Open Password – Friday February 4, 2022
#1026
Books that moved us – Roland Jerzewski – Open Password – Simon Verlag für Bibliothekswissen – Helga Schwarz – Alexander von Humboldt – Colonialism
Virtual education fair – Didacta – Library-related further training – Frank Seeliger – Vivien Petras – Frauke Schade – Friedrich Nietzsche – Company training and further education – KIBA – TH Wildau – Elevator pitches – Break out sessions – bibliotheksportal.de Books that moved us – Roland Jerzewski – Open Password – Simon Publishing House for Library Knowledge – Helga Schwarz – Alexander von Humboldt – Colonialism
16th International Symposium for Information Science – Aylin Imeri – Social Media – Perceived Scientificity of Tweets – Information Behavior – TD Wilson – Information Competence – A. Mazarakis – I. Peters – J. Schmitz – Hashtags – Links – Publicity – Methodology – Understanding – Guru- Effects
Scientific publishing – Science Council – Transformation Open Access – Innovative publication venues – Small publishers – Open publication software – Open Journal Systems – ZB MED – Publisso
Letters: The reading moment “that trembles like an arrow in the heart of the day,” by Helga Schwarz
II.
Virtual education fair
A “Didacta” in miniature and a plea for professional training – by Frank Seeliger, Vivien Petras and Frauke Schade
III. ISI2021
Perceived scientific nature of tweets – #lesshashtagsaremorescientific- By Aylin Imeri (Ilhan), University of Düsseldorf
IV.
Science Council
Open publishing software, for example Publisso
Books that moved us
The reading moment “that
trembles like an arrow in the heart of the day”
Newly included: Alexander von Humboldt and the Invention of Nature, by Andrea Wulf
To: A homage to the book (I) – An initiative by Open Password and the Simon Verlag for library knowledge – Written with heart and soul, passion and deep knowledge about books “that moved us”, in: Open Password, February 2nd
Helga Black
Dear Mr. Bredemeier,
I really enjoyed reading the “Password” from February 2nd and was very touched that you also mentioned my post. I am writing to you because just a few days ago I had the reading moment “that trembles like an arrow in the heart of the day.”
I am currently reading a highly recommended book by Andrea Wulf: Alexander von Humboldt and the Invention of Nature. Not to mention that you learn a lot about the emergence of Humboldt’s concept of nature and his groundbreaking new understanding of nature and also a lot about South America around 1800. Completely new to me were the details of Alexander’s friend Simon Bolivar’s fight for independence and the emergence of Venezuela and Colombia and Ecuador.
But the arrow was a different fact. Alexander’s planning for his trip turned out to be difficult; South America was ultimately only his third choice; he actually wanted to go to Egypt or, alternatively, Lapland. But neither was possible because there was war in Europe. A European could not simply travel anywhere outside of Europe. In 1798 there were only a few truly sovereign and independent states: the major European powers: Austria-Hungary, Prussia, England, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, plus Sweden and Denmark – in the “new world” recently the USA and Canada it not yet and in the East: Russia, the Ottoman Empire, China and Japan.
All other land areas on earth were colonies or were so dependent on one of the powers mentioned above that they were not truly independent. A traveler who wanted to move around the dependent territories needed the permission of the colonial power. Despite Alexander’s efforts to reach Egypt via French territory in North Africa, this did not work. Ultimately, only the Spanish King Alexander gave permission to travel to all Spanish areas of the “New World”. Alexander’s great desire to travel to the Himalayas later failed due to the lack of permission; Despite ten years of effort, he did not receive British permission.
Given that there is currently a lot of discussion about colonialism and German colonies, this realization really blew me away. I had never before realized that the great powers had descended upon the entire world like an octopus long before 1885; In 1885 at the Berlin Conference only the official and consensual codification of the spheres of influence took place.
When I read Walter Benjamin’s “arrow quote” in the password, I suddenly thought: yes, that was my arrow into consciousness.
I look forward to further editions.
Kind regards, Helga Schwarz
Virtual education fair
A “Didacta” in miniature and
a plea for professional training
By Frank Seeliger, Vivien Petras and Frauke Schade
Frank Seeliger
As librarians, we usually use quotes like those from Heinrich Heine: “Money is round and rolls away, but education remains” to hope for adequate basic funding or new scope from the public sector.
