Sign-up for action

Sign-up for action
Do you ever find yourself talking about getting a summer volleyball team together with your co-workers or getting a pool membership, but never get around to it?

No more excuses, here is all of the information you need to stay active this summer. We’ve done the hard part, now you just have to fork over the dough.

The Paradigms They Are A-Changin’ > Open / Semantic / Social / Mobile
Colleagues/

The Paradigms They Are A-Changin’ > The Future Of Research And Scholarship: Open / Semantic / Social / Mobile

There are four major themes that are and will become the context and framework of research and scholarship in the 21st Century: Open / Semantic / Social / Mobile:

Open >

Open Access / Open Data / Open Peer Review / Open Research

Semantic >

Audio / Interactivity / Supplemental Content / Video

Social >

Science Blogging / Social Bookmarking / Social Networking / Social Software

Mobile >

Mobile Access / Mobile Content / Mobile Data / Mobile Research

In scheduled presentation(s), we will briefly profile select developments related to these major themes and speculate on their potential evolution and impact on research and scholarship in the coming decade(s).

In June I Will Give Four (4) Invited Keynote Presentations On The Topic(s) In Ireland At

The National Library Of Ireland, Dublin (June 4 / 1:00 PM)

Lecture : The Paradigms They Are A-Changin’: The Future of Research and Scholarship / Thursday / 4 June 2009 / 1.00 PM / Seminar Room / Admission Free / Booking Is Not Required

The National University of Ireland – Galway (June 5 / 1:00 PM)

Library Seminar: The Future Of Research And Scholarship: Open / Semantic / Social / Mobile /Friday / 5 June / 1300 / Library Meeting Room, Basement Level, James Hardiman Library

Note: Sandwiches will be provided, so please contact Aoife Harrington (aoife.harrington@nuigalway.ie or ext. 2593) in advance for catering purposes.

The University College Cork, Cork (June 8 / 10:00 AM)

Boole Lecture Theatre 2 / Co-Sponsored by Ionad Bairre

The University of Limerick, Limerick (June 9 / 2:30 PM).

Symposium: Social Networking Services at Third-Level: Trends and Developments: “The Paradigms They Are A-Changin’: The Future of Research and Scholarship (Open / Semantic / Social / Mobile)” / Tuesday / June 9th 2009 / 2.30 pm / Charles Parsons Lecture Theatre / All welcome

Contact Dr. Tríona Hourigan for further information.Tel: 00 353 (0) 61 234675

If you are interested in information about any / all of these presentations, please contact me at gerrymck@iastate.edu

Questionnaire

In order to ascertain the particular interests of potential attendees to my presentation titled “The Paradigms Are A-Changin’ > The Future Of Research And Scholarship: Open > Semantic > Social > Mobile” , I would most appreciate your responses to a questionnaire requesting attendee preferences for a particular presentation

Please Note That All Responses Are Confidential And Will Only Be Used To Focus The Topics Of My Presentation.

I created a survey for potential attendees for each of the venues noted above and ask that potential attendees only complete the survey for the individual presentation they expect to attend:

National Library of Ireland, Dublin [http://tinyurl.com/lemfnl]

National University of Irealnd, Galway [http://tinyurl.com/l3vn5y]

University College Cork [http://tinyurl.com/m3bbkh]

University of Limerick [http://tinyurl.com/kn6kb4]

I will customize a prepared general presentation to reflect the specific preferences of probable attendees at a particular venue.

By July 1 2009 I will post the customized presentations as well as a Director’s Cut that combines each with additional content.

NOTE: I have also created a survey for probable non-attendees:

[http://tinyurl.com/n6behd]

Thanks for your assistance and cooperation.

/Gerry

Related

1) Open 2) Semantic 3) Social 4) Mobile

[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2009/04/1-open-2-semantic-3-social-4-mobile.html]

Leonardo: New Criteria for New Media

Leonardo: New Criteria for New Media
University of Maine’s criteria for New Media achievement serve as a model for faculty at other institutions.

Academia’s goal may be the free exchange of ideas, but up to now many universities have been wary–if not downright dismissive–of their professors using the Internet and other digital media to supercharge that exchange, especially in the arts and humanities.

Peer review committees are supposed to assess a researcher’s standing in the field, but to date most have ignored reputations established by blogging, publishing DVDs, or contributing to email lists.

In a signal that some universities are warming to digital scholarship, however, the winter 2009 issue of MIT’s Leonardo magazine–itself a traditional peer review journal, though known for experimenting with networked media–has published a feature on the changing criteria for excellence in the Internet age.

To make its point as concretely as possible, the feature includes the recently approved promotion and tenure guidelines of the University of Maine’s New Media Department, together with an argument for expanding recognition entitled “New Criteria for New Media.”

Rather than throw time-honored benchmarks for excellence out the window, “New Criteria for New Media” tries to extend them into the 21st century. To supplement the “closed” peer review process familiar from traditional journals, …. [University Of Maine's ] criteria recognize the value of the “open peer review” employed in recognition metrics such as ThoughtMesh and The Pool.

