After Scholarship: Making Information Actionable

Roberta Lamb (Case Western Reserve University)

Abstract: Discussions about scholarly communication and digital library implementations often assume academic contexts of use. However, the information technologies that comprise such systems will also be available to corporate consumers, government organizations, and individuals. In order to make scholarly communication actionable by these non-academics, we need to know how they use current publications in their daily work. This study examines that use, and its findings raise two related issues: that researchers in academia, industry, and government place very different, yet equally legitimate, requirements on a scholarly communication system, and that technological choices about scholarly communication systems may be narrowing around particular forms and formats.

Résumé: En discutant de la communication savante et de la création de bibliothèques digitales, on sous-entend souvent que l'usage qu'on en fera sera principalement académique. Cependant, les technologies d'information que de tels systèmes utilisent seront également disponibles aux hommes et femmes d'affaires, aux employés dans la fonction publique et à d'autres intéressés. Afin que ces non-académiques puissent recourir aisément aux communications savantes, il nous faut savoir comment ils utilisent les publications courantes dans leur travail quotidien. Cette étude examine leur utilisation, et conclut en faisant deux observations reliées : d'une part, les chercheurs en milieux académiques, en affaires et dans la fonction publique ont des exigences très différentes, et pourtant également légitimes, vis-à-vis un système de communication savante; d'autre part, les choix technologiques de systèmes de communication savante sont peut-être en train de se centrer autour de formes et de formats particuliers.

After scholarship

How shall we conceptualize a new scholarly communication system? New technologies may inspire us to speculate about the benefits of electronically distributed scholarly research. Rapid advancements in fields of knowledge, such as biotechnology, can encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and alliances with commercial firms that expand interests in academic publications. We recognize that these technologies and relationships provide new opportunities for enhancing scholarly communication. However, I believe that a university-centric perspective limits our understanding of the current scholarly communication environment, and it may oversimplify our conceptualizations of any new communications systems that we choose to assemble.

To gain the proper perspective, we need to consider what happens after scholarship. The scholarly research community extends beyond the university into government laboratories, industry consortia, and private research centres. Individual scholars move freely between academia, government, and industry, assuming new roles and acquiring new skills. They rely on publication and personal contacts to disseminate knowledge of their research to other academics and to non-academics throughout this dynamic community.

We tend to gloss over the potentially complicating fact that many of the information technologies we use to assemble our systems -- the digital collections, the on-line services, the browsers, and formats -- will also be available to corporate consumers, government organizations, and individuals. Instead, our discussions about scholarly communication and digital library implementations often assume that individuals perform research within academic contexts (National Science Foundation, 1993; Information Infrastructure Task Force, 1994). We may find it easier to think about individuals, working alone or in small groups, rather than in big, messy multinational corporate conglomerates. Some academic documents and data files raise significant interest within small groups with highly particularized information needs. However, people working within larger organizations are more likely to gather research data than the solitary consumer or curious intellectual. Their organizations can take action on information, whereas individuals often lack the resources to do so. We should, therefore, consider how this larger constituency uses scholarly information resources when conceptualizing a new scholarly communication system.

Using scholarly communications

In a recent study, I talked to people in 26 California biotech /pharmaceutical organizations, law firms, and real estate brokerages about how they gather and use information. I examined their needs for scholarly communication, their data-gathering practices, and the interorganizational relationships of their firms (Lamb, 1996). Informants explained how they gather data from a wide array of print and electronic resources and then assemble portions of this data into information packages to meet the communication requirements of their clients, customers, and regulators. These explanations provide clues about how we can avoid assembling a university-centric set of technologies that privilege individual use and scholar-to-scholar communication while ignoring the needs of these other researchers.

