Dr Altman provided this keynote plenary for the annual meeting of the 57th Annual Meeting of National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) More content is being created by scientists and scholars than ever -- and vastly greater collections of information are the subject of science as scholarship. Simultaneously, the community of users for and uses of this information are changing. This talk reflects on trends in the generation and use of durable information assets in scholarship and science, and on the changing relationship between consumers, purchasers and funders.

2. Prepared for
57th Annual Meeting of National Federation of Advanced Information
Services (NFAIS)
Washington, D.C.
February 2015
“Information wants someone else to pay
for it : as science and scholarship evolve,
who consumes and who pays?”
Dr. Micah Altman
<escience@mit.edu>
Director of Research, MIT Libraries

3. DISCLAIMER
These opinions are my own, they are not the opinions
of MIT, Brookings, any of the project funders, nor (with
the exception of co-authored previously published
work) my collaborators
Secondary disclaimer:
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the
future!”
-- Attributed to Woody Allen, Yogi Berra, Niels Bohr, Vint Cerf, Winston Churchill,
Confucius, Disreali [sic], Freeman Dyson, Cecil B. Demille, Albert Einstein, Enrico
Fermi, Edgar R. Fiedler, Bob Fourer, Sam Goldwyn, Allan Lamport, Groucho Marx, Dan
Quayle, George Bernard Shaw, Casey Stengel, Will Rogers, M. Taub, Mark Twain, Kerr
L. White, etc.
Information wants someone else to pay for it

4. Collaborators & Co-Conspirators
• Margy Avery, Program on Information Science
• Project CREDIT Working Group
• OCLC Task Group on Researcher Identifiers
• NDSA Coordination Committee
Research Support
Thanks to the Digital Science, Sloan
Foundation
Information wants someone else to pay for it

5. Related Work
• Liz Allen, Jo Scott, Amy Brand, Marjorie M.K. Hlava, Micah Altman (2014),
Beyond authorship: recognising the contributions to research; Nature.
• Altman M, Crosas M., 2014.The Evolution of Data Citation: From Principles to
Implementation. IASSIST Quarterly.
• Smith-Yoshimura, Karen; Micah Altman; Michael Conlon; Ana Lupe Cristán;
Laura Dawson; Joanne Dunham; Thom Hickey; Daniel Hook; Wolfram
Horstmann; Andrew MacEwan; Philip Schreur; Laura Smart; Melanie Wacker;
and Saskia Woutersen. 2014. Registering Researchers in Authority Files. Dublin,
Ohio: OCLC Research.
• Amy Brand, Liz Allen, Micah Altman, Marjorike Hlava, Jo Scott, (2015) “Beyond
authorship: attribution, contribution, collaboration, and credit”, Learned
Publishing. Forthcoming.
• Altman M, Bailey J, Cariani K, Corridan J, Crabtree J, Gallinger M, Goethals A,
Grotke A, Hartman C, Lazorshak B, et al. 2015 National Agenda for Digital
Stewardship. National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA); 2014.
Reprints available from:
informatics.mit.edu
Information wants someone else to pay for it

6. Roadmap for this Talk
* Some Trends in Information Creation and Use
in Scholarship and Science *
* Why the market alone cannot sort it out--
Information is not a Pure Public Good *
* Implications for Change Among Consumers,
Producers, Publishers, and Funders *
Information wants someone else to pay for it

7. Information wants someone else to pay for it
Some Trends in
Authorship

8. Then
Information wants someone else to pay for it
Clarke, Beverly L. "Multiple authorship
trends in scientific papers." Science
143.3608 (1964): 822-824.

9. Later
• By 1980, average number of authors in high-
ranked medical journals was 4.5
• By 2000, average number of authors was 6.9
[Weeks et al. 2004]
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10. Now
Information wants someone else to pay for it

11. Now is More
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12. Information wants someone else to pay for it
Some Trends

13. More…
… Forms of Evidence
… Collaborators
… Data
… Publishing, and Filtering
… Learners
… Access
… Evaluation
Information wants someone else to pay for it

14. Increasingly Complex Information
Flow
Information wants someone else to pay for it

15. idea
People
Team
Collaborations
Trainees
Affiliations
Employer
Professional Associations
Education
Funding
Grants
Contracts
Seed Funding
Coop Agreements
Publications
Journal Articles
Books
Patents
Legal Briefs
Algorithms
Software Code
Datasets
Physical Objects
Electronic Files
Protein Structures
Genetic
Sequences
Impacts
Policy
Legal
Health
Environment
Education
Product Development
Spin Off
Workforce
Service Activities
Peer Review
Working Groups
Leadership Positions
Training and Mentoring
More Contribution Types
Information wants someone else to pay for it

16. More more…
•Rapid Fabrication
•Social Media
•Mobile Devices
•Learning
Analytics
•Discovery
•Models of
education
•Inter-institutional
collaboration
•Adaptive learning
•Linked data
•Identifiers
•Sensors
•Multidisciplinary
work
•Data Science
Information wants someone else to pay for it

17. Information wants someone else to pay for it
Why the Market
Alone Can’t Sort
it Out

18. Practical Economics Principle #1:
Keynesian Long-Run Equilibrium Theory
Information wants someone else to pay for it
“But this long run is a misleading
guide to current affairs.
In the long run we are all dead”
- Keynes, 1923, A Tract on Monetary Reform

19. Practical Economics Principle #2:
Bator’s Theory of Market Failure
Information wants someone else to pay for it
Many things in the real world violate
[market assumptions] –
Bator, 1958, The Anatomy of Market Failure

20. Some Conditions for Market Function
Information wants someone else to pay for it
• Condition on Markets
–No political/legal distortions
Common knowledge
–No barriers to entry
• Conditions on agents
–Perfect rationality
–Self-interested
–Infinitely many agents
–Stable preferences
• Conditions on goods
–Consumptive goods
–Excludable goods
–Decreasing returns to scale
–Transferability
–No externalities
• Conditions on exchange
–No transaction costs
–No information asymmetries
• Conditions on equilibrium
valuation
–Pareto optimality vs. economic
surplus
–Ignorability of distributional
concern

21. Practical Economics Principle #3:
Kranzberg’s Theory of Technological
Change
Information wants someone else to pay for it
Technology is neither good nor bad;
nor is it neutral.
Kranzberg, (1986) Technology and History:
"Kranzberg's Laws", Technology and Culture

22. Practical Economics Principle #4:
Ostrom’s Principle of Commons Goods
Ideal market goods are
excludable and consumable --
otherwise, watch out.
[Not a quote!]
Information wants someone else to pay for it

23. Managing a Commons is Different from Managing
a Market
• Clearly defined boundaries should be in place.
• Rules in use are well matched to local needs and conditions.
• Individuals affected by these rules can usually participate in
modifying the rules.
• The right of community members to devise their own rules is
respected by external authorities.
• A system for self-monitoring members’ behavior has been
established.
• A graduated system of sanctions is available.
• Community members have access to low-cost conflict-resolution
mechanisms.
Information wants someone else to pay for it
Ostrom & Hess 2007

24. Softwar
e
Best
Practice
Preserve
d Digital
Content
Storage
Provisionin
g
Information wants someone else to pay for it
Excludable
Rivalrous
Willing
Researc
h
Subject
s
Public, Private, Toll, and Commons Goods

25. McCleod’s Corollary of Information
Purchasing
Information wants someone else to pay for it
Source: © Hugh Macleod,
Gapingvoid Art
gapingvoid.com

26. Information wants someone else to pay for it
Changing
Information,
Changing
Relationships

27. Scholarly Publication Unpacked?
• Digital information Allows us to “Unpack”
• Traditional Scholarly Publication Bundles
–durability & fixity
–identification
–discovery
–content indexing and previewing, interaction
–business broker
–selection
–production workflow
–distribution channels
–market - consumers & Channels
–market -producers
–Content - format, organization and boundaries
• As we unpack, and rebundle – how do we manage stakeholders &
frameworks Information wants someone else to pay for it

28. Creation/Collec
tion
Storage/
Ingest
Processing
Internal
Sharing
Analysis
External
dissemination/publica
tion
Re-use
• Scientific
• Educational
• Scientometric
• Institutional
Long-term
access
Information Lifecycle
Information wants someone else to pay for it

29. Creation/C
ollection
Storage
/Ingest
Processing
Internal
Sharing
Analysi
s
External
dissemination/
publication
Re-
use
Long-
term
access
Many Stakeholders
Scholarly
Publishers
Researche
rs
Data
Archives
/Publish
er
Researc
h
Sponsor
s
Data
Sources/S
ubjects
Consumers
Service/Infra
structure
Providers
Research
Organization
s
Information wants someone else
to pay for it

