It's not filter failure, it's a discovery deficit
- ISSN: 09530460
- ISBN: 1576073513
- DOI: 10.1629/2421
Abstract
The web has changed our information-seeking behaviour radically, yet scholarly communication remains firmly embedded in the traditions of the print world. Here, I argue that the dropping costs of publication and distribution mean that effort and resource expended on preventing publication is wasted and that developing the tools and culture for post-publication annotation, curation and ranking is more productive. Rather than see this as information overload, or in Clay Shirky's words, a filter failure, I propose that it is more useful to see the problem as a discovery deficit. This flood of content, instead of being a problem, is an opportunity to build technical and cultural frameworks that will enable us to extract more value from the outputs of research by exploiting the efficiencies that web-based systems can provide.
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