Innovating Communication in Scholarship (ICIS)

A UC Davis IFHA Project

Powerful changes are affecting traditional systems of research publication, academic credit, research quality assessment, and the meaning of “publication”:  the increasing scale and interdisciplinary nature of collaborations; the growing reliance on cyberinfrastructure for producing and disseminating research; the impact of Open Access models and economic dysfunction on traditional publishing; the transformation of data from evidence for research results to research output itself; new metrics of impact; new forms of misconduct and detection; doubts about peer review as quality guarantor; the impact of intellectual property on the content and timing of publications.

The “Innovation in Scholarly Communication” (ICIS) project will analyze these changes and help shape the future of scholarly communication.  The ICIS project is a collaboration between Mario Biagioli (UC Davis School of Law), MacKenzie Smith (UC Davis University Librarian) and Jonathan Eisen (UC Davis Genome Center).  In collaboration with colleagues from many departments across campus,  we will focus on three sets of issues emblematic of these changes:  1) “New Models of Scholarly Communication”;   2) “New Misconduct and New Opportunities”, and  3) “Communicating with Data.”

The scholarly communication system affects scholars and scientists across all fields and levels.  It also frames the policies of administrators evaluating and funding them, and of libraries confronting new forms of scholarly communication based on new technologies of discourse delivery.  These trends are profoundly changing the role of the university, and we want to lead their direction.

This project is funded by the UC Davis Interdisciplinary Frontiers in the Humanities and the Arts (IFHA) Program.