30. Digital Stuff is Different
•Accessible
•Replicable
•Computable
•Changeable
•…
Information wants someone else to pay for it

31. Some Questions Raised by Changes in
Information Flow
•How to design systems to carry provenance?
•How to communicate “trustworthiness” of the
information displayed, especially when you
have similar information from multiple
sources?
•How to enable corrections and annotations
from information consumers?
•Are all entities identified?
•How does all information integrate into
lifecycle workflows?
Information wants someone else to pay for it

32. Questions Raised for Analytics
How to…
• Reduce error in standard analytics
-- impact factors, citation indices
• Which new measures become feasible
-- collaboration analysis
• Include new research objects
-- grants, datasets, software
• Include new populations
-- graduate students, postdocs, citizen scientists
• Include new connections
-- new maps of science, revealing “dark matter”
• Improve predictive and causal validity
Information wants someone else to pay for it

33. Some Questions Raised from Changes in Production
Trend Potential Authorship Issues Questions
Increase in number of
coauthors
- ‘honorary’ authorship
- ‘ghost’ authorship
- disputes
- How to disambiguate
author names?
- How to communicate
attribution in citation?
- How to describe
contributions to work?
- How to evaluate and
predict impact?
- Who is responsible?
Shift from academic
publishing in books to journals
- loss of sole-author-book as
a evaluation measure
- How to integrate name
authority and researcher
identifier systems?
Decreasing granularity of
publications
- persistence of “nano”
publication vs. authorship
- How to document
authorship over
substructure of work?
Dynamic documents - version misattribution - How to document
authorship over time?
Increasing diversity in citable
scholarly outputs
- citation cannibalization,
overrcounting
- How to cite data, software,
protocols …. presentations,Information wants someone else to pay for it

34. No Single Organization can Preserve all the
Information upon which it Relies
• More production of digital content
• More publishing, filtering and access
• More learners and collaborators
• More attention to public information
• More embedding of information you
want, in a larger context required to
understand it

35. Single Institutions Cannot Counter all Risks
– Digital Offers Opportunity to Diversify
•Distribute to mitigate external risks
–Third party attacks
–Institutional funding
–Change in legal regimes
•Distribute to mitigate internal risks
(“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
–Unintentional curatorial modification
–Loss of institutional knowledge & skills
–Intentional curatorial de-accessioning
–Change in institutional mission
• Distribute Management of Information
Information wants someone else to pay for it

36. References
• Clarke, Beverly L. "Multiple authorship trends in scientific papers." Science 143.3608 (1964): 822-824.
• Weeks, William B., Amy E. Wallace, and B. C. Kimberly. "Changes in authorship patterns in prestigious
US medical journals." Social science & medicine 59.9 (2004): 1949-1954.
• Liz Allen, Jo Scott, Amy Brand, Marjorie M.K. Hlava, Micah Altman (2014), Beyond authorship:
recognising the contributions to research; Nature.
• Altman M, Crosas M., 2014.The Evolution of Data Citation: From Principles to Implementation. IASSIST
Quarterly.
• Smith-Yoshimura, Karen; Micah Altman; Michael Conlon; Ana Lupe Cristán; Laura Dawson; Joanne
Dunham; Thom Hickey; Daniel Hook; Wolfram Horstmann; Andrew MacEwan; Philip Schreur; Laura
Smart; Melanie Wacker; and Saskia Woutersen. 2014. Registering Researchers in Authority Files.
Dublin, Ohio: OCLC Research.
• Amy Brand, Liz Allen, Micah Altman, Marjorike Hlava, Jo Scott, (2015) “Beyond authorship: attribution,
contribution, collaboration, and credit”, Learned Publishing. Forthcoming.
• Altman M, Bailey J, Cariani K, Corridan J, Crabtree J, Gallinger M, Goethals A, Grotke A, Hartman C,
Lazorshak B, et al. 2015 National Agenda for Digital Stewardship. National Digital Stewardship Alliance
(NDSA); 2014.
• Bator, Francis M. "The anatomy of market failure." The Quarterly Journal of Economics (1958): 351-379.
• Keynes, John Maynard. A tract on monetary reform. Ed. Elizabeth Johnson. Vol. 4. London: Macmillan,
1923.
• Hess, Charlotte. "Elinor Ostrom, eds. 2007." Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to
Practice.
Information wants someone else to pay for it

37. Questions?
E-mail: escience@mit.edu
Web: informatics.mit.edu
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