This study sheds light on what makes scholarly communication actionable by non-academics. It helps us understand how they use current publications in the organizational context of their daily work. It shows, for example, that within California law firms and biotech companies, relationships with the major institutions of the industry largely determine how much and what kind of data they collect. Firms that interact directly with large regulatory agencies gather more scholarly research data than those that do not. Agencies, such as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) or the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), mandate a docucentric form of communication, and they require delivery of a well-defined information package. Firms in less strongly regulated industries, such as real estate, have also begun to place importance on the information package as a source of legitimacy and as a symbol of professional competency. The sophistication of their packages is increasing, as is the amount of research data those packages contain.

Research and expertise

These information packages contain the expertise of many researchers and scholars. The package signifies that the organization putting it together has a connection to the experts -- to people at the leading edge of the field. Interestingly, informants frequently mentioned using scholarly research to identify experts. They want access not only to the research, but also to the people who conduct it. They are not content to merely signal their association with experts. They seek rather to incorporate that expertise into their products and processes. For example, clinical trials groups within biotech firms continually look for research scientists to participate in new drug trials. They rely, as the informant quoted below points out, on scholarly communications to identify the experts who might help evaluate the safety of a new drug or the efficacy of treating a new disease with existing drugs.

If you're going into new [diseases], you also talk to experts in the area....You do literature searches to see who's published a lot in certain areas. You go to the meetings, and you figure out who's doing the research. [BOC1B2]

Company members may gather additional academic research documents if the firm retains the experts. When filing FDA submissions, a company must send profiles (including abstracts or references to research publications) for all physicians and researchers participating in their clinical trials. The company compiles such documentation to show that it has retained the best people in the field, that its teams have followed good clinical practices, that their trial results are reliable, and that the drug is safe. Therefore, demonstrable expertise, in the form of trusted scholarly communications, can be extremely important to a company trying to get FDA approval for the drugs it develops.

Other organizations follow similar practices. Intellectual property lawyers, for example, routinely retain expert witnesses, whether or not they expect to bring the case to trial. But finding an expert willing to provide paid testimony can be too easy. Experts who regularly testify in court can post their availability in various media, including on-line databases. However, a prosecutor who wants to present a convincing argument to a judge and jury will prefer to retain an expert they all believe is motivated to establish the truth rather than to collect a fee. The prosecutor may rely on scholarly publications to identify those experts, and to understand the facts of the case more generally. One paralegal illustrated how academic communications fit into the daily routine of a district attorney's (DA) office. In the interview quoted below, she describes common data-gathering activities by referring to a hypothetical homicide case in which the deceased may have contracted a rare disease called "limbo-limbo."

A lot of [the data gathering is] just to educate the DA so he could say "Hey, Doc, did you ever hear of limbo-limbo?" and at least know what he's talking about. It doesn't have to be he's an expert in it. He just needs to know what limbo-limbo is, what the symptoms of limbo-limbo show, and why somebody may have had a fatality because of limbo-limbo -- I mean, somebody died because of it! -- and what the exceptions to limbo-limbo are that we don't have in this case. So, those are the things. Now, if it were that say limbo-limbo needed to be proven that this is the cause of death, or something, perhaps then we would hire the expert of all experts that have written all the articles on limbo-limbo.... And usually, people that don't want to testify and aren't looking for the bucks to sit on the stand are the ones that you want, that are going to give you an honest opinion. Because if it's not there, they're not going to want to put their reputation on the line. [LOC2A1]

This DA's office, like biotech companies, relies upon academic journals to help retain experts. Through these examples and similar data, this study clearly suggests that one of the most important things that the scholarly communication system currently does for the public is to identify the level of expertise of its scholars and researchers. Journal hierarchies and the peer-review process sustain a trusted, qualified indication of disciplinary expertise that members of other organizations, like lawyers, clinical researchers, and federal regulators, depend upon.

Keeping current

Scientists in commercial research organizations and universities use scholarly journals, in association with other media and personal contacts, to maintain an awareness of what is going on in their field of research. Scientists become members of what Crane (1972) calls invisible colleges to get the inside track on the research breakthroughs of a small group of their colleagues. By extension, commercial research groups, like one in this study, retain or hire university associates to maintain a stable of scientists with complementary or cross-disciplinary expertise. In industry, leading-edge research groups keep themselves current by reading the journals and maintaining close ties with colleagues, but they also track advancements in the field through international patent applications -- frequently searching on-line patent indexes and full-text databases.

