JSTOR reports there were about 300 articles on Shakespeare a year in scholarly journals in 1997 to 2006; none of them are cited, nor any since then and only one before then. This is typical as well of political and military history. Wiki editors are not using scholarly journals. I assume that is because they are unaware of them. ~~~~
On Thu, 03 May 2012 03:41:59 -0600, Richard Jensen wrote:
JSTOR reports there were about 300 articles on Shakespeare a year in scholarly journals in 1997 to 2006; none of them are cited, nor any since then and only one before then. This is typical as well of political and military history. Wiki editors are not using scholarly journals. I assume that is because they are unaware of them. ~~~~
But is there smth in these publications which is not in the standard textbooks and should be necessarily cited for the general audience? Shakespeare is pretty well covered by textbooks, and from what I know there were no breakthroughs in the last 50 years at least. We can not put all the info in one article.
Cheers Yaroslav
On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 7:41 PM, Richard Jensen rjensen@uic.edu wrote:
JSTOR reports there were about 300 articles on Shakespeare a year in scholarly journals in 1997 to 2006; none of them are cited, nor any since then and only one before then. This is typical as well of political and military history. Wiki editors are not using scholarly journals. I assume that is because they are unaware of them. ~~~~
They are not aware of the use of scholarly articles for use on Shakespeare's article or period? If period, there are many places where it would be unlikely that an article could be sourced well using scholarly texts. Think most biographies of living people. Think sports. (And if you're going to do sports, the best histories are found in books.) A lot of this changes from discipline to discipline, topic to topic. (MEDRS generally prohibits the use of citing primary source research on English Wikipedia for medical articles, so it would be inappropriate to do so.)
In the case of Shakespeare, what of those 300 recent scholarly works do you think are seminal to put into the article? Are there any that would likely be problematic because of [[WP:FRINGE]]?
The reasons why people don't use academic articles are more complicated than your simplistic comment would suggest. I spent about three hours crawling through a library looking for research related to Lauren Jackson and I can tell you none of the academic work would likely apply. I doubt you could source an article on it.
On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 2:41 AM, Richard Jensen rjensen@uic.edu wrote:
JSTOR reports there were about 300 articles on Shakespeare a year in scholarly journals in 1997 to 2006; none of them are cited, nor any since then and only one before then. This is typical as well of political and military history. Wiki editors are not using scholarly journals. I assume that is because they are unaware of them.
Not at all.
Wikipedians are *very much* aware that these journals exist. They do not have access to them, because they are unaffiliated scholars. Dozens of editors want access to this content,[1] but can't have it because JSTOR locks it down. They just now started letting people access content that is in the public domain!
If as an academic, you see a problem where peer reviewed content is not cited in Wikipedia, I would strongly encourage you to join the movement lobbying for openness in scholarly work. Otherwise, you're complaining about a problem that Wikipedians do not have the power to fix, because academics tacitly support a system in which knowledge is kept in the hands of the few who can pay for it.
On May 3, 2012, at 11:17 AM, Steven Walling wrote:
I would strongly encourage you to join the movement lobbying for openness in scholarly work. Otherwise, you're complaining about a problem that Wikipedians do not have the power to fix, because academics tacitly support a system in which knowledge is kept in the hands of the few who can pay for it.
Wow. I never made this connection. I'd always thought of the issue as the somewhat idealistic:
scholar => citizen
But you are absolutely right, the more immediate need is:
scholar => wikipedian => citizen
Of course citizens and wikipedians are sometimes hard to distinguish. But, with the distinction made, the path is more believably important.
On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 2:29 PM, Ward Cunningham ward@c2.com wrote:
On May 3, 2012, at 11:17 AM, Steven Walling wrote:
I would strongly encourage you to join the movement lobbying for openness in scholarly work. Otherwise, you're complaining about a problem that Wikipedians do not have the power to fix, because academics tacitly support a system in which knowledge is kept in the hands of the few who can pay for it.
Wow. I never made this connection. I'd always thought of the issue as the somewhat idealistic:
scholar => citizen
But you are absolutely right, the more immediate need is:
scholar => wikipedian => citizen
Of course citizens and wikipedians are sometimes hard to distinguish. But, with the distinction made, the path is more believably important.
Ward, as ever you have a talent for breaking complex ideas down into clear statements :) I think this is right, yes, is a position that we can get better at articulating as a community.
This is self-serving, but I just gave a short talk about this topic last week: http://www.phoebeayers.info/phlog/?p=2377
cheers, Phoebe
Yes -- Wikipedia is an exercise in knowledge mobilization, not knowledge creation.
While there are some exceptions, most scholars are seeking to create knowledge (and academic literature is part of that process -- hence rarely is it useful for knowledge mobilization).
We don't expect a physicist (or an electrical engineer) to be able wire a house (or even write instructions for how to do it) -- and we don't expect an academic paper to useful for someone wanting to know how to plan wiring.
Researchers/scholars, inventors, product developers and users are usually different people.
Wikis don't eliminate the roles -- they just make the different roles open to more
...
On May 3, 2012, at 5:29 PM, Ward Cunningham wrote:
On May 3, 2012, at 11:17 AM, Steven Walling wrote:
I would strongly encourage you to join the movement lobbying for openness in scholarly work. Otherwise, you're complaining about a problem that Wikipedians do not have the power to fix, because academics tacitly support a system in which knowledge is kept in the hands of the few who can pay for it.
Wow. I never made this connection. I'd always thought of the issue as the somewhat idealistic:
scholar => citizen
But you are absolutely right, the more immediate need is:
scholar => wikipedian => citizen
Of course citizens and wikipedians are sometimes hard to distinguish. But, with the distinction made, the path is more believably important.
_______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto:Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
On Thu, 3 May 2012 20:51:27 -0400, Brian Butler wrote:
Yes -- Wikipedia is an exercise in knowledge mobilization, not knowledge creation.
While there are some exceptions, most scholars are seeking to create knowledge (and academic literature is part of that process -- hence rarely is it useful for knowledge mobilization).
We don't expect a physicist (or an electrical engineer) to be able wire a house (or even write instructions for how to do it) -- and we don't expect an academic paper to useful for someone wanting to know how to plan wiring.
Researchers/scholars, inventors, product developers and users are usually different people.
This is actually not correct. At least in natural sciences we have review articles - long papers which summarize the existing knowledge in a particular field. These articles are usually much appreciated by the community, get widely read and cited. My best cited paper - such a review article - is cites 15 times more than my second best cited paper, which is a regular article. We also write books (sometimes even textbooks) and contribute to encyclopedias.
Cheers Yaroslav
All fields have reviews, textbooks, popularization books, and encyclopedias ... but there are few scholars or disciplines that see creation of these resources (as valuable as they are) as their primary mission.
For this discussion it's important for us to see that there are many ways in which this is highly functional.
Telling craftsmen (people?) to pay attention to end users needs rarely results in better design and it severely disrupts their social structures which are focused on intrinsic values. In contrast, "entrepreneurs"/product creators/etc. are very focused on the match between artifacts and needs -- and their communities have very different ways of organizing and motivating participants.
While these distinctions are all a matter of degree, in most cases people (and groups) find it very difficult to be both/and.
...
On May 4, 2012, at 2:42 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:
On Thu, 3 May 2012 20:51:27 -0400, Brian Butler wrote:
Yes -- Wikipedia is an exercise in knowledge mobilization, not knowledge creation.
While there are some exceptions, most scholars are seeking to create knowledge (and academic literature is part of that process -- hence rarely is it useful for knowledge mobilization).
We don't expect a physicist (or an electrical engineer) to be able wire a house (or even write instructions for how to do it) -- and we don't expect an academic paper to useful for someone wanting to know how to plan wiring.
Researchers/scholars, inventors, product developers and users are usually different people.
This is actually not correct. At least in natural sciences we have review articles - long papers which summarize the existing knowledge in a particular field. These articles are usually much appreciated by the community, get widely read and cited. My best cited paper - such a review article - is cites 15 times more than my second best cited paper, which is a regular article. We also write books (sometimes even textbooks) and contribute to encyclopedias.
Cheers Yaroslav
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
This is an EXCELLENT email, Steven. +1 to it!
Luca
On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 11:17 AM, Steven Walling swalling@wikimedia.orgwrote:
On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 2:41 AM, Richard Jensen rjensen@uic.edu wrote:
JSTOR reports there were about 300 articles on Shakespeare a year in scholarly journals in 1997 to 2006; none of them are cited, nor any since then and only one before then. This is typical as well of political and military history. Wiki editors are not using scholarly journals. I assume that is because they are unaware of them.
Not at all.
Wikipedians are *very much* aware that these journals exist. They do not have access to them, because they are unaffiliated scholars. Dozens of editors want access to this content,[1] but can't have it because JSTOR locks it down. They just now started letting people access content that is in the public domain!
If as an academic, you see a problem where peer reviewed content is not cited in Wikipedia, I would strongly encourage you to join the movement lobbying for openness in scholarly work. Otherwise, you're complaining about a problem that Wikipedians do not have the power to fix, because academics tacitly support a system in which knowledge is kept in the hands of the few who can pay for it.
-- Steven Walling https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
If as an academic, you see a problem where peer reviewed content is not cited in Wikipedia, I would strongly encourage you to join the movement lobbying for openness in scholarly work.
A distributed version of keepgrabbing2.py and a little bit of civil disobedience on the part of some scholars and wikipedians would go a long ways towards cutting this particular Gordian knot. (We could call the project KeepGrabbing@Home --- the search for intelligent life on THIS planet.)
You may well disagree with this approach. In fact, I see two options; the other may be attractive. (But I don't see any reason to imagine that "lobbying" will get the job done.)
The two options:
(1) building an infrastructure that makes the old one obsolete; (2) or recognizing the non-obsolescence of the old system, and stealing whatever it has to offer.
Both courses can be pursued in parallel.
On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 11:17 AM, Steven Walling swalling@wikimedia.orgwrote:
They do not have access to them, because they are unaffiliated scholars. Dozens of editors want access to this content,[1] but can't have it because JSTOR locks it down.
A friend pointed out to me offlist that there is a slight error in my statement which merits correcting: JSTOR is not necessarily to blame here, since they are simply an archive, and have to fit in with how journal publishers license their content.
So FWIW, the real solution probably starts with open access journals like those published by PLoS. Wikipedia could do a lot more to encourage use of the the open access content that already is available.
They are more than an archive. They impose a very hefty surcharge on their own account, beyond what they need pay for licensing the backfiles from the publishers. They spent the money very usefully in the past: they have scanned and archived hundreds of thousands of pages print journals at a time nobody else was doing it sand no electronic backfiles existed, themselves developing the technology. They continue to archive additional print publications--but since there are so many people prepared to use what is now a mature technology without charging anybody for it, perhaps this role is no longer essential.
And making available backfiles that publishers have already digitized costs very little by comparison. But their publishers are by and large not profit-making commercial enterprises: they are primarily scholarly societies, some of them prosperous, but most very precariously funded themselves.
On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 7:06 PM, Steven Walling swalling@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 11:17 AM, Steven Walling swalling@wikimedia.org wrote:
They do not have access to them, because they are unaffiliated scholars. Dozens of editors want access to this content,[1] but can't have it because JSTOR locks it down.
A friend pointed out to me offlist that there is a slight error in my statement which merits correcting: JSTOR is not necessarily to blame here, since they are simply an archive, and have to fit in with how journal publishers license their content.
So FWIW, the real solution probably starts with open access journals like those published by PLoS. Wikipedia could do a lot more to encourage use of the the open access content that already is available.
-- Steven Walling https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
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