Session 3

1. Session 3

2. Group 1 • 1:mechanisms for informing users of new web publications • Do we still need publishers? • Documents can be held for originating org. but less well for multildisciplinary organisation • Difficulties where there are mergers or institutions disappear • Need for archiving – needs funding • Different requirements for different subjects: impacts upon funding • Forestry information still relevant though old • Important to maintain historical collections (e.g. OFI) • Avoid duplication of effort by librarians in cataloguing • Could we share chapter headings as basis for shared coding – metadata source • Depth of indexing – important not to lose specificity • Agreement on terminology usage • Automatic trawling of publishing lists by d’base producers

3. Group 2 & 3 • IUFRO should establish global forest ontology • Find funding for silva voc project and assess its needs amongst forestry community • Digitisation: survey who is doing what to avoid replication and prioritise projects • Unique literature as basis for digitisation projects

4. Group 4: Open access archiving • Improved access to information, particularly beneficial to those with reduced ability to pay • Libraries could benefit from space reduction • Freer access to info could provide access to information previously unknown or thought lost: stimulate new research • Quality control problems • How to establish reputation for new journal • What is the financial model? Funding body who supported research, the research Inst. or someone else or nobody?

5. Group 5 • Language problem as barrier • ‘No future in using languages other than English’ – a view point • Gfis as important to establish standards to enable automatic harvesting

6. Panel comments • IC: • [Methods for testing medical research background] Need to synthesise data better to serve community – evidence based Cochrane collaboration – 15k contributors globally in 12 centres; methodology groups; Cochrane library (controlled trials, systematic reviews d’base. All info is updated or removed. Free access if country has taken out sub. Campbell collaboration for social interventions work Meta analysis

7. General comments • Archives: digitisation enabling their visibility • Open access: commercial vs. not-for-profit conflicts; DC possibilities and opportunities • Importance of indexing tools behind internet resources: avoid replication of effort • Knowledge of ‘audience’ to improve relevance • Challenge ‘assumptions’ often found in sources which may not be accurate; work can lie hidden in archives • J-store • Distinguish between open-access publishing and archiving – the former having more difficulties and subject to more criticism/doubt • Micro-publishing: blogs, edited by professional editors: difficulties of finding and archiving this type of material • Publication bias – negative/disappointing results not always published – is this a systematic problem over all science • Appears to be also a problem in forestry • Why does peer review not pick up the problem in the original research? • ‘Peer review is a broken system’

8. continued • Is it ethical to embark on research without systematic review? • Scientific researchers need to be more rigorous • Counter-argument that peer-review process does work though not perfect • and that reviewers work hard • Are there data to back up the optimistic opinion? • Smaller journals vs. larger jnls and their quality standards • Time constraints on researchers encroaches on ability to write with attention to detail • Other models for peer-review: e.g. intro plus methods & materials section reviewed first as filter before fuller paper is reviewed; improvements always beneficial

9. continued • How does forestry get the scale needed to make decisions? • Define your terms in research outputs to improve shared knowledge/understanding