Keeping current means staying competitive. For commercial enterprises, this includes maintaining an awareness of what is happening in their own or related industries. Scholarly communications serve only part of that need. Such organizations also seek to understand their competitors, potential partners, markets, and customers. Their members try to determine what they must do to remain viable and to assess the chances of other organizations on whom they rely, or with whom they compete, to do the same. They do this in part by compiling profiles, which include a mix of financial, demographic, technical, patent, and academic research data. Profiles, like the one described below, help them evaluate individuals, groups, organizations, and markets.

Before we start doing business with any company, we always research the company. We will search financially about the company, business strengths, their marketing plans. We'll look at all of the press releases that they've made. We'll look at key players in the company -- get bios on those, histories, where they came from, where they studied, who they've done business with in the past. Depending on the type of relationship that we want to develop with this company, we will know as much about them as we do about ourselves. [OOC1A1]

This type of competitive analysis may not interest academic scholars, but their research data helps firms in market economies make strategic evaluations. Analysts integrate scholarly communications into profiles that present a unique organizational perspective on what is currently important in the field, in the industry, or in the larger political and regulatory environment.

Compliance, litigation, and collaboration

Political and regulatory agents play an interesting role by linking commercial organizations to scholarly communications in an important, but perhaps unexpected, way. Much of the data gathering an organization does supports decision-making processes and basic research. But much is also mandated by specific regulations and filing protocols, like the requirements for new drug approvals or patent applications. When firms interact directly with large regulatory agencies to comply with these requirements, they gather more scholarly research data. Agencies such as the PTO or FDA mandate a docucentric form of communication, and they require delivery of a voluminous, well-defined information package. For a pharmaceutical firm wishing to sell drugs in the U.S., regulation entails documentation.

It's very regulated... every single protocol is filed with the FDA.... At the end you'd file what's called an NDA, which is a New Drug Application. That NDA contains everything that you've ever done on that particular drug. So it can be 300 volumes of stuff. It goes by truck sometimes to Washington.... I mean, it's a very documented industry. [BOC1B2]

The information package for a new drug application contains references to research that supports the filing claims. The submitted dossier must include not only the research that the filing company has done through in-house drug development or clinical trials, but also anything else that has been published about the drug, its compounds, and its medical application. This accumulation of publications is mandated. It shows the regulatory agency what the field knows about this drug, and it builds the case for approval. Organizations comply with this mandate by collecting scholarly research articles, often in a frenzy of last-minute activity.

Well, anytime that we're getting ready to file an FDA submission, we do massive searches in the literature. And those are very time consuming. And, usually we don't get much warning... and they always want the latest data. So it makes sense to wait till the last minute so we can search the information and get the most current stuff. So just before submissions it's crazy for the library, and it's crazy for the regulatory folks as well. [BBA3A1]

If we consider that companies must prepare these packages for every drug in the pipeline, and that a large pharmaceutical firm may have as many as 50 at any one time, and that each one may take 10 or more years (and US$100 million to US$300 million) to develop, we realize that this activity constitutes a significant use of scholarly communications.

Law firms must also conform to very-well-defined information exchange protocols and short time-lines that sometimes require the staff to gather academic publications quickly. When a firm takes a case to court, its team must search the literature and gather everything it needs to make its case on the scheduled appearance date. As the informant quoted below points out, this hurried mode of information retrieval is not unique to litigation cases at the U.S. Supreme Court level -- it goes on, more or less, all the time.