>>>The Pool < <<

[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2008/05/everyone-into-pool.html]

>>>ThoughMesh< <<

[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2008/05/thoughtmesh-innovative-scholarly.html]

As the name suggests, open peer review allows contributions from any community member rather than a group of experts, and all reviews are public; when combined with an appropriate recognition metric, the result is much faster evaluations than possible via the customary approach.

“New Criteria for New Media” also urges academic reviews to reward collaboration in new media research; valuable roles include conceptual architect, designer, engineer, or even matchmaker (e.g., introducing two other researchers whose collaboration results in a publication).

Because the University of Maine hopes other institutions will adopt these criteria and adapt them to their own needs, it is releasing them under a Creative Commons (CC-by) license. [snip]

The new criteria have already been sought after by individual tenure candidates and cited in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

[http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i38/38a01001.htm]

You can find them in Leonardo’s winter 2009 issue (vol. 42 no. 1)

[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/feature.php?id=927]

Leonardo: New Criteria for New Media

Abstract

This paper argues for redefining evaluation criteria for faculty working in new media research and makes specific recommendations for promotion and tenure committees in U.S. universities.

[http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/leon.2009.42.1.71]

PDF (Subscribers)

[http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2009.42.1.71]

PDF Plus (Subscibers)

[http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/leon.2009.42.1.71]

See Also

[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2009/04/university-of-maine-promotion-and_20.html]

[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2009/04/university-of-maine-promotion-and.html]

See Also Also The ThoughMesh Version(s)

[http://thoughtmesh.net/publish/275.php]

University of Maine | Promotion and Tenure Guidelines || Promotion and Tenure Guidelines | New Criteria for New Media |
New Media Department, University of Maine

Promotion and Tenure Guidelines Addendum: Rationale for Redefined Criteria

New Criteria for New Media

Version 2.2, January 2007

Authors: Joline Blais, Jon Ippolito, and Owen Smith in collaboration with Steve Evans and Nate Stormer.

ABSTRACT: An argument for redefining promotion and tenure criteria for faculty in new media departments of today’s universities.

Introduction

Recognition and achievement in the field of new media must be measured by standards as high as but different from those in established artistic or scientific disciplines. As the reports from the American Council of Learned Societies[1], the Modern Language Association[2], and the University of Maine[3] recommend, promotion and tenure guidelines must be revised to encourage the creative and innovative use of technology if universities are to remain competitive in the 21st century.

The following points summarize some of the key areas in which new media research departs from traditional academic scholarship, with the aim of providing a rationale for specific criteria for promotion and tenure detailed elsewhere.

New form and content

The differences between traditional and new media excellence lie in both form and content. The hard-copy format of traditional review documentation, such as photocopies or slides, is insufficient for evaluating new media work; screenshots do little justice to electronic projects based on innovative interactive or participatory design. As the MLA puts it, “evaluative bodies should review faculty members’ work in the medium in which it was produced. For example, Web-based projects should be viewed online, not in printed form.”[4]

Further complicating the evaluation of new media achievements is the fact that they are often interdisciplinary, as reflected by the current University of Maine New Media faculty, whose backgrounds range from engineering to computer science to fine art to photojournalism to literature.

For example, while art professors typically divide clearly into critical (Art History) and creative (Studio Art) faculties, new media’s brief history often requires its practitioners to develop a critical context for their own creative work. This is why the majority of pre-eminent new media critics are also artists.[5] It is also why new media research spans numerous genres, from critical essays to political activism to community-building to software design.

Limitations of academic journals

These differences may require evaluators of new media artist-researchers to look beyond the usual standards applicable in other disciplines. As noted by a 2003 National Academies report:

Because the field of [Information Technology and Creative Practices] is young and dynamic, ITCP production is hard to evaluate. Traditional review panels…may be hampered by their members’ ties to single disciplines and the absence of a time-tested consensus about what constitutes good work in ITCP and why. [6]

Ironically, the National Academies study found that the highest benchmark for success in traditional academic departments, publication in peer-reviewed journals, is less relevant to success in new media–and empirically less an accurate measure of stature in the field–than more supple or timely forms of intellectual exposition:

The gold standard for academia–and the criterion most easily understood by parties outside a given subdiscipline–is the so-called archival journal (often published by scholarly or professional societies) that involves considerable editorial selection plus prepublication review and revision, which function as a screening system for quality. But the long lead time for such publications poses problems for subdisciplines in which timeliness–quickly getting an idea into the field–matters.[7]

Leonardo magazine (MIT Press) is currently the only print magazine universally recognized as a peer-reviewed journal about new media. There are currently a handful of networked peer-reviewed journals devoted to new media, such as Leonardo’s Electronic Almanac (Cambridge), Fibreculture (Sydney), and First Monday (Chicago).

Yet the field’s most prominent print publishers and research archivists[8] have acknowledged a 15-25 year lag and limited exposure that makes print publications far less relevant for new media research. Although promising new paradigms for distributed publication are on the horizon, at the time of writing these systems are only in the planning stage.[9] Finally, as the MLA warns, participation in electronic scholarship should not place extra demands on a researcher[10]; an accomplishment in new media research should substitute for a print article or monograph, not merely supplement them.

