December 10, 2008
Bringing Tenure Into the Digital Age
New tools for analyzing information are arriving every day, but that doesn’t mean scholars who use them well are being rewarded, says Christine L. Borgman, a professor of information studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. She contends that the new “scholarly information infrastructure” must be shaped with collaborative, interdisciplinary research.
Q. In your recent book, “Scholarship in the Digital Age,” you contend that the tenure system needs to reward people for contributions to collaborative digital projects instead of recognizing only those who publish books and articles. Why?
A. Data is becoming a first-class object. In the days of completely paper publication, the article or book was the end of the line. And once the book was in libraries, the data were often thrown away or allowed to deteriorate.
Now we’re in a massive shift. Data become resources. They are no longer just a byproduct of research. And that changes the nature of publishing, how we think about what we do, and how we educate our graduate students. The accumulation of that data should be considered a scholarly act as well as the publication that comes out of it.
Q. Are we talking about, say, a scholar who has collected and managed data on children’s health over five years?
A. Yes. Consider an assistant professor who has five years of field data. If she could combine that with five years of data on children from a researcher in another country, or another ethnic group or DNA strain, think of how much more powerful their work could be. We can bring these together and make comparisons on a large scale — these are things we couldn’t do before.
Q. But does this “data deluge,” as you and others have called it, have a downside? Isn’t there such a thing as too much information?
A. Francis Bacon complained about too much information. This is not a new issue. Scholars have always had to manage their time and find ways to decide what to read and where to look.
With the Internet it feels much more overwhelming. That’s why partnerships to divide up the task help a great deal. My work has become more collaborative over the years as well. At the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, I’m supporting half a dozen graduate students now. They come from physics, computer science, biology, and art, and they are all getting graduate degrees in information studies.
Q. Do you have any tips for the young scholar who feels deluged and overwhelmed?
A. Look for good data that have already been generated and are available. It’s the old saw about how an hour in the library can keep you from spending 60 hours in the lab. It’s similar in research nowadays. Finding good data that someone else has done, that you can build upon, is time well spent. [And] find partners that complement your expertise.
Q. What is your prescription when it comes to building infrastructure that makes all this information available?
A. We need a new conversation. We need to determine what we should be building, instead of just figuring if we build it, they will come. We’ve spent a lot of money on the technology without asking a lot of questions about the nature of scholarship.
When we do ask those questions, we will come up against entrenched interests, like the way we publish and get tenure. So we need to consider the policies and incentives for the reward system and for the use and reuse of information. These will need to change. —Lisa Guernsey
Posted on Wednesday December 10, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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Dr. Borgman has defined and
described incredible insights
with incredible implications.
She is to be congratulated for these pioneering efforts,
and supported as well.
— Bill Cohen Dec 10, 05:22 PM #
The problem with “counting” data collection as equivalent to more traditional scholarship is that it overlooks the really significant aspect of being a scholar; figuring out what the data mean. Simply collecting data, whether it is in a lab notebook, a field journal or a community database, does not in and of itself shed any light on processes, phenomena or basic principles. That is what we value in academia (or should value), not the collection of data without the real work of reflecting on what it means.
— Art Dec 11, 08:20 AM #
Librarains will play an important role in this new type of scholarship as they have in the traditional one. Many university libraries now have the Data Librarian position exactly for this reason.
— Roseline Dec 11, 10:30 AM #
While I agree with #2 that analysis and synthesis are essential parts of defining scholarship, this whole discussion assumes that tenure will continue to be relevant.
— hipppokleides Dec 11, 10:34 AM #
Tenure is relevent! Tenured professors will hire untenured research professors or research associates or Ph.D students to collect their data. The system works fine.
— LJ Dec 11, 11:07 AM #
The Modern Language Association is trying to be proactive about evaluating digital work in the humanities by hosting for the first time at their annual convention a workshop on evaluating digital work for tenure and promotion (session #1 of the MLA program). This workshop is being lead by the MLA Committee on Information Technology. Participants will be drawn from potential candidates for tenure and from senior members who will be doing the evaluation of these types of cases. Both English and Foreign Language cases will be reviewed and critiqued with an eye to establishing standards of best practice. The results of the workshop will be posted at <http://www.mla.org/comm_id>
Best, Robert Blake, Director of the UC Language Consortium
— Robert Blake Dec 11, 11:16 AM #
Dr. Borgman’s insights are indeed refreshing, well intentioned, yet rather naive as well, in terms of how the academe operates with research dollars. A great deal of sharp elbowing and political jockeying remains in the yearly fight for budget and research dollars at every university pumping out the required research pulp.
Interdisciplinary research will only have a recognized place at the budget and grants tables when equitably established as a department in each institution. Gathering or generating research data is not the crux of the opportunity at hand – it’s turning such data into useful information to satisfy those who make such requests and their associated practical needs. Too often funded researchers veer off course to merely satisfy their own curiosity.
Finally, the tenured environment continues eroding towards a low baseline ebb as this century presses forward with employment “at will”. Do not look towards the digital data domain to revive it any time soon.
— Thomas Dec 11, 01:07 PM #
LJ says: “The system works fine.”
The system works fine at Harvard. At budget-strapped StateSchool U, it can turn into a monster. Your suggestion that tenured profs will just hire assistants speaks volumes — particularly given the hiring freezes and layoffs in many areas of the country.
— Michael Dec 11, 07:57 PM #