Reinventing academic publishing online. Part II: A socio-technical vision

Abstract

Part I of this paper outlined the limitations of feudal academic knowledge exchange and predicted its decline as cross-disciplinary research expands. Part II now suggests the SOCIO-TECHNICAL DESIGN Systems theoryThe previous paper defined a knowledge exchange system (KES) as one that aims to develop, discriminate and disseminate human knowledge. An electronic KES that works across a computer network is a socio-technical system (STS) -a social system sitting on a technical base. Email is a simple example, where people communicate socially using computer technology. More complex examples include social networks like Facebook, wikis like Wikipedia, and electronic trade systems like EBay. In contrast, sending a physical letter by the post is a socio-physical system -social communication on a

The effect of format on performance: Editing text in print versus digital formats

“…Interestingly, Chang and Ley () reported that the students who preferred reading academic text from the monitor were the higher achieving students. Usually, readers indicate that they prefer the printed version of papers because of the sense of ownership provided by the printed text (Armitage et al , ; Griffith, Krampf and Palmer, ). In recent years, with the penetration of digital reading and writing technologies into higher education, submission of academic work in a digital format has become common practice in most institutions (Heider et al , ; Nelson, ; Thayer et al , ; Whitworth and Friedman, ). Consequently, students are required to submit seminar work, assignments and even examinations in digital format, and instructors are required to read, annotate and grade them in front of a digital display (Bus and Neuman, ).…”

Reviewing and Ethics in the Online Academy

“…The academy of the future is here, as open-access transforms publishing, MOOCs transform pedagogy and academic communications become ever-increasingly digital and web-based (Cope & Phillips, 2009;Gardner & Green, 2014;Whitworth & Friedman, 2009). As academics in education, we use digital tools, such as computers and online platforms, as means to do what academics once did by hand or in person -rather than being interested in the Internet, apps, etc.…”

How to Create an Innovation Accelerator

“…This is reflected by a number of contributions and events [9,10,18,20,21,22,23,24,25] and by the fact that Europe has lately been funding projects addressing this issue [26,27,28].…”