Net-Centric Scholarly Discourse?

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Net-Centric Scholarly Discourse? Simon Buckingham Shum Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK http://people.kmi.open.ac.uk/sbs twitter @sbskmi

Future of Research Communication Perspectives Workshop, Schloss Dagstuhl, 15-18 August 2011 http://bit.ly/p8pRFD

“We may some day click off arguments on a machine with the same assurance that we now enter sales on a cash register.”

Vannevar Bush, 1945

2 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/3881

Launch of ScholOnto project, 2001: the big question...

§  In 2010, will we still be publishing scientific results

primarily as prose papers, or will a complementary

infrastructure emerge that exploits the power of the

social, semantic web to model the literature as a

network of claims and arguments?

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20xx?...

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Questions the next generation scientific infrastructure should help answer

“What is the evidence for this claim?”

“Was this prediction accurate?”

“What are the conceptual foundations for this idea?”

“Who’s built on this idea?”

“Who’s challenged this idea, and using what kind of argument?”

“Are there distinctive perspectives on this problem?”

“Are there inconsistencies within this school of thought?”

so we want to change the system

- so let’s think systems -

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Longer version in a talk at PARC: http://olnet.org/node/582

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1665 throws a long shadow

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, March 1665

Le Journal des Sçavans January 1665

Beyond richly expressive, but passive, prose documents...

To network-native, computationally tractable models and services…

Chaomei Chen, 2006: Citation network visualization

Buckingham Shum, S. (2007). Digital Research Discourse? Computational Thinking Seminar Series, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, 25 Apr. 2007. http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/hyperdiscourse/docs/Simon-Edin-CompThink.pdf

A community of enquiry – inc. but not ltd to scientists – is a complex adaptive system

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A community of enquiry – inc. but not ltd to scientists – is a complex adaptive system

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A community of enquiry – inc. but not ltd to scientists – is a complex adaptive system

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How do we augment this system’s capacity to sense, respond to, and shape its environment?

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§  Through the lens of complex adaptive systems, resilience and network science...

§  Through the lens of sensemaking and HCI...

How do we augment this system’s capacity to sense, respond to, and shape its environment?

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§  Through the lens of complex adaptive systems, resilience and network science...

§  many interacting agents (human and software)

§  many weak signals that can build up unexpectedly

§  diversity and redundancy

§  feedback loops

§  visual analytics to reveal emergent patterns and

network properties

§  ability to withstand change and shock to the system

Resilience

§  Walker, et al. (2004) define resilience as

“the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change, so as to still

retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and

feedbacks”

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Resilience in knowledge-intensive ecosystems

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When knowledge and understanding are key variables in the system, resilience depends on the capacity for learning

e.g. awareness of discrepant evidence, critical practice, reflection and dialogue when confronted by challenges or shocks to the system.

How do we augment this system’s capacity to sense, respond to, and shape its environment?

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§  Through the lens of sensemaking and HCI... §  many plausible narratives: what

was, is, or might be going on?... §  many representational artifacts

being shared and annotated §  attention to the quality of

conversation: how well are agents listening to each other and what kinds of contributions do they make?

§  informal interaction mixed with stronger public claims

§  many connections being made, both explicit/implicit, formal and fuzzy

• critical thinking • argumentation • rhetorical moves • assumptions • analogical thinking

• causality • juxtapositions • “kinda related...”

Sensemaking: the search for plausible, narrative connections

§  In their review of sensemaking, Klein, et al. conclude:

§  “Sensemaking is a motivated, continuous effort to understand connections (which can be among people, places, and events) in order to anticipate their trajectories and act effectively.”

