10 Questions for Christine Borgman

In the digital age, scholars in every field are being inundated with information. Perhaps no one at UCLA understands the implications of this better than Christine Borgman, professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies. In her new book, "Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet," (MIT Press), she examines the new role of digital data.

Using digital tools, researchers can collaborate more easily and access data more quickly. But what are some trade-offs?

Collaboration has considerable overhead. Tools and services for conducting online meetings are not yet robust or easy to use. Similarly, data are not always easy to find or to interpret.

What's been the biggest difference?

It's that data have become a first-class object. Historically, publication was the end product of research. Your data could rot or be discarded once you published your findings. Now the NSF, NIH and other agencies are expecting scholars to keep their data and make it available.

Does that pose a problem?

Most researchers don't really know what it means to do a data management plan. Some fields, such as seismology and genomics, have fairly well-established standards and practices, but most fields don't.

Isn't keeping data the job of academic libraries?

Putting a sentence in your NSF proposal that says, "At the end of my project, I will give the library my data" is not a data management plan. Libraries may partner in data curation, but few are willing to be "dumping grounds" for those who failed to plan for its disposition.

Is UCLA doing anything about it?

We'd like to teach more people how to manage and organize information. The Information Studies Department, together with Mark Hansen (associate professor of statistics) and others, has proposed establishing a campuswide graduate program in the data sciences here.

How can faculty protect their intellectual property rights in this digital age and still publish?

Be proactive about managing your rights. I often point people to the SHERPA/RoMEO Web site. It pulls together the copyright agreements of major publishers and categorizes them by authors' rights to post and distribute their work.

Can you protect your rights, but still post your papers on a Web site or e-repository?

You can. I recommend assessing a journal's copyright policy before submitting an article, modifying agreements where appropriate and using Creative Commons licenses whenever possible. The Creative Commons is a some-rights-reserved legal model. You can learn more about these methods through the UCLA Library.

Is preservation of data a problem?

A massive problem, especially as the "data deluge" accelerates. Information scientists are partnering with other scholars to build up data preservation expertise in specific disciplines.

Are you working on a research project now?

My graduate students and I are partners in CENS Center for Embedded Networked Sensing). We're studying how new kinds of data are being created and used with the new instruments they’ve invented.

As a scholar, are you happy to be living at a time of information overload?

I wouldn't have had a book to write if I weren't! It's an exciting time to be a scholar, more so than ever before.