1.ix The Shifting Future of Scholarly Communication and Digital Scholarship

Arbuckle, Alyssa, Constance Crompton, and Aaron Mauro. 2014. Introduction: “Building Partnerships to Transform Scholarly Publishing.” Scholarly and Research Communication 5 (4): n.p. http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/195.

Arbuckle, Crompton, and Mauro introduce the proceedings for an Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) gathering in Whistler, Canada, in February 2014. This introduction reflects a network of scholarly communication players and possibilities in Canada. The editors acknowledge the pressing areas of concern around scholarly communication for the authors in the collection, including the fluidity of digital publication, the opportunity for (and challenges of) open peer review, and the effects of rapid technological development on scholarship. