Guest Speaker - Vincent Larivière: Scholarly Communication in the Digital Era

Wednesday October 14

10-11:30am

University of Alberta

ECHA L1-490 (basement) 

11405 87 Ave NW, Edmonton

This year marks the 350th anniversary of the creation of the first scientific journal. After coexisting alongside correspondence and monographs, journals became at the beginning of the 19th Century the fastest and most convenient way of disseminating new research results, and consolidated this position throughout the 20th Century, especially in the sciences. The advent of the digital era, 20 years ago, challenged their traditional role and form. Indeed, digital technologies, which are easy to update, reuse, access, and transmit, have changed how researchers produce and disseminate new knowledge, as well as how it is being used. Drawing on historical and contemporary empirical data, this talk will address the past and current transformations of scholarly communication, with an emphasis on how these have affected the speed of diffusion of knowledge. While common wisdom suggests that science and scholarship is diffused—and gets forgotten—faster, the reality is more complex… and much more interesting. 

Vincent Larivière holds the Canada Research Chair on the Transformations of Scholarly Communication at the Université de Montréal, where he is associate professor of information science. He is also scientific director of the Érudit journal platform, associate scientific director of the Observatoire des sciences et des technologies (OST) and regular member of the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie (CIRST).Vincent holds a bachelor’s in Science, Technology and Society (UQAM), a master’s degree in history of science (UQAM) and a Ph.D. in information science (McGill), for which he received the 2009 Eugene Garfield Dissertation Scholarship award.