Clifford Lynch has published "The 'Digital' Scholarship Disconnect" in EDUCAUSE Review.
Here's an excerpt:
Still, in all of these examples of digital scholarship, a key challenge remains: How can we curate and manage data now that so much of it is being produced and collected in digital form? How can we ensure that it will be discovered, shared, and reused to advance scholarship? We are struggling through the establishment of institutions, funding models, policies and practices, and even new legal requirements and community norms—ranging from cultural changes about who can use data (and when) to economic decisions about who should pay for what. Some disciplines are less contentious than others: for example, astronomy data is technically well-understood and usually not terribly sensitive. Reputation, rather than commercial reward, is wrapped up in astronomical discoveries, and there is no institutional review board to ensure the safety and dignity of astronomical objects. On the other hand, human subjects and their data raise an enormous number of questions about informed consent, privacy, and anonymization; when there are genetic markers or possible treatments to be discovered or validated, serious high-value commercial interests may be at stake. All of these factors tend to work against the free and convenient sharing of data.
Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap
