Table Of ContentThe Digital Scholar
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The Digital Scholar
How Technology Is Transforming
Scholarly Practice
Martin Weller
B L O O M S B U R Y A C A D E M I C
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First published in 2011 by
Bloomsbury Academic
an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY, UK
and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
Copyright © Martin Weller 2011
This work is published subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence.
You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution
to the copyright holder and the publisher. For permission to publish commercial versions
please contact Bloomsbury Academic.
CIP records for this book are available from the British Library and the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-1-84966-497-4 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-84966-617-6 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-84966-625-1 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-84966-626-8 (ebook PDF)
This book is produced using paper that is made from wood grown in managed,
sustainable forests. It is natural, renewable and recyclable. The logging and
manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of
the country of origin.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group, Bodmin, Cornwall
Cover image: © PeterPhoto123/Shutterstock
www.bloomsburyacademic.com
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To Ellen
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
1 Digital, Networked and Open 1
2 Is the Revolution Justifi ed? 14
3 Lesons from Other Sectors 29
4 The Nature of Scholarship 41
5 Researchers and New Technology 52
6 Interdisciplinarity and Permeable Boundaries 64
7 Public Engagement as Colateral Damage 76
8 A Pedagogy of Abundance 85
9 Openes in Education 96
10 Network Weather 14
1 Reward and Tenure 128
12 Publishing 141
13 The Medals of Our Defeats 154
14 Digital Resilience 168
References 185
Index 19
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A cknowledgements
h is book has grown out of a number of converging projects and interests,
some of these related to my institution, the Open University (OU), some from
T research and others from my online network.
I n my workplace at the Institute of Educational Technology at the OU, there are
a number of colleagues who I have worked with on various projects and talked
through many of the issues in this book. These include Patrick McAndrew, Grainne
Conole, Eileen Scanlon, Doug Clow, Nick Pearce, Josie Taylor, Will Woods, Sam
Kinsley and Karen Cropper amongst many others. Elsewhere in the OU, Tony Hirst
has acted as my archetype for a digital scholar, and John Naughton showed me the
power of blogging before they were even called blogs. I’d also like to express my
gratitude to all the colleagues who have patiently attended workshops where I have
worked through these ideas and the various senior managers who have indulged
half-baked project plans and supported the writing of this book.
M y online network features far too many people to list, and I fear I will offend
people by not including them, but it would be remiss of me not to highlight the
infl uence of early bloggers and online contributors, including Alan Cann, George
Siemens, Josie Fraser, Scott Leslie, Brian Lamb, Brian Kelly, Alan Levine and Jim
Groom.
I am aware that evenings when I should have been giving my family my full
attention were occupied with writing, or ‘playing with stuff’, so thank you to my wife
and daughter for allowing me to get on with it.
B ut most of all, my thanks go to all those who constitute my network, who, on
a daily basis, share resources, thoughts, links, insights and poor jokes and thus
enrich my professional and personal life.
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1 Digital, Networked and Open
ad, you know that book you’re writing, what’s it about?’ my daughter asked,
‘ Das I walked her to school.
T he ‘elevator pitch’ is always diffi cult for academics, who prefer to take their time
to explain things in depth and give all sides to an argument. An elevator pitch for a
nine-year-old is almost impossible.
‘ Well,’ I pondered, ‘it’s about how using technology like the Internet, dad’s
blog, and Wikipedia is changing the way people like daddy work.’ Having recently
completed a school project, she was well acquainted with Wikipedia.
S he considered this and then concluded, ‘da-aaaaad, no one’s going to want
to read that!’
I fear she may be right, but I realised I have been writing this book for the past
four years, mainly through my blog, which I have been using to explore what the
advent of technologies, which offer new ways of communicating, collaborating and
creating knowledge, mean for higher education. I fi gured if it had kept me interested
for this long, it might be useful to share some of that with others.
A tale of two books
S o what are these new ways of working that I had hinted at to my daughter? I’ll
start with an example that is in your hands now – the process of writing this book.
Six years ago I wrote my last book, and halfway through writing this, I thought I’d
compare the two processes. Below is a list of some of the tools and resources I
used to write this book:
● B ooks – they were accessed via the library but increasingly as e-books, and
one audiobook.
● E -journals – my university library has access to a wide range of databases,
but I also made frequent use of others through tools such as Google Scholar
and Mendeley.
● D elicious/social bookmarking – as well as searching for key terms I would
‘forage’ in the bookmarks of people I know and trust, who make their
collections available.
● B logs – I subscribe to more than 100 blogs in Google Reader, which I try to read
regularly, but in addition I have cited and used many posts from other blogs.
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