The Future of Digital Scholarship

This paper advocates that connectivity is the technological foundation of digital scholarship and argues that the characteristics of modern science, i.e. data-centric, multidisciplinary, open, network-centric and heavily dependent on internet technologies entail the creation of a linked, semantically enhanced scholarly record composed of interconnected discipline-specific literature and scientific, social, and humanities data spaces. The changing scenario of the scholarly record is illustrated by describing the principal transformations now being enabled by advanced linking and semantic technologies. The main functionality of a cyberscholarship infrastructure is described, i.e. the ability to effectively and efficiently support a linking environment.