Dear Ken and others,
Thanks to all for these great resources :)
In building resources for research and scholarship, some of the issues that are brought forth are the same that we have in relation to all current internet resources - things like sustainabililty, ethics, ownership, and control/governance.
When using something like Zotero or Mendeley that are integrated with a web based database, there are issues such as
- will I be able to manage my personal database without (all or selected parts of it) it being uploaded to a service against my intention / permission
- will I infringe on someone's rights if I include a document in my own database and the system uploads it to the web
- will the system disclose my activities to others in ways that I do not like/approve (e.g. visits to pages, downloads of documents) (beyond being sometimes annoying, these can in some cases be even dangerous and e.g. lead to persecution)
- is it possible/likely that the system changes its behavior in a way that a) breaks my practices b) becomes unacceptable for me
- will I be able to migrate my data to some other system and preserve my significant investment in the practice
Some of the actors in the field are clearly commercial enterprises that are trying to create a Facebook for Academia - something that people become dependent on and can not migrate from. I feel that e.g. for Academia.edu to require that anyone downloading a paper must be first a logged in member is driven by a business incentive and is not in the spirit of open access. There were also other features that brought to my mind Facebook's strategies of taking people's info and actions and using it to attract more members without giving one the control to decide what actions are and are not visible, that made me decide that I will not want to become an active Academia user.
Please do not take this as a targeted attack on Academia - I have the same doubts about Mendeley or Zotero or any other such system. I have not yet found a social media system whose governance model I could trust. The systems also document very superficially and vaguely how and when they upload material and how you can exactly control that, and in their terms of use they tend to reserve the possibilities for them to keep anything you upload, use it any way they want, and to change the way the system works in any way that pleases them, without telling you or giving you any way to have control over what they can do. Also, they are usually based in some other jurisdiction than your own, which makes it practically impossible for you to ever have any legal recourse to correct any misdeeds by them.
I am also not trying to propose that it is a bad idea to enroll and upload materials - it is important to build these shared resources, and some of these systems promise great help in that, despite of the problems I mention. I am just pointing out that this is a very large societal problem that we are also scratching the surface of, as we are thinking about where should our academic community construct its own infrastructure. It is a large design problem that we as design specialists could hopefully appreciate and try to contribute for solutions, in theory and in practice as users of these systems.
Maybe some future systems could also have a novel, better governance model, where the concerns of users could have impact. Also, a system could be designed and built to fully support migration to any other system.
Maybe a non-commercial cooperative by academic institutions could build or buy an open, modular, open source system that could become a stable, reliable and fair environment for this development - it would be in the interest of humanity.
Meanwhile I also continue to search for the best tool for myself ;)
cheers, Kari-Hans
------------------
Kari-Hans Kommonen
Director, Arki research group
Media Lab, Dept of Media
Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture
On Feb 7, 2013, at 9:44 AM, Ken Friedman wrote:
> Dear Colleagues,
>
> Been following the conversation on a bibliographical resource space with interest. While I can see the value of a place to which we can upload bibliographies, I'm not sure what value this has as a specific project for Terry — we can use Academia.edu for this purpose.
>
> The real challenge is some way to upload and organize bibliographies to render them usable across common platforms. That is, what would be genuinely useful would be some way to develop an EndNote bibliography into which people are able — and willing! -- to provide full bibliographic data together with notes that render the items usable. I can't imagine Terry making this kind of service available. The problem with Zotero and Medeley as well is that few people are willing — willing — to invest this kind of work in making raw bibliographic data more useful than a booklist. A bibliography is systematic and thematic — that is why Chuck's bibliography is more valuable to the field as contrasted with a series of disorganized titles in a book list. But if all we're talking about is a place to post individual bibliographies either within articles or in raw form as bibliographies, Academiu.edu is all we need.
>
> For now, Chuck's use of Academia.edu has inspired me. I have uploaded 14 papers, mostly on design, and some on Fluxus. My bibliography on design thinking appears in the first four papers:
>
> "Theory Construction in Design Research: Criteria, Approaches, and Methods" (2003)
> "Models of Design" (2012)
> "Creating Design Knowledge: From Research into Practice" (2000)
> "Design Science and Design Education" (1997)
>
> I've been working on a project that revisits and addresses some of these issues, but for now, these include most of the useful entries I'd place in a bibliography on design thinking, problem solving, and systems thinking.
>
> You'll find these papers at URL:
>
> http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
>
> Yours,
>
> Ken
>
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