one speakers and general discussion about themes raised.

13-00 to 14-15 Lunch in the adjacent Gavin de Beer Lecture Theatre

14-15 to 17-30 SESSION TWO: THE VIRTUAL SCHOLAR – WHAT BIG RESEARCH TELL US 1.
This will bring together the first group of three major contributors to research on the virtual scholar. Each speaker has been asked to explain what the research programmes they have directed or have been associated with have actually demonstrated about the research behaviour of scholars in the digital environment.

14-15 to 15-00 Professor David Nicholas, Director of the School of Library Archive and Information Studies, the Centre for Publishing and the CIBER research group at University College London
Professor Nicholas will summarise what five years of research and an impressive output of publications (see http://www.publishing.ucl.ac.uk/publications.html) can tell us. He will characterise the information seeking behaviour of the virtual scholar on the basis of five years worth of CIBER research data.

15-00 to 15-45 Peter Burnhill, Director of EDINA and Head of the Edinburgh University Data Library, Edinburgh University
Mr. Burnhill is also co-director of SUNCAT (UK union catalogue of serials) and Jorum (UK repository of learning materials). These are both funded by JISC and in his presentation he will report on JISC-funded studies and activities that might cast light upon the virtual scholar: revealing what users require, want and seemingly do as part of scholarly activity. The intention is to do that by first proposing a framework that links the reader and the author within the formal and informal worlds of scholarly communication, and by paying some attention to provenance

15-45 to 16-15 Refreshment break in the adjacent Gavin de Beer lecture theatre

16-15 to 17-00 Professor Carol Tenopir, Professor of Information Sciences, Director of Research, College of Communication and Information and Director of the Center for Information and Communication Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Professor Tenopir will bring her unequalled experience of what scholars actually do and her record of long-term studies (see http://web.utk.edu/~tenopir/) to bear on the themes of the conference with especial reference to the transition from print to digital.

17-00 to 17-30 Questions for the session two speakers and general discussion about themes raised.

17-30 to 19-00 Drinks Reception for all speakers and registrants on either day in the adjacent Gavin de Beer Lecture Theatre


DAY TWO: FRIDAY 27 JUNE 2008


08-45 Registration and Coffee in the Gavin de Beer Lecture Theatre

09-30 to 13-00 SESSION THREE: THE VIRTUAL SCHOLAR – CONTEXT AND SPECIFICS 2.
This session will be devoted to shorter presentations drawn from those with special knowledge and techniques to bring to the main theme of the conference and reports from important projects and internal research studies relating to behaviour in specific disciplines.

09-30 to 10-00 Dr. Andrew Walkingshaw, postdoctoral research associate, Unilever Centre for Molecular Bioinformatics, University of Cambridge
Dr. Walkingshaw will discuss scientific data, RDF and linked data. He will also deal with the crossover between the research academics do and related fields like database journalism and the work people are doing on bespoke data visualization, and between informal communication (like blogging) and formal communication (like journals).

10-00 to 10-30 Richard Kidd, Project Manager, Project Prospect, Royal Society of Chemistry
Mr. Kidd will explain how this award winning project that exploits the opportunities the web presents to the chemistry community has developed – see http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/ProjectProspect/). He will be describing the different work flows available now to chemists across various publishing routes.

10-30 to 11-00 Vince Smith, Cybertaxonomist, Department of Entolomology, Natural History Museum London
Mr. Smith will describe how the Internet has transformed the work of the taxonomist both as a user of research and as an author and the opportunities that are presented.

11-00 to 11-20 Refreshment break in the Gavin de Beer Lecture Theatre

11-20 to 11-50 Vanessa Murtough, Institute of Physics Publishing
Ms Murtough will describe the research conducted by Institute of Physics Publishing in developing its new journals platform, highlighting how the physics community reacted to the resources available to them and what they were looking for.

11-50 to 12-20 Professor Roger Griffin, Department of History, Oxford Brookes University
Professor Griffin is the editor of an e-journal and someone active in the cybersphere. He will give a humanities perspective and talk about how researchers can work creatively with the resources offered by a virtual environment to enrich and consolidate traditional paper-based and archival scholarship while revolutionizing communication between academics.

2-20 to 12-50 Joy van Baren, Elsevier
Ms van Baren has been heading most of the user-centred design work on Scopus and now on research workflow tools. Her background is user-computer interaction and design. She has spent a great deal of her life observing what end-users do in science and research with STM information products, and then develop and design better products for them. Invitations are out to a number of other potential speakers with special reference to the different behaviours in the humanities and the social sciences.

12-50 to 13-15 Questions for the session two speakers and general discussion about themes raised.

13-15 to 14-15 Lunch in the Gavin de Beer Lecture Theatre

14-15 to 17.30 SESSION TWO: THE VIRTUAL SCHOLAR – WHAT BIG RESEARCH TELL US 2.
This will bring together the second group of three major contributors to research on the virtual scholar. Each speaker has been asked to explain what the research programmes they have directed or have been associated with have actually demonstrated about the research behaviour of scholars in the digital environment.

14-15 to 15-00 Mayur Amin, Director Research & Academic Relations, Elsevier
Mr. Amin will distil from the wealth of Elsevier research what his team have uncovered about the research behaviour online generally and over a broad range of disciplines.

15-00 to 15-45 Dr. Michael Jubb, Director Research Information Network
Dr. Jubb will draw together the evidence from the projects of the Research Information Network (see http://www.rin.ac.uk/) which was set up in 2005 to conduct research to develop the evidence base, to provide independent advice and guidance, and to promote change, to meet the needs of UK researchers. He will concentrate on what researchers are doing by way of "publishing" or sharing their data, and the issues they are rubbing up against in so doing.

15-45 to 16-05 Refreshment break in the Gavin de Beer Lecture Theatre

16-05 to 16-50 Dr. James Pringle, Thomson Scientific
Dr. Pringle will be speaking from within the Scientific business of Thomson Reuters, Here we have another large publisher well known for their high level of research into the needs of their marketplace. He will provide a different perspective to many of those who have spoken previously.

16-50 to 17-30 Questions for the session two speakers and general discussion about themes raised throughout the meeting. If time permits Anthony Watkinson will presume on a summary of main conclusions from the conference especially as far as further research is concerned