AI and Scholarship

My blog posts typically come together in a single sitting. I percolate ideas for a few days, and then eventually sit and wrestle with them on my keyboard before I completely forget them and then, I post.

Sometimes, I look back on a piece I wrote years ago and beyond wondering how I missed such obvious typos, I can’t believe how certain I let myself sound when the thoughts I shape into a post are actually part of a developing thought process. Maybe I have a type of storytelling that reveals bits  about me and  that connects me with readers. Much of what I write about comes from my experience as a librarian, years ago as a school librarian and now at a university.

School and academic librarians practice information literacy and provide equitable access to space for ideas to grow, all while protecting our privacy. One important difference between a school librarian and academic librarians is that many of those in universities work toward promotion and tenure and are expected to conduct research and scholarship along with their librarianship and service. Scholarship is an essential part of academic work that traditionally consists of writing peer reviewed articles. These articles display new scholarship that relates to work written by others in the field. Reports we do in high school and undergrad synthesize what we’ve read. Scholars (usually) ground their work in existing information and combine it with original research to create new concepts.

Peer reviewed or scholarly articles appear in academic journals. Because they are printed ad free, these journals are quite costly and usually appear behind the paywalls of subscription databases that provide access to electronic copies of articles or memberships to professional organizations who print the journals. Scholars are not compensated for writing their articles, nor are they paid for the labor provided as a peer reviewer. The journal publishers and database owners profit off the articles, the scholars do not.

Most scholars write to be part of a community that shares and develops ideas. This scholarly communication builds on the work of other people and verifies that by citing them. Being part of this intellectual community, watching one’s reputation grow is thrilling. It can also be frustrating and annoying because the process can be extremely exclusive, bias, and homogenous.

Those who are concerned about equitable access to information turn to open access publishing. In the Library with a Lead Pipe is an excellent example of open access. “Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.”

We imagine technology being this great equalizer that provides wide access to information. But, you need a device, wifi, and you need media literacy. This access isn’t without costs. For just a minute, we thought AI would remove barriers by allow those with learning disabilities or with limited access to sources to produce higher quality information products even though those same barriers still exist as with tech in general. Added to that, AI quickly depletes natural resources. It accesses information behind paywalls without paying for it while the tech developers profit, and it doesn’t credit its sources. I know that Copilot and ChatGPT recognize my name and ChatGPT can discuss some of the important topics on my blog. They’re making my work more widely available but they’re neither citing nor paying me.

How do academics grow as experts in their field if they’re not being cited? How does AI facilitate scholarly communication?

I think the same sort of conversations had to have occurred when printing presses, which could have been lauded as tools to share and preserve stories that had been told in communities for generations, became commodified.

For academics, compensation occurs through recognition; for being seen and acknowledgement as an expert. Some academics extend the scope of their recognition and monetize their careers by publishing books. After they publish, they often become sought after to keynote at conferences or lead workshops for fees that would astound their colleagues, or so I’ve been told. This is where antiDEI work and book bans erode careers by eliminating opportunities for marginalized authors to promote their works in schools and libraries. I’m still hearing that authors are having fewer opportunities to talk, and some are still being disinvited.

Tech leaders don’t like libraries because they are meant to provide inclusive, open and equitable access to information. Libraries are meant to protect user access and privacy. They provide an equitable flow of information. Tech leaders manage an industry that is meant to profit on information, so they design a system that is maintained by an upward flowing cash stream. Consider that when you wonder what these tech people are doing in our government.

Even though writing as an academic has been an uphill challenge for me, I appreciate the opportunity to be part of a community that brings the work of marginalized authors into the scholarly arena. AI might have made it easier, but without good guidance, there would be a lot I wouldn’t have learned. And as AI grows, what happens to the stories that we tell?

Filed under: Libraries & Schools