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Interview with:
Amy Brand PhD '89
Amy Brand, who earned a PhD in cognitive science in 1989, has worked
in electronic publishing, book publishing, and academia. She joined CrossRef
as Director of Business Development in April 2001 and previously held
positions at Ingenta, Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, The MIT Press, and
the University of Pennsylvania.
Although the benefits and efficiencies of electronic information far outweigh the problems, I see three key challenges for researchers right now: (1) The problem of quality determination. Most Web-based search produces results that are not vetted in any way on the basis of merit or research caliber of the matching results. This can create even greater challenges for students and non-experts, who may be less capable of making that quality determination on their own. (2) A related challenge for scholars is figuring out the most efficient way to do research in a field when the resources that matter to you -- journals, databases, etc. -- are not integrated across the various content providers. Some fields have more advanced navigational tools than others, but doing research online can still be a highly disjointed, stop-and-start experience. (3) Where to publish? There are a growing number of non-traditional venues for research, such as electronic-only journals and institutional repositories, which may avoid some of the usual publishing delays and barriers to access but may not count towards tenure. The whole culture of publishing is undergoing major transition, yet most scholars still feel compelled to publish in high impact-factor, established journals.
Google is great, but doesn't currently allow researchers to search the full text of scholarly content (since this is largely proprietary content) and doesn't provide any assurances as to authoritativeness of its search results. CogNet was unique when it launched as a cross-publisher platform for searching across and accessing selected, authoritative resources in a particular field. CrossRef's purpose is to advance the collaborative development and use of new technologies to facilitate research. CrossRef, at present, is not a search interface or aggregation of content per se, although it could eventually evolve in that direction. Rather, CrossRef is a cross-publisher linking platform that makes it possible for a researcher to click on a citation in one publication and access the desired content wherever it may reside. This type of cross-publisher linking is tremendously valuable to researchers because navigation can flow from idea to idea, rather than from search to search, in a closer approximation of how we actually think and communicate. How did your MIT studies prepare you to develop new and innovative technologies to facilitate scholarly and professional research? My doctoral studies in cognitive science at MIT focused on child language acquisition, evaluating linguistic theory against real child language data. So there's probably no direct relevance to what I do today. My other MIT affiliation is to MIT Press, where I worked as cognitive science and linguistics editor for several years. But having been trained as a researcher and maintaining an interest in the research process, I can bring that expertise to my work. I definitely tend to think about tools for research in terms of how people actually behave and what their cognitive preferences will be. The more intelligence we can build into our technology, the more flexible that technology will be, and the better the fit with how the mind works.
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Institute of Technology