Digital Information: Order or Anarchy?

Citation

McCulloch, E. (2011), "Digital Information: Order or Anarchy?", Library Review, Vol. 60 No. 5, pp. 438-441. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242531111135362

Comprising a collection of individually written chapters, Digital Information: Order or Anarchy? boasts an impressive list of prolific contributors, representing a wide range of perspectives and an international scope. The inclusion of librarians, publishers and a legal expert is welcome and encourages readers to think more objectively about the issues in hand, rather than from their own subjective perspective. This helps the reader to appreciate that a solution or practice in one field (e.g. librarianship) may not always be acceptable to another (e.g. publishing). The title of the book is somewhat general given that the main focus of the type of digital information under discussion is essentially that relating to scholarly communication, although the preface does note that “the issues tackled are pertinent to the broader information industry including trade publishers, bookshops, public libraries and national libraries”. With the title posing a question I was looking forward to being presented with some potential answers as to the state of the future of online scholarly communication.

Overall, the book presents many interesting discussions about e‐books, copyright, digitisation, institutional repositories, open access, publishers' business models, mash‐ups and personalisation, and acknowledges the current position in the UK, Europe, the USA and Australasia. Relevant studies, projects and initiatives are referenced throughout and the text warns that particular measures must be in place to avoid future anarchy. Metadata for accessibility, effective navigation, the use of standards, copyright restrictions and preservation frameworks, to give some examples of measures mentioned, are deemed integral to the future of online scholarly communication.

Some discussions are thought provoking. For example, the rise in digital information and reduced usage of print‐based texts brings into sharp focus the continuing role of academic, public and national libraries. It quickly makes you realise that things could go too far. National libraries have a remit to preserve materials in perpetuity; will this be possible in an all digital world; will it be necessary; will other agencies fulfil that role?; will the organisation of and accessibility to information be compromised as a result?

For me, the strongest chapter of the book is undoubtedly Chapter 3 by Ian Russell, presenting the publisher's view of scholarly publishing. Within its first two sentences Ian identifies a number of tangible and key issues to be tackled: “For the future of digital information to be orderly, that information must be discoverable, accessible, structured, interoperable, linked, semantically tagged and well identified; it must have clear provenance and good version control; and it must be preserved and curated. There must also be a means of bestowing authority on the corpus of literature in order to give the readers a quick but effective way of assessing the importance or likely importance of anything that they come across.” Ian also shows courage in his conviction stating that “There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that the future of digital scholarly information will be orderly”. He goes on to discuss possibilities for order afforded by the semantic web and presents some of the barriers that need to be overcome to avoid chaos, including a discussion of the unbounded growth of folksonomies, my own bête noire of Web 2.0. Before closing his chapter, Ian Russell presents four possible future scenarios of the open access movement – subsistence, subvention, substitution and subversion – and assesses the feasibility of each. Only the fourth, subversion, is deemed likely to ensue in chaos, which is reassuring.

Chapter 5 by Alastair Dunning, on the “next steps for public sector digitization” also raises some forward‐thinking ideas particularly within the section on “new tools and standards for content sharing” where RDF, APIs and the semantic web are given prominence.

Another valuable chapter is 7, by Wilma Mossink and Lorraine Estelle, which discusses ownership of content in the digital environment and very helpfully brings together legal positions in different countries. The authors recognise that intellectual property should not be protected to the extent that material becomes overly restricted.

This book contains a lot of “this is how things were” and “this is how things are now”. We used to use an OPAC, now we use Google. Owing to the continued broad focus on where we are now, much repetition occurs throughout the book. In fact multiple chapters discuss open access, institutional repositories, the journal pricing crisis and the future of Google, which is a little frustrating. The definition of open access even occurs twice within Chapter 1.

Although many aspects of digital information are flagged up by the authors as having the potential to descend into anarchy, perhaps with the exception of Chapters 3, 5 and 6, suggestions as to how such disorder can be avoided are a little scant. Even within the book's Preface, instead of presenting the digital world as a dynamic and innovative environment full of possibility, the editors discuss the fact that fear of copyright infringement may limit the extent of digitisation work undertaken, and they state that:

The rights of authors and their publishers need to be protected to ensure vibrant and economically sustainable creative industries. At the same time, policy needs to change, especially for the educational sector, to ensure innovative use of content and the creation of new digital knowledge.

