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ZHANG Xiaolin / Disruptive changes and the post-library era: Toward supply-side structure reform of knowledge services 007
because of the difficulties to organize, distribute, utilize and conserve information in the past that
paper and characters were used instead. However, in the new information environment, users of
smart phone witness the rapid changes of communication, which inevitably leads to the evolving
of scholarly records and scholarly communication (Erway, 2014). All the experiments, interviews,
excavations, simulations, demonstrations, speeches in scholarly research can be recorded,
organized and distributed directly and originally, and incorporated into scholarly records.
3) Knowledge becomes linked data oriented. The knowledge is essentially about the
interconnection, relationships and effects of various knowledge objects. Digital knowledge
products can granularly identify, describe and label in machine readable language the knowledge
objects such as subjects, people, incidents, time, place, institutions, methods, process, formulas,
tools, results and their relationships which are linked data (Linked Data, 2017). Actually, it is the
intrinsic attribute of Internet to link, only now on the granular and semantic level (The UMLS
semantic networks, 2017).
4) Knowledge becomes intelligent. When knowledge products merge granular content,
operation procedures and linked data, users can reorganize chapters of books; make experiments
in books with data input by themselves; display different foods with their favorite seasoning;
try clothes in books with their favorite colors and styles; or go into the scenarios of books by
cameras of cell phones (Publishing Perspectives, 2017). Books (and other products) are no longer
the mechanical tool to distribute information, but a platform that think about, analyze and create
things with users.
5) Knowledge becomes open access. Open access of research achievements is advocated
internationally. In 2014, both the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Chinese
Academy of Sciences issued policies to support the open access of achievements. Horizon 2020
program of the European Commission required that all research results should be completely
open by 2020. The OA2020 Initiative which was launched by the International Max Planck
Research School and many institutions in the world participated in called on the transformation
of subscription of scholarly journals to open access by 2020 (OA2020, 2017). In fact, most
subscription publishers have already published a great number of open journals and allowed the
open publication of articles. Meanwhile, the thriving of open data, open source software and open
social media backs up the age of open science and nurtures new knowledge services (Zhang,
2013).
1.2 Publishing as an ecosystem based on data
1) The publishing mode will continue to transform. Tech Trends 2015 issued by the International
Association of STM Publishers (2015) indicated that the major change in scientific publishing
was from discoverability to actionability. The STM Tech Trends Outlook 2020 (2016) released in
2016 pointed out that machine was the new reader. STM Tech Trends 2021 (2017) released in 2017