A model of scientific communication - Bo-Christer Björk - June 11 - IATUL 2007

I found the following presentation very interesting, it presents an attempt to completely model all aspects of scientific communication.  Very ambitious and also a useful step in getting us all to a common vocabulary and understanding.  I think there are still many challenges, including getting us all onto a common modelling standard, and modelling library activities beyond just the scholarly communication parts.  CISTI has done a lot of work in this area, and I will be talking about some of it tomorrow (June 12).

Bo-Christer Björk
Hanken, Svenska handelshögskolan, Helsinki, Finland

A model of scientific communication of a global distributed information system

http://www.sciencemodel.net/

http://informationr.net/ir/12-2/paper307.html

[modeling scientific communication IT systems]

Two ways for complex info systems to develop
* top down, planned
* bottom up, independently

scientific communication is a good example of bottom up

common items in scientific communication
- article, author, journal etc.

main uses of info in sci com
* communicating research results
* supporting funders and university administrators in deciding about grants and appointments

Backgorund of the SCLC model
* developed since 2000
* SciX project (EC)
* OACS project (Academy of Finland)

Purpose

* this model is to act as a roadmap for policy discussions

Scope
* whole scientific communication value chain
* focus is publishing, indexing, retrieval and reading of traditional peer reviewed journal articles

Model hierarchy
* 33 diagrams
* 113 activities

Conclusions
* this model can be useful in structuring comparisons between different business models
* it can also help in positioning different OA initiatives

Comment from the audience: (library whose name I didn't catch) found it useful to use and extend the models

Q (me): Can you assign a dollar value to each activity and do automatic calculations?
A: Yes but you need empirical data.