Education in the context of lifelong learning, further qualification, career planning, in the context of the rapidly changing requirements in everyday working life appears to be anything but absurd as a home-made and cross-sectoral challenge. In order to master current and future requirements, it is not just about on-the-job training, ad hoc introduction and informal acquisition of new skills. This also includes formal and systematic further training and further education. Looking at the last two years and all the special hurdles associated with them, one would like to pause with Nietzsche, who thoughtfully commented in the 19th century (!): Education is becoming less and less every day because the haste is increasing.
Professional development not only depends on the personal commitment of the individual and his resources, but it is also the employer’s responsibility to create an excellent environment for in-company training and further education. In view of the shortage of skilled workers, there is no alternative to this and it is quite urgent given the declining number of young talent and in the context of – not only, but also – career changers, who are also attracted by an attractive competitive environment.
Vivien Petras
To put this in perspective, it should be noted that it is not a novelty for library practice to obtain the necessary know-how from institutions that do not specifically focus on topics for information institutions, such as knowledge management and scientific communication, including educational and technical curricula. We started small, “in miniature”!
The market for professional and library-related further training has created a wide range of options, specializations and directions through a lot of commitment. This thematic range was held for the first time as a virtual conference in German-speaking countries through a continuing education fair jointly organized by the Conference of Information and Library Science Training and Study Programs (KIBA, Section 7 in the dbv and the Training Commission of the DGI) and the TH Wildau. It received an enormous response with over four hundred entries. From low-threshold further training and certificate courses to part-time and dual offers with BA and MA degrees or corresponding credit points (ECTS), everything was offered, for all disciplines!
Frauke Schade (with the editor of Open Password)
Well over 300 interested parties attended the elevator pitches , each of which presented, in just three minutes, with dizzying speed, how they can continue their education and training. It was highly topical, soberly and quickly presented and therefore the best basis for deepening questions and concerns in the subsequent sub-group meetings or break-out sessions . Following the wide-ranging offer prints, all interested parties had the opportunity to choose one of the 13 offers in two rounds and to find out more in detail in a dialogue. A new edition has already been put on the agenda by the organizers.
We recommend the various sets of slides for further reading, which are also available on the event page as well as the corresponding link to the specific further training offer. If we have piqued your curiosity, take a look at www.wit-wildau.de/zentrale-weiterbildungsmesse.
The listing there supplements the information from other portals (see bibliotheksportal.de/informationen/beruf/fortbildung/).
Addendum to the 16th International Symposium for Information Science (ISI2021)
Perceived scientific nature of tweets
#fewerHashtagsseemmorescientific
By Aylin Imeri (Ilhan), University of Düsseldorf
It is no secret that social media plays an important role not only in the private environment, for example to stay in touch with friends and relatives, to receive or share information, but also in the professional environment, especially in the academic environment. How do researchers and teachers behave on social media? How is communication about and within science on social media? And how is the scientific nature of such contributions perceived by users? Especially during conferences, content and results are written and shared with the scientific community using a conference hashtag like at #ISI2021.
One of the core topics of information science is information behavior. Information behavior does not only refer to searching and finding information on the web, i.e. in Google or in specialist databases such as Scopus, Web of Science or Dimensions. As Wilson (2000, p. 49) explains:
“Information behavior is the totality of human behavior in relation to sources and channels of information, including both active and passive information seeking, and information use.”
Posting a tweet (text post of 280 characters, for example in Twitter) is a result of information behavior. But how is this information perceived? What is the intention of authors of such tweets? Are there aspects that limit or promote the credibility or scientificity of the information or tweet? Scientists in particular want to share or communicate their research results (McKendrick, Cumming, & Lee, 2012). The information competence of researchers is also an exciting aspect, because the examination of information found (here tweets) with a view to quality, trustworthiness and scientificity reflects how information-competent users are.
The critical question that arises here is: Can the scientific nature of a tweet be adequately measured? Especially when social media also carries the risk of spreading false information. And can we, as users and producers of such tweets, recognize and support the science?
At the 16th International Symposium for Information Science (ISI 2021), Mazarakis, Peters and Schmitz (2021) examined in more detail whether there is a connection between, among other things, the number of hashtags within a tweet and the perceived scientific nature. [1] The discussion is about the question How can scientificity be expressed? not a new research topic. Mazarakis et al. (2021) that the link to the article (DOI), conference hashtags or even the names of scientific authors in tweets have already been discussed (Weller, Dröge, & Puschmann, 2011).