Alternative Recognition Measures

Given the accessibility and timeliness required for new media research, the following measures of recognition should be prioritized in the evaluation of new media research candidates:

1. Invited / edited publications

Invitations to publish in edited electronic journals or printed magazines and books should be recognized as the kind of peer influence that in other fields would be signaled by acceptance in peer-reviewed journals.

2. Live conferences

The 2003 National Academies study concludes that conferences on new media, both face-to-face and virtual, offer a more useful and in some cases more prestigious venue for exposition than academic journals:

[The sluggishness of journal publications] is offset somewhat by a flourishing array of conferences and other forums, in both virtual and real space, that provide a sense of community and an outlet as well as feedback[11]….The prestige associated with presentations at major conferences actually makes some of them more selective than journals.[12]

New forms of conference archiving–such as archived Webcasts–add value and exposure to the research presented at conferences.

3. Citations

Citations are a valuable and versatile measure of peer influence because they may come from or point to a variety of genres, from Web sites to databases to books in print. Examples include citations in:

a. Electronic archives and recognition networks, such as the publicly accessible databases maintained by the Daniel Langlois Foundation (Montreal), the V2 organization (Rotterdam), the Database of Virtual Art (Berlin), and the Media Art Net database (Karlsruhe).

b. Books, printed journals, and newspapers. These are easier to find now, thanks to Google Scholar, Google Print, and Amazon’s “look inside the book” feature.

c. Syllabi and other pedagogical contexts. Google searches on .edu domains and citations of the author’s work in syllabi from outside universities can measure the academic currency of an individual researcher or her ideas. In the sciences, readings or projects cited on a syllabus are likely to be popular textbooks, but in an emerging field like new media, such recognition is a more valid marker of relevance.

4. Download / visitor counts

Downloads and other traffic-related statistics represent a measure of influence that has gained importance in the online community recently. As a 2005 open access study[13] concludes:

Whereas the significance of citation impact is well established, access of research literature via the Web provides a new metric for measuring the impact of articles – Web download impact.

Download impact is useful for at least two reasons:

(1) The portion of download variance that is correlated with citation counts provides an early-days estimate of probable citation impact that can begin to be tracked from the instant an article is made Open Access and that already attains its maximum predictive power after 6 months.

(2) The portion of download variance that is uncorrelated with citation counts provides a second, partly independent estimate of the impact of an article, sensitive to another form of research usage that is not reflected in citations (Kurtz 2004).

5. Impact in online discussions

Email discussion lists are the proving grounds of new media discourse. They vary greatly in tone and substance, but even the least moderated of such lists can subject their authors to rigorous–and at times withering–scrutiny.[14] Measures such as the number of list subscribers, geographic scope, the presence or absence of moderation, and the number of replies triggered by a given contribution can give a sense of the importance of each discussion list.[15]

6. Impact in the real world

While magazine columns and newspaper editorials may have little standing in traditional academic subjects, one of the strengths of new media are their relevance to a daily life that is increasingly inflected by the relentless proliferation of technologies. Even counting Google search returns on the author’s name or statistically improbable phrases can be a measure of real-world impact[16].

By privileging new media research with direct effect on local or global communities, the university can remain relevant in an age where much research takes place outside the ivory tower.

8. Net-native recognition metrics

Peer-evaluated online communities may invent their own measures of member evaluation, in which case they may be relevant to a researcher who participates in those communities. Examples of such self-policing communities include Slashdot, The Pool, Open Theory, and the Distributed Learning Project.

The MLA pins the responsibility for learning these new metrics on reviewers rather than the reviewed.[17] Given the mutability of such metrics, however, promotion and tenure candidates may be called upon to explain and give context to these metrics for their reviewers. Again, efforts to educate a scholar’s colleagues about new media should be considered part of that scholar’s research, not supplemental to it.

9. Reference letters

Letters of recommendation from outside referees are an important compensation for the irrelevance of traditional recognition venues. Nevertheless, it is insufficient merely to solicit such letters from professors tenured in new media at other universities, since so few exist.

More valuable is to use the measures outlined in this document to identify pre-eminent figures in new media, or to require new media promotion and tenure candidates to identify such figures and supply evidence that they qualify according to the criteria above.

[1] The ACLS recommends “policies for tenure and promotion that recognize and reward digital scholarship and scholarly communication; recognition should be given not only to scholarship that uses the humanities and social science cyberinfrastructure but also to scholarship that contributes to its design, construction, and growth….

We might expect younger colleagues to use new technologies with greater fluency and ease, but with tenure at stake, they will also be more risk-averse….

Senior scholars now have both the opportunity and the responsibility to take certain risks, first among which is to condone risk taking in their junior colleagues and their graduate students, making sure that such endeavors are appropriately rewarded.”

“Our Cultural Commonwealth,” report by the ACLS Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 29 July 2006,

[http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber.htm[, accessed January 2, 2007.

[2] “Departments and institutions should recognize the legitimacy of scholarship produced in new media, whether by individuals or in collaboration, and create procedures for evaluating these forms of scholarship.” December 2006 report of the MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion,

[http://www.mla.org/tenure_promotion] accessed January 2, 2007.

[3] “The Commission encourages each department on campus, as well as the University as a whole, to examine promotion and tenure criteria to recognize and reward innovative uses of technology in teaching, research and service….the University needs to consider the criteria and standards used in the promotion and tenure process.

The Commission encourages each department and the University as a whole to consider whether faculty efforts in this area are recognized, valued, and/or encouraged.” November 2003 report of the University of Maine Commission on Information Technologies, accessed at

[http://www.umaine.edu/documents/CIT.pdf] on May 2, 2004.

[4] MLA Committee on Information Technology. “Guidelines for Evaluating Work with Digital Media in the Modern Languages.” 20 May 2000. ADE Bulletin 132 (2002): 94–95. 82, mirrored at

[http://www.mla.org/guidelines_evaluation_digital], accessed 2 January, 2007.

[5] A brief sampling of new media theorist-practitioners includes Simon Biggs (Cambridge University), Matthew Fuller (Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam), Mary Flanagan (Hunter), Alexander Galloway (NYU), Kenneth Goldberg (Berkeley), Eduardo Kac (Art Institute of Chicago), Natalie Jeremijenko (UCSD), Raphael Lozano-Hemmer (Karlstad University, Sweden), Lev Manovich (UCSD), Randall Packer (American University), Richard Rinehart (Berkeley), and Jeffrey Shaw (ZKM).

[6] National Research Council, Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation, and Creativity (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2003), pp. 8-9.

[7] National Research Council, op. cit., p. 188.

[8] These estimates are from MIT’s Roger Malina (Director of Leonardo magazine) and the Daniel Langlois Foundation’s Alain Depocas (Director of the Centre for Documentation + Research), and are mirrored at

[http://cordova.asap.um.maine.edu/wiki/index.php/Standards_of_Recognition]

[9] The Interarchive project is a possible model for distributed publication; see

[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive]

[10] “Change in favor of a more capacious conception of scholarship, which we strongly endorse, should not mean ever-wider demands on faculty members, most especially those coming up for tenure and promotion.” MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, op. cit., p. 21.

[11] National Research Council, op. cit., pp. 8-9.

[12] National Research Council, op. cit., p. 188.

[13] Tim Brody and Stevan Harnad, “Earlier Web Usage Statistics as Predictors of Later Citation Impact”,

[http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10647/], accessed 5 March 2005.

[14] This recent

[http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0504/msg00051.html]

rejoinder by Morlock Elloi on the list exemplifies the expectations of such online forums:

> If you have any past publications that might help me understand your point of view, I would gladly read them.

While I understand that in paidspeakerworld the weight of the argument is computed as (volume of publications) x (number of speeches), on nettime and elsewhere closer to reality arguments stand for themselves.

[15] Electronic and email texts also have a currency acknowledged by leading institutions in the field. As of December 21, 2005, one of the premiere bibliographic indices in new media, the Langlois Foundation’s CR+D database, included the following indexation for “Jon Ippolito”:

* Author of 10 documents
* Subject of 48 documents
* Participant to 21 events
* Organizer of 2 events

Of the 10 documents by the author indexed, 1 is from an email list and 2 are parts of Web sites. In the case of artist and critic Alexander Galloway, the relevance of his online texts is even more striking: although by 2005 he was the author of several journal articles and an important book from MIT Press, the two documents that represented his writing in the CR+D database were both from email lists.

[16] A statistically significant number of Google returns, eg > 30, may be a necessary but insufficient condition for confirming global impact.

[17] “In evaluating scholarship for tenure and promotion, committees and administrators must take responsibility for becoming fully aware both of the mechanisms of oversight and assessment that already govern the production of a great deal of digital scholarship and of the well-established role of new media in humanities research.

It is of course convenient when electronic scholarly editing and writing are clearly analogous to their print counterparts. But when new media make new forms of scholarship possible, those forms can be assessed with the same rigor used to judge scholarly quality in print media. We must have the flexibility to ensure that as new sources and instruments for knowing develop, the meaning of scholarship can expand and remain relevant to our changing times.” MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, op. cit., p. 46.

[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/new_criteria_for_new_media.html]

University of Maine | Promotion and Tenure Guidelines || Promotion and Tenure Guidelines | New Criteria for New Media |

University of Maine | Promotion and Tenure Guidelines || Promotion and Tenure Guidelines | New Criteria for New Media |
New Media Department, University of Maine

Promotion and Tenure Guidelines Addendum: Rationale for Redefined Criteria

New Criteria for New Media

Version 2.2, January 2007

Authors: Joline Blais, Jon Ippolito, and Owen Smith in collaboration with Steve Evans and Nate Stormer.

ABSTRACT: An argument for redefining promotion and tenure criteria for faculty in new media departments of today’s universities.

Introduction

Recognition and achievement in the field of new media must be measured by standards as high as but different from those in established artistic or scientific disciplines. As the reports from the American Council of Learned Societies[1], the Modern Language Association[2], and the University of Maine[3] recommend, promotion and tenure guidelines must be revised to encourage the creative and innovative use of technology if universities are to remain competitive in the 21st century.

The following points summarize some of the key areas in which new media research departs from traditional academic scholarship, with the aim of providing a rationale for specific criteria for promotion and tenure detailed elsewhere.