Almost ten years on from the inception of open access, we surely know this by now; what we really need to work towards is a means of ensuring authors have rights, protecting publishers and changing policy. I had rather hoped that this book would do more to suggest ways forward rather than just documenting a series of issues yet to be overcome. I am afraid statements like “Librarians and publishers do need to find a solution to the current dilemma” and “A careful balance is needed to ensure order rather than anarchy” does little to hearten the reader in thinking that we are making progress on this front. The somewhat circular argument that access needs to change and that change is needed to provide better access to information is a little lacklustre. Surely the longer such indecision or lack of action continues, anarchy will ensue by default?

In addition to a lack of future direction in some chapters, statements are made that I doubt very much hold true, particularly within the first chapter. Examples from page 18 are:

It seems clear that as long as universities, colleges and schools exist as physical entities there will continue to be a requirement for information to inform and support learning, teaching and research.

and:

Unless all information becomes “toll‐free” (and that seems unlikely in the short to medium term) then there will continue to be a need for e‐resource acquisition, organization and management […].

The first suggests that without being affiliated with established institutions, learners will not need academic materials while the second suggests that if all information was freely available, it would not need to be maintained in any way.

Perhaps, I am being unfair, harsh even. Dame Lynne Brindley is quoted in the book as saying that “The environment in which we operate has arguably changed more in the past two decades than in the preceding two centuries, driven particularly by technological developments”. Of course, it will take time to adapt to change on this scale […] but surely someone has some ideas?

Although technological advancement readily facilitates it, the jarring philosophies of the traditional and relatively closed print‐based scholarly communication model and the revolutionary open access model are hampering the development of a truly accessible academic publishing culture. Considered in isolation, technology enables anyone to become a publisher; anyone can freely create a web site and make publications of any sort available. There is a perceived danger therefore, that an open access approach affords less rigorous peer review, and therefore, yields lower quality outputs. This is a misconception however; open access publishing can still incorporate much of the practices of the traditional model – blind peer review, the incorporation of publishers' typesetting and so on. So, are we just being over‐cautious? Leaps are sometimes required for great progress. Where would we be if, back in 1935, Allen Lane had not championed the “paperback revolution”? Literature would have remained largely restricted and only accessible to the wealthy. At some stage, the users' interests need to be the main driver for change. Alastair Dunning (Chapter 5) recognises this and emphasises that “future digitization ventures need to question the traditional parameter sand develop services that respond to the greater demand for user interaction”.

Graham Stone (Chapter 6 – “Resource discovery”) recognises the importance of the user and describes a number of standards under development that aim to ensure better access to materials. Although it is encouraging to know that a number of initiatives are underway, I cannot help but feel disheartened by the apparent lack of a collaborative development approach on this front.

Without thinking objectively about the academic, in the scholarly communication context, who cannot access the most recent papers in his field and who is getting to grips with uploading his papers to his institutional repository, coupled with the tendency to hark back to processes and procedures central to the print‐based model, little to advance the forward‐thinking, universally‐reaching open access paradigm is being achieved. Entirely new practices such as making pre‐print versions of publications are deemed perfectly acceptable under the open access model; in fact, they are required to ensure scholarly communication is greatly enhanced in terms of publicising embryonic research ideas, reducing impact times, fostering collaboration and developing communities of practice. Pricing is a case in point here, with ongoing debate over how to exercise charging in an open‐access approach without crashing the revenue of publishers. One wrong move and the result could most certainly be anarchy as opposed to order. Charging models are just one facet that must be addressed before a full shift to digital publishing takes hold in the academic world.

Perhaps, it is time to be brave and make some difficult decisions.

A strength of the book is the cross‐referencing between chapters, particularly references from the introductory chapter to more detailed discussions that appear later on. This is helpful, particularly as each author represents a different perspective on the issues at hand. Although the representation of different perspectives including that from the library and the publisher is welcomed, it may have been even more fruitful a venture to get these different perspectives working together, to try to suggest some ways forward, perhaps as a concluding chapter. Surely joined up thinking, communication, collaboration and mutual understanding would be an effective step towards mitigating anarchy across these fields?

For readers who have not been involved in academic publishing, are unfamiliar with the development of the open access movement or have little to do with institutional repositories or digitisation projects, this book provides a valuable introduction and overview of these areas and of the difficulties faced in recognising the need for, and adapting to, changes created by advances in the digital environment.