Twitter offers the opportunity to clarify what the research is about in a short article. However, according to Mazarakis et al. (2021), there is still no real template or recommendation for what a tweet should look like so that it can be labeled as scientific (in contrast to format templates from publishers, for example). In order to make further progress, our authors examined the scientific nature of tweets from the field of medicine. The target group of the short articles included both laypeople and experts.
The hashtags used or selected included, for example, #obstetrics, #urology, #epidemiology, #ophthalmology and the associated English terms. However, the authors not only analyzed the 162 tweets, but also integrated these tweets into a survey in order to examine the scientific nature not only quantitatively but also qualitatively. An initial description of the tweets showed that around 90% of the tweets were not formulated as a question and 75% contained an image. Especially with a view to exchanging information and forwarding to other sources, it is important that 70% of tweets contain a link.
It is also noticeable that the tweets have up to five hashtags on average. In addition to analyzing features specific to the microblogging platform Twitter (@-mention, hashtags, etc.), seven additional categories were formed to which the tweets were assigned. These were the terms: article, job, opinion, methodology, publicity, fun and understanding . As the content analysis showed, most tweets belonged to the “Publicity” category; The “fun” category was the least common. Most tweets were in the “Publicity” category. They contained, for example, book launches, staff searches, advertising for a congress and reports on congresses. Only about a quarter of the tweets were classified as “scientific” (N = 40), i.e. around three quarters were considered “non-scientific” (N = 122).
The study was successful in using several methods. The tweets were not only categorized (content analysis), but also integrated into an online survey and rated for their scientific quality by 109 participants. The authors worked with eight sets, each containing twenty tweets.
The authors note that tweets with many hashtags are characterized as less “scientific”. I find that exciting, because Twitter in particular allows you to link to other topics using hashtags and thus allows you to draw attention to other topics. But this also makes it clear: “More is not better.”
What is the scientific nature of tweets that belong to a certain category? In the publicity category, the choice between “Is perceived as scientific” and “Is not scientific” is not entirely clear, even though the majority of these tweets were categorized under “non-scientific”. This also raises the question, what does “scientificism” actually mean for everyone and can this view be objectified?
For example, within the “Publicity” category there are also posts with hashtags that draw attention to conferences. Of course, this is a setting that advances research and gives rise to new topics. Nevertheless, they represent a big difference to a tweet that reproduces a result from a study. In the words of Mazarakis et al.: Tweets in the “Publicity” category are scientific in nature if they “refer to or link to a scientific publication, a scientific report or medical and life science congresses” (Mazarakis et al., 2021, page 55). The definition of “non-scientific” is just as clear if it is simply pointed out that the conference has started or that Mr. or Ms. X is currently presenting.
Tweets that have been assigned to the “methodology” and “understanding” categories have a relatively high probability of being labeled as “scientific.” There is also a considerable gray area of tweets that cannot be clearly assigned or where the categorizing scientists show a need for discussion.
Have we made any progress with the construction of scientific tweets or the formulation of recommendations for action? It is certainly not enough to state that Aylin Imeri works at the Department of Information Science at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf Germany , as a connection to her research or other academic activities has not been established. On the other hand, this tweet could be categorized as “scientific”: Isabella Peters is presenting the results on the topic of “scientificity of tweets” at #ISI2021 . Here we find out who, where and what is presenting.
[1] https://epub.uni-regensburg.de/44936/1/isi_mazarakis_et_al.pdf
Mazarakis et al. show that there is no significant relationship between links and “perceived scientificity.” For me, a link should provide access to my research/publications or even a presentation about it. From my point of view, it’s primarily about conveying information and the awareness that I want to create.
The authors have also mentioned the possibility of “guru effects” (Sperber, 2010). These suggest that tweets from well-known scientists are less scrutinized than from someone who is still unknown in the scientific community. And what about the features of Twitter, i.e. links, images, videos, hashtags and @-mentions? These cannot necessarily be characterized as “scientific”, but can contribute to the transparency of research.
And how did Twitter users behave during ISI 2021? For this question, I conducted a small count [1] on the hashtag #ISI2021 on Twitter. No more than five hashtags were used and sometimes no hashtags were used. Tweets that contain the hashtag #ISI2021 or the word/profile as such (@isi2021) have an average hashtag usage of around one hashtag on the first day. A total of 27 tweets were sent on the first day, of which eleven tweets had zero hashtags, ten tweets had one hashtag, two tweets had two hashtags, two tweets had three hashtags and two tweets had five hashtags. In particular, the ten tweets included the hashtag #ISI2021. Of the 27 tweets for the first day, five tweets had a link, i.e. only around 18%. The tweet with the most retweets and likes also contained a link to the proceedings. On the second day, 33 tweets were sent [2] . Here too, an average of one hashtag was used. On the second day, only around 15% of the tweets (N = 5) contained a link. The fewest tweets were sent on the third day (N = 20). They contained an average of two hashtags. Within the tweets from day three, there was only one tweet that had no hashtags, and two tweets with four and one tweet with five hashtags. In total, only four out of twenty tweets had a link. Compared to the study by Mazarakis et al. (2021), hashtags were used more sparingly on the ISI.
I am looking forward to the following studies by the authors from Kiel and Cologne, especially with regard to recommendations for action. I would like to thank Athanasios Mazarakis, Isabella Peters and Jasmin Schmitz for this interesting study.
Credentials :
Mazarakis, A., Peters, I., & Schmitz, J. (2021). #fewerhashtagsaremorescientific. The relationship between tweet characteristics and perceived scientificity. In T. Schmidt & C. Wolff (Eds.), Information between Data and Knowledge. Information Science and its Neighbors from Data Science to Digital Humanities. Proceedings of the 16th International Symposium of Information Science (ISI 2021), Regensburg, Germany, 8th—10th March 2021 (pp. 44-63). Publisher Wener Hülsbusch. DOI: doi.org/10.5283/epub.44936.
McKendrick, DRA; Cumming, GP; Lee, A.J. (2012). Increased use of Twitter at a medical conference: A report and a review of the educational opportunities. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 14 (6), e176. https://doi.org/10.2196/ jmir.2144
Sperber, D. (2010): The Guru Effect. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1 (4), 583–592. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-010-0025-0
Weller, K.; Dröge, E.; Puschmann, C. (2011). Citation analysis in Twitter: Approaches for defining and measuring information flows within tweets during scientific conferences. In M. Rowe, M. Stankovic, A.-S. Dadzie, M. Hardey (ed.), Making Sense of Microposts (#MSM2011), Workshop at Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2011), Crete, Greece . Heidelberg: Springer. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-718/paper_04.pdf
Wilson, T. D. (2000). Human information behavior. Informing Science, 3 (2), 49-56
[1] July 2021
[2] ISI2021 until:2021-03-11 since:2021-03-08
Science Council
Open publishing software,
for example Publisso
“The scientific publication system includes large publishers, small and medium-sized publishers as well as publishing-like non-profit organizations and actors from science that operate publication platforms. The transformation to Open Access must be used as an opportunity to renegotiate the conditions for publication services. In order to promote improvements in the usability and use of scientific publications, it is important, not least, to create the conditions for new, innovative publication venues to emerge. If they are able to exert competitive pressure on established, commercial providers, all users benefit from the effects.
However, smaller commercial providers of publishing services, especially in the monograph sector, will only be able to achieve higher levels of performance and therefore be competitive if they can rely on newer technologies with regard to the workflows to be established. For many of them, coping with the purchase financially may be a challenge. A solution here can be open publication software, as it already exists for magazines and other text formats from providers such as Open Journal System (OJS) or ZB MED/PUBLISSO. About the costs of diamond journals, which are often published via open source software such as OJS and using public or other financial resources, e.g. Although these are sometimes carried out through voluntary work, there is no need for transparency on the part of the authors. Nevertheless, the service they provide should be able to be reflected in the outlined model of minimum standards and performance levels so that they can be compared as publication venues at this level.
With the publication platform developed by ZB MED – Information Center for Life Sciences, together with the web-based software PUBLISSO, magazines and other text formats can be published for all specialist disciplines. It is offered both as open source software and as a service offering including hosting
and maintenance services (see https://www.publisso.de/open-access-publizieren/publisso-system ).”
In: Science Council, Recommendations for the transformation of scientific publishing to open access, January 2022
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