New form and content

The differences between traditional and new media excellence lie in both form and content. The hard-copy format of traditional review documentation, such as photocopies or slides, is insufficient for evaluating new media work; screenshots do little justice to electronic projects based on innovative interactive or participatory design. As the MLA puts it, “evaluative bodies should review faculty members’ work in the medium in which it was produced. For example, Web-based projects should be viewed online, not in printed form.”[4]

Further complicating the evaluation of new media achievements is the fact that they are often interdisciplinary, as reflected by the current University of Maine New Media faculty, whose backgrounds range from engineering to computer science to fine art to photojournalism to literature.

For example, while art professors typically divide clearly into critical (Art History) and creative (Studio Art) faculties, new media’s brief history often requires its practitioners to develop a critical context for their own creative work. This is why the majority of pre-eminent new media critics are also artists.[5] It is also why new media research spans numerous genres, from critical essays to political activism to community-building to software design.

Limitations of academic journals

These differences may require evaluators of new media artist-researchers to look beyond the usual standards applicable in other disciplines. As noted by a 2003 National Academies report:

Because the field of [Information Technology and Creative Practices] is young and dynamic, ITCP production is hard to evaluate. Traditional review panels…may be hampered by their members’ ties to single disciplines and the absence of a time-tested consensus about what constitutes good work in ITCP and why. [6]

Ironically, the National Academies study found that the highest benchmark for success in traditional academic departments, publication in peer-reviewed journals, is less relevant to success in new media–and empirically less an accurate measure of stature in the field–than more supple or timely forms of intellectual exposition:

The gold standard for academia–and the criterion most easily understood by parties outside a given subdiscipline–is the so-called archival journal (often published by scholarly or professional societies) that involves considerable editorial selection plus prepublication review and revision, which function as a screening system for quality. But the long lead time for such publications poses problems for subdisciplines in which timeliness–quickly getting an idea into the field–matters.[7]

Leonardo magazine (MIT Press) is currently the only print magazine universally recognized as a peer-reviewed journal about new media. There are currently a handful of networked peer-reviewed journals devoted to new media, such as Leonardo’s Electronic Almanac (Cambridge), Fibreculture (Sydney), and First Monday (Chicago).

Yet the field’s most prominent print publishers and research archivists[8] have acknowledged a 15-25 year lag and limited exposure that makes print publications far less relevant for new media research. Although promising new paradigms for distributed publication are on the horizon, at the time of writing these systems are only in the planning stage.[9] Finally, as the MLA warns, participation in electronic scholarship should not place extra demands on a researcher[10]; an accomplishment in new media research should substitute for a print article or monograph, not merely supplement them.

Alternative Recognition Measures

Given the accessibility and timeliness required for new media research, the following measures of recognition should be prioritized in the evaluation of new media research candidates:

1. Invited / edited publications

Invitations to publish in edited electronic journals or printed magazines and books should be recognized as the kind of peer influence that in other fields would be signaled by acceptance in peer-reviewed journals.

2. Live conferences

The 2003 National Academies study concludes that conferences on new media, both face-to-face and virtual, offer a more useful and in some cases more prestigious venue for exposition than academic journals:

[The sluggishness of journal publications] is offset somewhat by a flourishing array of conferences and other forums, in both virtual and real space, that provide a sense of community and an outlet as well as feedback[11]….The prestige associated with presentations at major conferences actually makes some of them more selective than journals.[12]

New forms of conference archiving–such as archived Webcasts–add value and exposure to the research presented at conferences.

3. Citations

Citations are a valuable and versatile measure of peer influence because they may come from or point to a variety of genres, from Web sites to databases to books in print. Examples include citations in:

a. Electronic archives and recognition networks, such as the publicly accessible databases maintained by the Daniel Langlois Foundation (Montreal), the V2 organization (Rotterdam), the Database of Virtual Art (Berlin), and the Media Art Net database (Karlsruhe).

b. Books, printed journals, and newspapers. These are easier to find now, thanks to Google Scholar, Google Print, and Amazon’s “look inside the book” feature.

c. Syllabi and other pedagogical contexts. Google searches on .edu domains and citations of the author’s work in syllabi from outside universities can measure the academic currency of an individual researcher or her ideas. In the sciences, readings or projects cited on a syllabus are likely to be popular textbooks, but in an emerging field like new media, such recognition is a more valid marker of relevance.

4. Download / visitor counts

Downloads and other traffic-related statistics represent a measure of influence that has gained importance in the online community recently. As a 2005 open access study[13] concludes:

Whereas the significance of citation impact is well established, access of research literature via the Web provides a new metric for measuring the impact of articles – Web download impact.

Download impact is useful for at least two reasons:

(1) The portion of download variance that is correlated with citation counts provides an early-days estimate of probable citation impact that can begin to be tracked from the instant an article is made Open Access and that already attains its maximum predictive power after 6 months.

(2) The portion of download variance that is uncorrelated with citation counts provides a second, partly independent estimate of the impact of an article, sensitive to another form of research usage that is not reflected in citations (Kurtz 2004).

