Traditional, dialogical and complex scholarly communication: towards a renewed trust in science
| Date | 27 May 2024 |
| Pages | 1313-1332 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-12-2023-0252 |
| Published date | 27 May 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Antonella Foderaro,David Gunnarsson Lorentzen |
Traditional, dialogical and
complex scholarly communication:
towards a renewed trust in science
Antonella Foderaro
Independent Researcher, Boulder, Colorado, USA, and
David Gunnarsson Lorentzen
Swedish School of Library and Information Science, University of Bor
as,
Bor
as, Sweden
Abstract
Purpose –The credibility crisis of science is a growing topic of investigation. This study approaches the
problem from the sustainability of the scholarly communication system by merging argumentation with
information science.
Design/methodology/approach –Coding and content analysis drawing from a well-established textual
argumentativetradition; a novel non-textual approach to complexcommunication and, an overlooked definition
of sustainable information,were applied to 34 research works. The retrieval was carried out using Inciteful,a
tool exploring literature networks. Additional information, such as keywords, mapping to Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) and citations were acquired through the OpenAlex API. Operationalisation of
concepts from the theoretical frameworkunderpinned the selection and analysis of documents.
Findings –Scholars virtually involve peers, funding agencies, research councils, policymakers, experts,
practitionersand representatives of the public in theirformal written production. Thedescribed coalitions are
occasional, while the needed ones are deep. Threeforms of scholarly communication were found: traditional,
dialogicaland complex depending onthe involved audiences. Thesample tells us about the sustainability of the
scientificcommunicationsystem and the impact it may have on the publicconstruction of imaginariesof science.
Originality/value –This investigation frames scholars, their products and societies as intertwined dialogical
entities constantly communicating and impacting each other. Direct and indirect forms of scholarly
communications are addressed too, showing how poor sustainability in these processes may entail a failure to
reach different layers of societies.
Keywords Sustainable information, Sustainable communication system, Sustainable impact,
Sustainable design, Epistemic justice, Epistemic activism, Scholarly argumentation, Maria Lugones
Paper type Article
1. Introduction
The centrality of science in contributing to national growth in terms of innovation and
commerce is widely recognised. Science has also unquestionably a pervasive impact on
individuals’and societies’development (e.g. Russell, 1952). However, the public accepts this
impact differently depending on how and by whom it is framed.
Biased use of science, polarised communication practices and scientific illiteracy hinder
public benefits and trust in scientific findings. Moreover, online platforms allow for a new and
different public participation in scientific debate, in which people are not passive receivers of
truth but critical reviewers (Marres, 2023). All these aspects add to the current facts-
resistance epidemic and contribute to the contemporary crisis of the scientific system.
This problem is relevant not only because it involves the scientific community but also
because it exposes entire soc ieties to campaigns of disinformation and ideological
manipulation by means sometimes difficult to detect (Haider and R€
odl, 2023). So far, the
problem has been approached from either the perspective of production or dissemination
Journal of
Documentation
1313
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 6 December 2023
Revised 31 March 2024
Accepted 5 April 2024
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 80 No. 6, 2024
pp. 1313-1332
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-12-2023-0252
(for an overview see Kappel and Holmen, 2019), with some exceptions with a focus on
evaluation (Walter et al., 2007).
This investigation looks at the scientific communication system considering evaluation
too as a way through which the academy mediates its value, supporting and justifying
decision-making (R
afols and Stirling, 2021, p. 165). Failing to consider the perspective of
different audiences in all these processes, the scholarly communication system could be a
contributing factor to the growing distrust and mistrust in science. To address these issues,
this investigation looks at how researchers communicate in written scientific production,
whom they address and involve, and what kind of relationship they describe and intend to
build with their interlocutors. Then, we evaluate their argumentation practices in terms of
sustainability according to the audience and the process addressed. We investigate how these
adopted and sometimes described or discussed practices may affect public imaginaries and
trust in science. Finally, we present what the authors consider an obstacle to sustainability.
We accomplish this with the support of 1) a well-established argumentative textual approach
tradition (Lepori and Greco, 2019;Rigotti and Rocci, 2006), a novel, powerful contribution to
non-textual argumentation (Lugones, 2006), and an overlooked definition of sustainable
information (Nolin, 2010).This study introduces these approaches as intertwined in the
theoretical framework (section 2) and discusses future steps towards sustainability and
renewed trust in science (section 6). In doing this, it draws from a rich pre-existing literature,
the selection of which is meant not to be systematic (see Research material). The literature
was acquired using the free-to-use software Inciteful (Weishuhn, 2023) which works on
citation networks and facilitates interdisciplinary research. Since the scope of this study is to
investigate the sustainability of the scholarly communication system through its formal
products, two outputs from the theoretical framework dealing respectively with sustainable
information (Nolin, 2010) and science communication/argumentation (Lepori and Greco,
2019) were selected as seed papers. The retrieved documents’relevance was assessed based
on their titles. Concepts such as sustainability,scholarly communication,(public) impact(s),
diversity, and processes such as (co-)production,dissemination, and evaluation/assessment
were considered to fit the purpose of this study. Among these documents, those fulfilling a set
of criteria designed to obtain relevant information were studied (section 4.1). Through the
analysis of the communication practices in a sample of 34 documents, we aim to find
strategies to strengthen the sustainability of the scholarly communication system and trust
in science. By highlighting the obstacles to sustainability reported by the author(s), we intend
to show how a change toward a more sustainable system is already in line with scholars’
needs and aspirations.
To this relevant collection of literature, coding and content analysis were applied
(section 4). The rest of the paper presents the related works (section 3), describes its findings
(section 5), discusses their significance for science and society (section 6), and finally
acknowledges its limitations suggesting paths for further research (section 7).
2. Theoretical framework
2.1 Sustainable impact
The scholarly communication system involves multiple stakeholders, and the main one is the
scholar producing and using information. Other stakeholders are the learned societies, the
publisher, the product, the librarian and the influence of the new communication technologies
(Fleming-May, 2023, in Background, p. 100).
In this investigation, we introduce societies as stakeholders, and we look at the
relationship between them and the scholars through the analysis of their written products.
We consider all three as dialogical entities (e.g. Borgman, 1989), constantly communicating
and impacting each other. Scholars adopt different communication strategies that we define
JD
80,6
1314
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