Dear Ken and Colleagues,
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and concerns. They greatly contribute to the pragmatic discussion on what approach to take to the challenges and opportunities before us. As your concerns focus on the cons I will take a positive, designerly intentional stance until the most desirable "form" for bibliographic referencing to support design thinking, design and design research emerges. I have inserted my thoughts into your post in response to your concerns. I will soon post a more contextualized reply to help situate the proposal and encourage support for it.
On Feb 8, 2013, at 11:34 PM, Ken Friedman wrote:
> Dear Chuck,
>
> While I understand the idea, a project to extract bibliographies from PhD thesis projects seems to me unmanageable.
Let's see.
>
> Bibliography projects require editorial skill with careful reading of source documents and selective decisions on what to include. While an editorial board of some kind allows for expertise, the time required to collect, read, and select among thesis projects takes a lot more work than the yield would justify. No one with the expertise required would want to read all those thesis projects to decide what to include. There is too much to read.
The proposal does not seek to create or edit bibliographic projects, or read abstracts or complete dissertations. There is no need to do that to establish a valuable reference database as I will indicate. You did not mention the lightly used dissertation database previously supported by the Australian Government that you mentioned offline. A bibliographic database is not the same thing at all,Those were different times; data mining and social networks with soft links to other large and smaller networks of distributed resources were no. I'm guessing that the content was all Australian and not global. Scale and connectivity and a well formed clientele (the PhD Listserve) were probably not there yet. Times have changed.
> Most people earn a PhD to improve their career opportunities.
Not always; I took it to allow me to think about what I wanted to think about.
> Few go on to do research or to publish. Scientometric and bibliometric studies repeatedly indicate that of all people who earn a PhD, around 25% never publish anything after completing the PhD. Another 50% publish once and only once in a full career. The remaining 25% do all the rest.
Past measures are not always predictive. Especially when there have been major revolutions in social networks, computation, search engines, communication, collaboration, gender equality, etc. I strongly believe that anyone who has studied architecture or designing of any kind has acquired broad scope and useful knowledge that can be applied in many ways. PhD's who don't publish don't cease to exist. They might even contribute more to society or the quality of life than if they did.
> The PhD is a journeyman’s work piece; the student develops research skills, learns to apply them, and the thesis demonstrates that he or she can do a credible job. The degree is a license to practice research and to teach at research universities.
A journeyman's work piece? A license to do research? A risk free life in a highly regulated, intellectually and culturally limited world?
> The reference list of the average PhD thesis is not an expert-level bibliography. It should be, but generally it is not. The thesis is a specific kind of demonstration project, and much of the material across thesis projects involves repeatingwell-known central texts, including methods texts that have nothing to do with the thesis topic.
One great thing about a bibliographic database of any scale and contextualization is that it provides ways to see what is being cited for what purposes and when. Such books invite further development and define markets. If books are thought to be relevant, in the mind that cited them, they are. The quality of a bibliography might even become a focus for research that would improve them. Libraries usually cull their unused books, but this isn't necessary in unlimited digital repositories. They are just ignored until someone thinks they might apply to their concerns. To me that is a lot better way to go than to have elite repression of information they don't want to consider.
>
> The authors of the best thesis projects nearly always repurpose the thesis, writing up the findings as journal articles or monographs. This suggests that a project to review doctoral theses to mine the bibliographies would consume more time than the yield would justify. The valuable work will show up in peer-reviewed journal articles or monographs from good publishers.
As I have suggested one does not need to review a thesis to mine a bibliography. They simply need to apply their own informed intelligence.
>
> Your bibliography was compiled with the expert judgment of a half century in the field. That’s why it is valuable. Two dozen serious bibliographies of this kind are worth more than two thousand PhD thesis reference lists.
> What the field needs are selective bibliographies, based on expert judgment and careful reflection. That’s what makes your bibliography valuable, and that’s why Teena’s bibliography will be valuable.
>
> It is a better use of expert time to develop and polish a selected bibliography than to read a hundred thesis projects to find the one reference list worth publishing.
I agree, but see no reason to deny exposure to less experienced or expert people, who will recognize just by citation numbers, the need to improve or edit their bibliographies.
>
> Every now and then, this kind of proposal goes round on the list. Despite the arguments for why it should work, it has not happened yet.
And won't happen when the view is elitist, and closed.
> I can explain my view on why it doesn’t work and won’t, but that’s not my point here.
The explanation should be forthcoming if it is to help our understanding of how to go forward.
> My point is that one serious scholar can produce a decent bibliography in far less time than the same scholar would use mining a stack of PhD theses. And an expert bibliography is selective, thematically appropriate, and structured.
>
> We would do better to invest our time in writing selective bibliographies and making them available than to look for project funding and software systems to bring book lists together or mine PhD thesis reference lists.
Repetition clarifies your point?
> To put my money where my mouth is, I’ve posted a bibliography on hermeneutics to my Academia.edu page. This bibliography was good in 2006 – I plan to bring it up to date by the end of the year and post the new version when it is ready. As it is, it runs 20 pages, starting with a good selection of classic books on the topic followed by a few hundred articles on hermeneutics, hermeneutics and narrative, hermeneutical research methods, and hermeneutical phenomenology.There is also material that can be applied to design and the social sciences even though it was written for theologians and philosophers. You’ll find it at:
>
> http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
Way to go Ken! Doesn't it make you feel better. Think positive. Others might too.
>
> My hat is off to you, Chuck, for putting forward a useful bibliography and getting this conversation under way. I’ve put forward a bibliography now, and Teena is at work. What we need are a few more colleagues who will do the real work of preparing selective, well-structured thematic bibliographies. These can’t simply be mined from thesis projects and they are far more than book lists – they are purposeful, selective, thematic, structured, and organized with a usable citation system.
Again the mining of thesis projects has not been proposed. The mining of their bibliographies and abstracts has been.
>
> Software can’t do this work. Scholars can.
And the education of scholars can move forward, if they learn to develop similar bibliographies that are focused, original and well organized. That might occur if all bibliographies are accessible, contextualized and searchable from a shared database with soft links to their source document.
>
> Warm wishes,
>
> Ken
An equally cordial reply, Please give my regards to Yrjo
Chuck
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