5. Impact in online discussions

Email discussion lists are the proving grounds of new media discourse. They vary greatly in tone and substance, but even the least moderated of such lists can subject their authors to rigorous–and at times withering–scrutiny.[14] Measures such as the number of list subscribers, geographic scope, the presence or absence of moderation, and the number of replies triggered by a given contribution can give a sense of the importance of each discussion list.[15]

6. Impact in the real world

While magazine columns and newspaper editorials may have little standing in traditional academic subjects, one of the strengths of new media are their relevance to a daily life that is increasingly inflected by the relentless proliferation of technologies. Even counting Google search returns on the author’s name or statistically improbable phrases can be a measure of real-world impact[16].

By privileging new media research with direct effect on local or global communities, the university can remain relevant in an age where much research takes place outside the ivory tower.

8. Net-native recognition metrics

Peer-evaluated online communities may invent their own measures of member evaluation, in which case they may be relevant to a researcher who participates in those communities. Examples of such self-policing communities include Slashdot, The Pool, Open Theory, and the Distributed Learning Project.

The MLA pins the responsibility for learning these new metrics on reviewers rather than the reviewed.[17] Given the mutability of such metrics, however, promotion and tenure candidates may be called upon to explain and give context to these metrics for their reviewers. Again, efforts to educate a scholar’s colleagues about new media should be considered part of that scholar’s research, not supplemental to it.

9. Reference letters

Letters of recommendation from outside referees are an important compensation for the irrelevance of traditional recognition venues. Nevertheless, it is insufficient merely to solicit such letters from professors tenured in new media at other universities, since so few exist.

More valuable is to use the measures outlined in this document to identify pre-eminent figures in new media, or to require new media promotion and tenure candidates to identify such figures and supply evidence that they qualify according to the criteria above.

[1] The ACLS recommends “policies for tenure and promotion that recognize and reward digital scholarship and scholarly communication; recognition should be given not only to scholarship that uses the humanities and social science cyberinfrastructure but also to scholarship that contributes to its design, construction, and growth….

We might expect younger colleagues to use new technologies with greater fluency and ease, but with tenure at stake, they will also be more risk-averse….

Senior scholars now have both the opportunity and the responsibility to take certain risks, first among which is to condone risk taking in their junior colleagues and their graduate students, making sure that such endeavors are appropriately rewarded.”

“Our Cultural Commonwealth,” report by the ACLS Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 29 July 2006,

[http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber.htm[, accessed January 2, 2007.

[2] “Departments and institutions should recognize the legitimacy of scholarship produced in new media, whether by individuals or in collaboration, and create procedures for evaluating these forms of scholarship.” December 2006 report of the MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion,

[http://www.mla.org/tenure_promotion] accessed January 2, 2007.

[3] “The Commission encourages each department on campus, as well as the University as a whole, to examine promotion and tenure criteria to recognize and reward innovative uses of technology in teaching, research and service….the University needs to consider the criteria and standards used in the promotion and tenure process.

The Commission encourages each department and the University as a whole to consider whether faculty efforts in this area are recognized, valued, and/or encouraged.” November 2003 report of the University of Maine Commission on Information Technologies, accessed at

[http://www.umaine.edu/documents/CIT.pdf] on May 2, 2004.

[4] MLA Committee on Information Technology. “Guidelines for Evaluating Work with Digital Media in the Modern Languages.” 20 May 2000. ADE Bulletin 132 (2002): 94–95. 82, mirrored at

[http://www.mla.org/guidelines_evaluation_digital], accessed 2 January, 2007.

[5] A brief sampling of new media theorist-practitioners includes Simon Biggs (Cambridge University), Matthew Fuller (Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam), Mary Flanagan (Hunter), Alexander Galloway (NYU), Kenneth Goldberg (Berkeley), Eduardo Kac (Art Institute of Chicago), Natalie Jeremijenko (UCSD), Raphael Lozano-Hemmer (Karlstad University, Sweden), Lev Manovich (UCSD), Randall Packer (American University), Richard Rinehart (Berkeley), and Jeffrey Shaw (ZKM).

[6] National Research Council, Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation, and Creativity (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2003), pp. 8-9.

[7] National Research Council, op. cit., p. 188.

[8] These estimates are from MIT’s Roger Malina (Director of Leonardo magazine) and the Daniel Langlois Foundation’s Alain Depocas (Director of the Centre for Documentation + Research), and are mirrored at

[http://cordova.asap.um.maine.edu/wiki/index.php/Standards_of_Recognition]

[9] The Interarchive project is a possible model for distributed publication; see

[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive]

[10] “Change in favor of a more capacious conception of scholarship, which we strongly endorse, should not mean ever-wider demands on faculty members, most especially those coming up for tenure and promotion.” MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, op. cit., p. 21.

[11] National Research Council, op. cit., pp. 8-9.

[12] National Research Council, op. cit., p. 188.

[13] Tim Brody and Stevan Harnad, “Earlier Web Usage Statistics as Predictors of Later Citation Impact”,

[http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10647/], accessed 5 March 2005.

[14] This recent

[http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0504/msg00051.html]

rejoinder by Morlock Elloi on the list exemplifies the expectations of such online forums:

> If you have any past publications that might help me understand your point of view, I would gladly read them.

While I understand that in paidspeakerworld the weight of the argument is computed as (volume of publications) x (number of speeches), on nettime and elsewhere closer to reality arguments stand for themselves.

[15] Electronic and email texts also have a currency acknowledged by leading institutions in the field. As of December 21, 2005, one of the premiere bibliographic indices in new media, the Langlois Foundation’s CR+D database, included the following indexation for “Jon Ippolito”:

* Author of 10 documents
* Subject of 48 documents
* Participant to 21 events
* Organizer of 2 events

Of the 10 documents by the author indexed, 1 is from an email list and 2 are parts of Web sites. In the case of artist and critic Alexander Galloway, the relevance of his online texts is even more striking: although by 2005 he was the author of several journal articles and an important book from MIT Press, the two documents that represented his writing in the CR+D database were both from email lists.

[16] A statistically significant number of Google returns, eg > 30, may be a necessary but insufficient condition for confirming global impact.

[17] “In evaluating scholarship for tenure and promotion, committees and administrators must take responsibility for becoming fully aware both of the mechanisms of oversight and assessment that already govern the production of a great deal of digital scholarship and of the well-established role of new media in humanities research.

It is of course convenient when electronic scholarly editing and writing are clearly analogous to their print counterparts. But when new media make new forms of scholarship possible, those forms can be assessed with the same rigor used to judge scholarly quality in print media. We must have the flexibility to ensure that as new sources and instruments for knowing develop, the meaning of scholarship can expand and remain relevant to our changing times.” MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, op. cit., p. 46.

[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/new_criteria_for_new_media.html]

Dental faculty practice what they teach

Dental faculty practice what they teach
The faculty at the UMKC School of Dentistry wants to see you smile.

That’s why, in addition to the time they spend teaching, the dental faculty also work at the Dr. S. Orlando and Harriet Somers Clinic Faculty Practice.

The faculty practice, located on the second floor of the School of Dentistry building on Hospital Hill, is home to 15 dentists with specialties ranging from pediatric dentistry to periodontics and implantology.

Historical interview captivates crowd

Historical interview captivates crowd
Charles Everett Pace convincingly portrayed Langston Hughes Tuesday evening at the Kansas City Public Library Central Branch.

The Langston Hughes interview was the first of three “Meet the Past with Crosby Kemper III” events hosted by the library.

It is a series featuring re-enactors who are interviewed by the library’s director as if they were a certain historical figure.

Reckoning with a painful past
Poetry is a complicated art.

“Writing poems is harder than writing poetry,” Michelle Boisseau said. “You can write lots of poetry and never really write a poem that holds it all together in a kind of intense connection.”

Boisseau has been teaching at UMKC since 1995.

Reckoning with a painful past

Reckoning with a painful past
Poetry is a complicated art.

“Writing poems is harder than writing poetry,” Michelle Boisseau said. “You can write lots of poetry and never really write a poem that holds it all together in a kind of intense connection.”

Boisseau has been teaching at UMKC since 1995.

Two PhD Positions in Auditory Neuroscience-Hannover

Two PhD Positions in Auditory Neuroscience-Hannover
Two PhD Positions in Auditory Neuroscience

We are seeking highly motivated PhD Students to work in the program “Function and pathophysiology of the auditory system” at the Hannover Medical School, in Hannover, Germany.

The goal of our group is to investigate neural mechanisms of human auditory system by using event-related potentials (32-channel system, Brain Products). Experiments will involve healthy controls, as well as subjects with cochlear implants (CI). An emphasis will be placed on the processing of language-related irregularities as well as music perception. All studies are conducted in collaboration with the Clinic for Laryngology, Rhinology and Otology.

The research will be conducted at the Hannover Medical School (http://mh-hannover. de) in Hannover, Germany, which is one of the world’s leading university medical centers. Our research and patient care set national and international standards. We are also part of an excellent regional medical network. Our outstanding success in interdisciplinary collaboration both within the MHH and with extramural scientific institutions is reflected in the fact that the MHH is the German medical university with the greatest volume of grant funding.

PhD positions:
The candidates must have a master degree (or equivalent) in neuroscience, medicine, psychology, or a related field. Proficiency in oral and written English is necessary. PhD students will have the opportunity to participate in the Center of Systems Neuroscience.

Starting date for all positions is flexible (official teaching classes start date: October, 1st, 2009), but an earlier start will be supported. Scholarship will be 1500 €/months.

We seek to increase the number of women in those areas where they are under-represented and therefore explicitly encourage women to apply. We are committed to employing more handicapped individuals and especially encourage them to apply.

The closing date for applications is 15th May 2009 but interested candidates are encouraged to get in touch at their earliest convenience.

For questions or informal enquiries about these posts please contact Dr. Matthias Wittfoth: (wittfoth.matthias@ mh-hannover. de) +49 (0) 511-532-3578.

Please include the following documents in your application (preferably in one PDF-file): Curriculum Vitae, names and contact details of two personal references, a description of your personal qualifications, future research interests and academic goals.

Applications should be sent to: wittfoth.matthias@ mh-hannover. de
or via post to:

Dr. Dipl.-Psych. Matthias Wittfoth
Department of Neurology
Hannover Medical School
Carl-Neuberg- Str. 1
30625 Hannover, Germany
Tel.: ++49-(0)511- 532-3578

Local jazz talents draw crowds
Last Monday night, Kansas Citians turned out in droves to the Blue Room for some local jazz fun.

Clint Ashlock’s New Jazz Order (NJO), Kansas City’s own big band group, put on a show to a packed house. Featuring some of the best jazz musicians in town, the NJO performed a wide selection of both jazz standards as well as new arrangements from local writers.

Phd positions at The Institute for Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science, Univ. of Kent

Phd positions at The Institute for Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science, Univ. of Kent
University of Kent
PhD Scholarships
Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science
The Institute for Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science
The Institute for Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science will be offering two PhD Scholarships which will cover tuition fees at the Home/EU rate plus a maintenance grant at the same rate as the Research Councils (£12,960 per annum in 2008-09). Recipients will be expected to do some teaching as part of the terms of the Scholarship. The Scholarships will be offered for one year in the first instance, renewable for a maximum of three years subject to satisfactory academic performance. Candidates must hold a good Honours degree (First or 2i) or a Master’s degree at merit or distinction in a relevant subject or equivalent.

The scholarship competition is open to all postgraduate research applicants. UK, EU and overseas fee paying students as well as full-time and part-time postgraduate research students are invited to apply.

Application Process
To be eligible for this scholarship, candidates must make a formal application for postgraduate research study at the University of Kent. This can be done online at: http://records. kent.ac.uk/ external/ admissions/ pgapplication. php
When candidates send their application paperwork to the University of Kent they should include a letter stating that they would like to be considered for this University of Kent scholarship.
Candidates who are interested in applying for one of these scholarships should contact Dr R J Shank at the institute of mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Sciences via email at R.J.Shank@kent. ac.uk.
The deadline for receipt of applications is 17:00 on Friday 26 June 2009.

Vile and evilIt is absolutely outrageous that the

Vile and evil

It is absolutely outrageous that the Catholic Church thinks those who allowed a nine-year old Brazilian girl to have an abortion to save her life are committing a greater sin than the man who impregnated her. It is vile that the Church thinks that it is fine to excommunicate the girl’s mother who wanted to save her young daughters life – but not excommunicate the girls stepfather who impregnated and abused her for years.

Instead the Church wants to prosecute the mother for securing the abortion and excommunicate the doctors for administering it.

Rape is against the law in Brazil, but abortion is permitted in cases of rape where the mother’s life is at risk. The church says that the law of God is above any human law, meaning that abortion as a result of rape is worse than rape and serial sexual abuse itself. Why? Because the Catechism of the Church says that sexual misconduct is not in the list of “grave personal sins”. Instead it is merely a heinous crime.

[update: but apparently it is a grave personal sin to take communion after not repenting for a sin like sexual abuse, meaning that a person who raped is committing a bigger sin akin to abortion merely by taking communion without repenting.]

The stance by Catholic leaders has nothing to do with God’s law or the teachings of Jesus at all. As a Christian I find the position of the church – ie: that the girl had less of a right to live than her unborn child – sickening, intolerable, and absolutely repulsive. I find it disgusting that church leaders think that it is fine to murder a girl while delivering her babies only for these babies to grow up orphans if they are delivered alive. Bishops who kick you out of the church for allowing an abortion that will save a life, but move you to the next parish if you are a rapist priest are fit only for the pit of hell.

While I’d like to know what Catholic readers think of the Church’s position on this, I’m sure there are Catholics leaders in this country who disagree with stance taken by their fellow clergyman, while still remaining pro-life – as all Catholics should.

Blackout

Like most of the political bloggers, I was blacked out this morning in protest over impending copyright laws. Thanks for visiting Black News this morning. I was obviously blogging something worthwhile as I got nearly double my normal daily readership. Hope you got the message.

I’m glad all main centres media covered the protest. Creative Freedom Foundation spokeswoman Bronwyn Holloway-Smith told NZPA thousands of sites, from political blogs to news sites such as Scoop and even a Shortland Street discussion board, joined the blackout. Even the Sydney Morning Herald covered the NZPA story on our protest.

Critics: Thousands evicted from Angola church land – PR Inside

Critics: Thousands evicted from Angola church land – PR Inside
LUANDA, Angola (AP) – Even as Pope Benedict XVI said his heart cannot be at peace while people are homeless, critics used his Africa pilgrimage to highlight the plight of thousands whom the Angolan government has violently evicted from land owned by the Roman Catholic Church. Amnesty International

Icing Eyed in Montana Plane Crash – AOL
BUTTE, Mont. (March 23) – Speculation over the crash of a single-engine turboprop plane into a cemetery shifted to ice on the wings Monday after it became less likely that overloading was to blame, given that half of the 14 people on board were small children. While descending Sunday in preparation

Former teachers complete 3rd and final spacewalk of shuttle mission; path cleared of space junk – Newsday
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Two astronauts who were teaching math and science to middle school students just five years ago went on a spacewalk together Monday, their path cleared of dangerous orbiting junk that had threatened the space station and shuttle. On Sunday, the linked shuttle-station

Next Page »