It was the first Supreme Court case, but really we've been just as hard working on other things that haven't gone up to the Supreme Court. It's just how stressed out the attorneys are that makes a difference. And how many times they'll call with yet another thing, because as they're going through their material something else comes up they just can't consolidate.... So the air was a little bit more electric around those times. But it's certainly not the only time we've ever [searched the literature like] that. There are a couple of other big things that are boiling over right now. And you know everybody's going nuts. It's just the way things go. [LBA4A1]

These last two examples show that when commercial firms interact directly with large institutions, like the courts or the FDA, they come under a great deal of stress to assimilate huge amounts of information very quickly. They require information-processing support, such as a well-staffed law library or a corporate information centre. If this infrastructure is absent or overloaded with requests, the firm may accomplish its data-gathering tasks by forming a number of well-co-ordinated alliances with outside contractors and information suppliers.

Firms may choose not to interact directly with regulatory bodies and government agencies. A biotech firm, for example, can simply restrict its activities to drug discovery, and let another company take over critical segments of the drug development process. That company would then assume any research-reporting responsibilities associated with mandate compliance. Some informants in my study mentioned following this option during clinical trials.

In developing drugs, you always have to go into the clinic and test them. So clinical trials are very expensive. That's where we would hand off to somebody else. [BOC4A1]

An organization may also opt to interact directly with the courts and regulators, but to share the data-gathering facilities of other firms rather than develop information infrastructure itself. This arrangement does not shift the data-gathering responsibility, but, as the law firm informant quoted below describes, it does change the nature of data-gathering activities at the firm, making them more collaborative.

[The legal staff will] go upstairs to the law library there.... It's just part of the arrangement we have with them... they do allow us to use their LEXIS and NEXIS. So we can go there in their library, and they'll get you set up. [LOC4A1]

The need to comply with regulatory mandates also encourages collaboration. As examples given show, not every firm collects vast quantities of scholarly research data. However, those that regularly gather large volumes of data, and have acquired the information infrastructure to manage that activity, indirectly support the data-gathering needs of other organizations. Small biotech firms often obtain FDA approval for their drugs by partnering with large pharmaceutical companies that can take the drug through documentation-intensive clinical trials. Similarly, law firms that retrieve and assimilate research data for their clients may also make their information resources available to other attorneys on a quid pro quo basis. Through these collaborations, commercial firms regularly use scholarly communications to satisfy the information exchange requirements of regulation compliance and litigation.

Displaying competency

The information package that a law firm or biotech /pharmaceutical company puts together can be technically impressive. It looks professional. It contains well-researched data presentations and legal or scientific arguments supported by pages of references and citations. The package builds a reviewer's confidence that the work represented is well done, that the claims the firm makes are true. Firms in strongly regulated industries routinely assemble information packages that display these competencies. But other firms, such as real estate brokerages, have also begun to place importance on the information package as a source of legitimacy and as a symbol of professional competency.

When an individual purchases property, he or she may feel confident in the deal. But an institutional investor must provide data that justifies a purchase to the underwriters or pensioners of a fund. Institutional investors have many investment choices. They can buy properties. They can also purchase stock in publicly traded companies, such as Fortune 100 pharmaceutical firms, or the initial public offerings packaged by securities law firms. Commercial real estate brokers compete with these alternative investments when they deal with institutional investors. These investors can go out and look at a property to satisfy themselves that it is a good buy, but they need information and analysis to take back to their fund members that is comparable to the information packages on other investments in their portfolio. As one information researcher at a California brokerage indicates, the sophistication of real estate investment packages is increasing, as is the amount of research data they contain.

The packages have to be fancier. They have to have more colour graphics, aerial photographs -- more bells and whistles. It takes a lot more to do the same project. In fact, we've really had to gear up and retrain so that we can do really dazzling packages.... The guys can't compete with a package that would have been suitable last year or two years or three years ago. [ROC3A1]

Investor group representatives and funding-agency managers need to be able to justify their real estate investment decisions, and they often do this with information packages supplied in part by the broker. The content of the package is important, but so is the form. Professionalism and competence is communicated through the total package.

Scholarly communications have not yet become a routine part of the broker's package, except perhaps for some market-oriented pieces or investment theory publications. However, the academic publication -- the scholarly information package -- communicates the competency and expertise of its contributors and their community. Scholarly communicators, like commercial real estate brokers, may find it necessary to increase the technical sophistication of their journals to effectively convey the quality and importance of their work to a public that has come to expect highly sophisticated formats.

