Implications of newer models of popularization of science for science library collection development When we look at science communication - communication about science or by scientists - we normally divide that into communication among scientists (scholarly communication) and communication to non-scientists (variously: popular communication of science, popularization, or the French - vulgarization). Within scholarly communication we have formal scholarly communication (journal articles, books, textbooks, etc.) and informal scholarly communication (sometimes conference papers, but basically any communication among scientists besides what's in formal - see my review). The formal/informal bit was really solidified in the Garvey and Griffith models [e.g., 1].

The "dominant model" of popularization developed over the 20th century (maybe starting in the 19th), but it has become obvious from SSS research that it no longer adequately models reality, if it ever did [2,3, 4]. Some of the proponents of the dominant model are the scientists themselves. The dominant models makes some very large assumptions. Namely:

• scientists produce genuine knowledge and then it is dumbed down, translated, distorted, simplified, and polluted
• the public is ignorant -- essentially a blank slate
• the information flows one way -- scientist to public [5]
  
• scientists don't want to talk to the public, but they will if they have to to get funding [4].

But we understand now from Paul's study [4] and others cited by her that:

• popularization is a continuum
  
• writing journal articles in general scholarly publications is a form a popularization
• textbooks are a form of popularization
• can be children's books, to heavy duty journal articles that require a high level of more general science knowledge
  
• science is so very specialized now, that anyone outside of the exact area needs a popularized view
• science professors need textbooks outside their particular field (more to come out of my current research project)
• scientists are big consumers of popularizations to get ideas from adjacent and disparate research areas for their own work as well as for their own popularizations or teaching
• popularizations are used by scientists to gain the support for their revolutionary ideas (in the Kuhnian sense) from other scientists

About Libraries
Academic and Research libraries in the sciences (in my experience) collect "popular works" as extra or entertainment reading. These are the first to go because they are seen as extra or not real science. When libraries collect these, they may be shelved in a special place for popular books, and not in with the subject area. Yet, these works can spark creativity and connections for the scientists. In a place with applied scientists who have their heads down in their work, these may serve the very important purpose of connecting the scientists to new relevant research.

But they have to be the right popularizations. There exist book reviews written by scientists of popular science books. How do librarians tell if this popularization is more on the sciencey end of the continuum? Probably from reviews in science magazines and journals as well as by the publisher. Maybe by browsing within the pages? Looking at the footnotes and citations. Hey, how about looking in the science blogosphere (hm, oh that's another post there...)!

Here's my point: research science libraries should make more effort to collect and market popular science materials. These materials should be an important part of the service we do -- plus they're cheap. Compare $25 for a popular book and minimum $125 for a specialized science book (yep, really).

Notes (in some strange half apa half other format):

[1] Garvey, W. D., & Griffith, B. C. (1967). Scientific communication as a social system. Science, 157(3792), 1011-1016.

[2] Whitley, R. (1985). Knowledge producers and knowledge acquirers: Popularisation as a relation between scientific fields and their publics. In T. Shinn, & R. Whitley (Eds.), Expository science: Forms and functions of popularisation (pp. 3-28). Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Pub. Co.

[3] Hilgartner, S. (1990). The dominant view of popularization: Conceptual problems, political uses. Social Studies of Science, 20(3), 519-539. (or actually probably Whitley in 1985, but I don't have e- access to this to check it)

[4] Paul, D. (2004). Spreading chaos: The role of popularizations in the diffusion of scientific ideas. Written Communication, 21(1), 32-68. DOI:10.1177/0741088303261035

[5] Myers, G. (2003). Discourse studies of scientific popularization: Questioning the boundaries. Discourse Studies, 5(2), 265-279. DOI:10.1177/1461445603005002006

Labels: collection development, science communication, science libraries

  ¶ 2:23 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |

  If "notes" or "letters" take a year to publish, do scientists have an obligation to self-archive? In many established science journals, there's a letters or notes section which is less thoroughly peer-reviewed, is some what preliminary, short, and is supposed to discuss new developments and preliminary reports of completed work. Some organizations have publications that consist only of these things.

Ok, so I was doing a little search today and ran across a "note" from the current issue of Journal of Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer. Woo-hoo, I thought... this must be new stuff. Cutting edge and all that.

So the "note" was received Jan 2006 and accepted April 2006. What? That's craziness. No doubt the in-group - the peers of the researchers and the more prestigious in that field - know about the work and have received updates through informal channels. The rest of the world, however, needs to hear about it in a journal.

I haven't looked into the policies of this particular publication -- but I think that you should only have an embargo from the date of acceptance, not the date of publication. Aren't some of the SAMPE journals like 2-3 years behind? I also think that the right thing to do is to self-archive the article with the citation and the accepted copy if the journal won't publish it for a year.

For publishers that put things online in advance of print this isn't really a big deal, of course, unless you're from another local institution here that gets journals only through database aggregators (w/12 month embargoes) and don't have access to the journal home pages -- but I digress.

Labels: science communication, science publishing, self archiving

  ¶ 12:12 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |

  Science Blogging, Public Communication of Science, and Public Intellectuals I've spent all day (literally) working on a literature review for an upcoming (hopefully) study of how and why scientists use blogs. I'm going back through previous research on blogs in general, personal web pages of scientists, informal scholarly communication, personal information management, and public communication of science. All fascinating stuff -- that's the problem, really, that I keep getting lost and wandering off :) Now I'm just fried so I have to go work more on IR stuff (ha!).

Anyway, to the point(s). First, Lamb and Davidson (2005) found that senior researchers don't pay attention or really worry much about web presence -- they want to be known by their publication record and sort of think their time could be better spent. They found that junior researchers searched for people's web pages and also maintained up to date and detailed personal web pages. This is interesting given Barjak's (2006) findings that senior researchers and those who were more productive used the web more. I think there are some details there to tease out.

My other point is how much I enjoyed reading Cohen (2006) and Gregg (2006).
Cohen (2006) discusses the criticism of blogs as narcissistic and/or as (poor/new/revolutionary) journalism. He argues that blogs are an emerging thing which is "subjected to the gravity of the familiar" - IOW that they really are different and the views of 'public' is different but they are judged as if they are trying to be something else. They straddle this public-private thing... well if you're interested, you had better read the paper, because my toasted brain can't do it justice right now. (of course, your library has to have a subscription to the journal for you to read it)

Gregg (2006) brings up how scholars blogging make the work life of the scholar banal and ordinary (her words). This struck me as Kyvik (2005) was saying that one of the reasons for public communication of science is to make visible the invisible work of the scientist - non-scientists don't know what scientists do so may be less pro-science and less likely to fund science. Anyway, she also talked about institutional constraints and views of "professionalism" getting in the way of public communication of scholarship and public intellectualism (I went on a whole long side trip there looking for more information on the exact definition of public intellectual and getting involved in French history....) I guess in her field, cultural studies, there's been a lot of criticism about not being "out there" enough. Also, lots of really good stuff here, which I am, at this point, incapable of summarizing.

Barjak, F. (2006). The role of the internet in informal scholarly communication. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(10), 1350-1367.
Cohen, K. R. (2006). A welcome for blogs. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 20(2), 161-173.
Gregg, M. (2006). Feeling ordinary: Blogging as conversational scholarship. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 20(2), 147-160.
Kyvik, S. (2005). Popular science publishing and contributions to public discourse among university faculty. Science Communication, 26, 288-311.
Lamb, R., & Davidson, E. (2005). Information and communication technology challenges to scientific professional identity. Information Society, 21(1), 1-24.

Labels: science blogging, science communication

  ¶ 5:25 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |