FSCI 2022

To watch a recording of this session, click on "open Zoom" above.

0:00 - 0:30: announcements, logistics, and orientation
0:30 - 1:35: presentation by our keynote speaker, Nathan Woods, followed by questions

Designing New Collaborative Horizons in Scholarly Communications
How do we design new ways to engage with and enhance the collaborative impact of scholarship now? The field of scholarly communications is increasingly framed by its potential to shape the social impact of scholarship. We find, for example, the centrality of scholarly communication in efforts to curb the parallel ‘infodemic’ or information disorder that has accompanied the multiple and ongoing Covid-19 health emergencies. We also find it in the centrality of research dissemination and use with regard to the cascading crisis of climate change, and the slow emergency of preserving cultural memory under conditions of rapid ecological change. In this talk, I explore the organization of scholarly communications as a field of collaboration and the tensions and possibilities this poses for addressing or enhancing social impact. The scholarly communications ecosystem is organized through interprofessional collaborations across multiple forms of expertise, as well as increasingly intensive collaborative engagement with social and cultural stakeholders. Towards new horizons of collaborative design, I highlight several models for organizing collaboration in scholarly communications, and some recent examples of initiatives that mobilize collaborative change processes.

Nathan D. Woods is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of research and practice on issues related to the creation, use, and stewardship of science, scholarship and cultural memory. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Lethbridge conducting a collaborative study on research infrastructures in the humanities and cultural heritage information ecosystems. Working with multiple communities of practice, his larger research agenda considers the complex and dynamic relationships between knowledge, the design of institutions, and the organization of expert work. Ongoing projects explore the changing organization of scholarship; the science-policy interface; and the democratization of knowledge production. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from the CUNY Graduate Center; an MSLIS from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and an interdisciplinary BA in the history and philosophy of science from the Evergreen State College. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the American Philosophical Society.