Gathering documents

The organizations investigated rely on scholarly communications, along with other data resources such as personal contacts or proprietary documents, when locating expertise, keeping current, fulfilling mandates, evaluating options, justifying actions, and displaying competency. Not every firm does this by purchasing and maintaining scholarly journal archives, although some firms do.

Informants reported routinely obtaining scholarly documents by searching on-line databases for citations or abstracts and then going to local university libraries to retrieve and photocopy the full-text articles from expensive journals their firms do not purchase. Private firms rely on university archives for continuous access to scholarly journals. They sometimes make unique arrangements to take advantage of these archives, such as this one between a California biotech firm and a University of California library.

We have a person down at -- -- . I don't know if he lives [there] or goes to [UC] or something, who does use that library all the time for us. So we can fax him things and the next day he would get them up to us. [So we basically use the UC library] a lot. [BOC3A1]

Private firms clearly prefer this cost-effective method of obtaining needed documents, and they use it exclusively unless special circumstances warrant a change of tactics, as the librarian at this busy California law firm explains.

There was such a crunch because there was so much to do that we really couldn't use the physical libraries around us the way we usually do because all of us would have been out all day [photocopying] that stuff and not available to everybody else [in the firm]. So what we did more of was calling outside services to help us retrieve the articles. And it kind of went against the grain because it's so cost effective to be able to go locally and just do the copying yourself. [LBA4A1]

As pointed out earlier, one of the reasons for gathering scholarly research data is to fulfill regulatory submission mandates. An active firm will gather a great deal of scholarly reference material in the process of compiling its submissions. When these data-gathering activities are frequent, a firm may negotiate a flat rate with on-line service providers to access academic publication references, abstracts, full-text or data sets in electronic formats. Electronic formats provide flexible local storage and data manipulation, but firms expressed uncertainty about copyright violation. Firms who take advantage of these technologies to fulfill FDA mandates more efficiently are in an awkward position. They must make and store copies of articles and other publications for submission whenever FDA filings may be required, but they are unsure about when this is a copyright violation. Now that the FDA has begun requesting electronic filings, their uncertainty has increased.

We are looking at doing [FDA] submissions totally electronically and [the paper] stuff is being scanned in. Now that does raise copyright issues, and I don't know -- it's kind of bizarre. I mean you have the government saying, "Well, no that's infringement of copyright. But we'll accept it." [BBA 3A1]

In-situ forms of scholarly communication are complex. The university library plays an economically important dissemination role for the entire community. On-line formats make complying with regulatory requirements easier by allowing for electronic storage, but, at the same time, efficient document-handling practices confound copyright issues. When scholars consider how to make their research accessible to the public, they may not think primarily about biotech companies, law firms, or commercial real estate brokerages, but these are active members of the community that university libraries currently serve. When librarians and publishers grapple with copyright protection issues, they may not be overly worried about multinational pharmaceutical companies or the FDA, but these organizations desperately need electronic copyright issues resolved. They are the public. These are the individuals and organizations that use academic communications after scholarship.

Institutional and technical pressures

The foregoing examples show that the communications systems of academia and industry are intertwined and interdependent -- and they are changing. Informants confirm that time constraints and economic considerations provide incentives for adopting new data-gathering practices. They also identify one way in which information technologies can "push" those changes -- when, for example, brokers adopt multimedia and information technologies to display professional competency. Some researchers speculate that although "the current [scholarly communication] system... is unlikely to change easily or quickly ... the combined pressures of economics, technological change, and increased demand for plentiful, accurate, and timely information will ultimately overcome this inertia" (AUCCCARL /ABRC, 1995). This study indicates that institutional pressures also influence data-gathering practices and communication systems. Therefore, I would add that institutional pressures of legitimacy and the associated need to increase the documentation of expertise will strongly shape any scholarly communication system that takes its place.

Summary

Because the research community extends outside academia, we should make an effort to conceptualize scholarly communication as an open process with a heterogeneous field of participants (Kling & Lamb, 1996). Researchers in academia, industry, and government place very different, yet equally legitimate, requirements on scholarly communications. The informants in this study have clearly identified one of these requirements: the public requires that scholarly communications define the body of current knowledge and identify experts.

Lawyers, clinical researchers, and federal regulators trust the peer-review system, particularly for scientific journals, to indicate the level of disciplinary expertise of scholars and researchers. Any system that effectively replaces current practices will need to sustain that trust.

By examining how the larger community uses scholarly publications, we can see that journal hierarchies are useful, not only to academics reporting their research and seeking tenure, but also to members of judicial and regulatory organizations. Institutional representatives use scholarly publications to form a documentary basis for the social, judicial, and economic legitimization of their actions and decisions. Any system that effectively replaces current practices will need to preserve or enhance their ability to anchor these legal and commercial interests in legitimate scholarly research.

The informants in this study have also identified one of their expectations about communication systems: the public expects that the technologies used to deliver scholarly communications will, to some degree, reflect the competency of contributing scholars and the content value of their contributions. In specific contexts, certain types of information packages and technologies are preferred over others because of their ability to signal professional competence. Real estate brokers, for example, value data that they can easily convert into presentation graphics or audio /video clips. These capabilities may not matter so much to scholars, but scholarly communication systems will also be evaluated by funding agencies, legislators, and committees who use these same external standards to judge the value of the systems they fund and promote.

Policy conclusions

The policy implications of the data I have presented are somewhat counter-intuitive. Although we commonly associate technological change with a wide array of technical choices, public expectation has drastically curtailed those choices. By this I mean that the public, as represented in this study, has adopted electronic forms and integrated desktop formats for managing documents, and they expect scholarly communication systems to follow that lead. Commercial firms and public agencies have systems that they use now -- these are ad hoc, but they work -- and they define a set of widely adopted preferences. At this point in time, I would say that any new and effective scholarly communication system will need to conform to those preferences.

Public expectations about technology will shape scholarly communications, as will public requirements for certain types of knowledge. Any new scholarly communication system will be effective if it preserves the broader research community's ability to identify experts. It must also sustain or enhance the public's ability to anchor legal, commercial, and social decision-making in legitimate research and academic thought. This can be done in a number of ways, but changes to the system will require changes in social and professional behaviour.

Our set of choices about scholarly communication systems may be narrowing around a few points that make scholarly research publicly available and publicly actionable. These are points of potential reintermediation for academics, publishers, libraries, and public institutions. They involve hard choices and potentially difficult transformations of social and professional behaviour. But some leverage may be obtained by bringing the public into focus more clearly.

In order to make scholarly research actionable within non-academic work contexts and to identify the possibilities for reintermediation, we must consider a broader purview. By understanding the requirements of a more broadly construed research community, I believe we can develop the policies and assemble the technologies that will form the basis of a dynamic, usable scholarly communication system. At the same time, we may come to understand better what makes this effort necessary. We may realize that the impetus for moving toward electronic forms and digital publication comes less from the studied rational deliberation of self-directed scholars than from the legitimation required within non-academic consumer constituencies.

References

AUCCCARL /ABRC Task Force on Academic Libraries and Scholarly Communication. (1995). Towards a new paradigm for scholarly communication. Ottawa: Author. URL: http: //www.lib.uwaterloo.ca /documents /scholarly(aucc-carl).html

Crane, D. (1972). Invisible colleges: Diffusion of knowledge in scientific communities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Kling, R., & Lamb, R. (1996). Analyzing alternate visions of electronic publishing and digital libraries. In G. B. Newby & R. P. Peek (Eds.), Scholarly publishing: The electronic frontier (pp. 19-54). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Lamb, R. (1996). Interorganizational relationships and online information resources. Proceedings of the 29th annual Hawaii international conference on systems sciences: Vol. 5. Digital documents (pp. 82-91). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press.

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