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Sensemaking

Karl Weick: §  “Sensemaking is about such things as

placement of items into frameworks, comprehending, redressing surprise, constructing meaning, interacting in pursuit of mutual understanding, and patterning.” (Weick, [23], p.6)

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Sensemaking

Karl Weick: §  “The point we want to make here is that

sensemaking is about plausibility, coherence, and reasonableness. Sensemaking is about accounts that are socially acceptable and credible” ([23] p.61)

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(contested) collective intelligence...

discourse is how we construct meaning

there is no master worldview

we need CI infrastructures to pool awareness of how people are reading the

signals, and amplify important connections

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Where our tools fit… Given a wealth of documents…

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...and tools to detect and render potentially significant patterns…

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...and tools to detect and render potentially significant patterns…

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...we need ways to make meaningful connections between information elements…

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...we need ways to make meaningful connections between information elements…

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interpretation

interpretation

interpretation

interpretation

...we need ways to make meaningful connections between information elements…

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interpretation

interpretation interpretation

interpretation

interpretation

(a hunch – no grounding

evidence yet)

interpretation

...we need ways to make meaningful connections between information elements…

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predicts causes

interpretation

interpretation interpretation

interpretation

interpretation

(a hunch – no grounding

evidence yet)

interpretation

Is pre-requisite for

...we need ways to make meaningful connections between information elements…

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prevents

predicts causes

interpretation

interpretation interpretation

interpretation

interpretation

(a hunch – no grounding

evidence yet) Is inconsistent with

interpretation

challenges

Is pre-requisite for

...we need ways to make meaningful connections between information elements…

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Question

Answer

Supporting Argument… Challenging

Argument…

challenges supports

responds to

Assumption

motivates

...we need ways to make meaningful connections between information elements…

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Question

Answer

Supporting Argument… Challenging

Argument…

challenges supports

responds to

Hunch

motivates

...we need ways to make meaningful connections between information elements…

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Question

Answer

Supporting Argument… Challenging

Argument…

challenges supports

responds to

Data

motivates

empirical studies of users motivate

user interface concepts

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Interaction design for literature visualization: pilot study: paper-based literature modelling

Buckingham Shum, S.J., Uren, V., Li, G., Sereno, B. and Mancini, C. (2007). Modelling Naturalistic Argumentation in Research Literatures: Representation and Interaction Design Issues. International Journal of Intelligent Systems, (Special Issue on Computational Models of Natural Argument, Eds: C. Reed and F. Grasso, 22, (1), pp.17-47. ePrint: http://oro.open.ac.uk/6463

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Interaction design for lit. visualization From paper prototype to semiformal mapping tool §  The ClaiMapper tool

…to formal argument maps

Starting from paper-based modelling, move from literature sketches…

Buckingham Shum, S.J., Uren, V., Li, G., Sereno, B. and Mancini, C. (2007). Modelling Naturalistic Argumentation in Research Literatures: Representation and Interaction Design Issues. International Journal of Intelligent Systems, (Special Issue on Computational Models of Natural Argument, Eds: C. Reed and F. Grasso, 22, (1), pp.17-47. ePrint: http://oro.open.ac.uk/6463

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Interaction design for doc. annotation Pilot study: paper-based annotation

Pilot study reported in: B. Sereno, S. Buckingham Shum, and E. Motta. (2005). ClaimSpotter: an Environment to Support Sensemaking with Knowledge Triples. Proc. Int. Conf. Intelligent User Interfaces, pages 199–206, ACM

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The ClaimSpotter annotation tool §  Web 2.0-style tagging with optional community/system tag

recommendations

Sereno, B., Buckingham Shum, S. and Motta, E. (2007). Formalization, User Strategy and Interaction Design: Users’ Behaviour with Discourse Tagging Semantics. Workshop on Social and Collaborative Construction of Structured Knowledge, 16th Int. World Wide Web Conference, Banff, Canada; 8-12 May 2007.

baby examples

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A scholarly hypertext wins Best Paper Award at ACM Hypertext 2004!

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Mapping a nuclear power debate on a blog

Mapping a nuclear power debate on a blog

Mapping a nuclear power debate on a blog

from small single-user hypertext maps

to collaborative web infrastructure?

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Growing number of tools for structured deliberation and mapping arguments

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Online Deliberation: Emerging Tools Workshop

Online Deliberation 2010, Leeds UK www.olnet.org/odet2010

ESSENCE: E-Science, Sensemaking & Climate Change

ESSENCE 2009 workshop, KMI, Open University http://events.kmi.open.ac.uk/essence

example services

demos later...

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Cohere visualization of semantic annotations on publications

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‘Learner autonomy’ emerging as a hub node in the literature analysis...

“‘Learner autonomy’ represents a variety of overlapping and

effective learning practices, and implies the learner can give

meaning to learning and create new learning tools”

Webcast and Cohere demo: Mapping the Deeper Learning Literature with Cohere: Helen Jelfs, Simon Buckingham Shum, Anna De Liddo, Open University Seminar: http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/5618

ClaiMaker: a concept demonstrator (2004)

Modelling the philosophy of AI Turing debate

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Buckingham Shum, S.J., Uren, V., Li, G., Sereno, B. and Mancini, C. (2007). Modelling Naturalistic Argumentation in Research Literatures: Representation and Interaction Design Issues. International Journal of Intelligent Systems, (Special Issue on Computational Models of Natural Argument, Eds: C. Reed and F. Grasso, 22, (1), pp.17-47. ePrint: http://oro.open.ac.uk/6463

De Liddo, A., Buckingham Shum, S., Quinto, I., Bachler, M. and Cannavacciuolo, L.(2011). Discourse-Centric Learning Analytics. Proc. 1st Int. Conf. Learning Analytics & Knowledge. Feb. 27-Mar 1, 2011, Banff. http://oro.open.ac.uk/25829

Tracking the kinds of contributions a researcher makes, e.g. acting as a broker, connecting the

ideas of peers or separate communities

New forms of “Impact Analytics”?

“What is the lineage of this idea?”

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Buckingham Shum, S.J., Uren, V., Li, G., Sereno, B. and Mancini, C. (2007). Modelling Naturalistic Argumentation in Research Literatures: Representation and Interaction Design Issues. International Journal of Intelligent Systems, (Special Issue on Computational Models of Natural Argument, Eds: C. Reed and F. Grasso, 22, (1), pp.17-47. ePrint: http://oro.open.ac.uk/6463

OpenEd Evidence Hub: ci.olnet.org

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OpenEd Evidence Hub: ci.olnet.org

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Phone alert: the weight of challenging evidence on Issue X has grown...

49 http://debategraph.org/details.aspx?nid=113433&lan=EN&nf=1

— web annotation of OER (Firefox extension)

Human+machine discourse annotation (work with Ágnes Sándor, Xerox)

51 Ágnes Sándor & OLnet Project:

http://olnet.org/node/512

Discourse analysis with Xerox Incremental Parser

BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE:

Recent studies indicate …

… the previously proposed …

… is universally accepted ...

NOVELTY:

... new insights provide direct evidence ...

... we suggest a new ... approach ...

... results define a novel role ...

OPEN QUESTION:

… little is known …

… role … has been elusive

Current data is insufficient …

GENERALIZING:

... emerging as a promising approach

Our understanding ... has grown exponentially ...

... growing recognition of the

importance ...

CONRASTING IDEAS:

… unorthodox view resolves … paradoxes …

In contrast with previous hypotheses ...

... inconsistent with past findings ...

SIGNIFICANCE:

studies ... have provided important advances

Knowledge ... is crucial for ... understanding

valuable information ... from studies

SURPRISE:

We have recently observed ... surprisingly

We have identified ... unusual

The recent discovery ... suggests intriguing roles

SUMMARIZING:

The goal of this study ...

Here, we show ...

Altogether, our results ... indicate

Detection of salient sentences based on rhetorical markers:

Ágnes Sándor & OLnet Project: http://olnet.org/node/512

Distributed annotation platforms (Cohere+Utopia PDF demo: thanks to Steve Pettifer, U. Manchester)

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A community of enquiry – inc. but not ltd to scientists – is a complex adaptive system

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Envisioning the shifts that will take place...

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Compendium Institute

http://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/hyperdiscourse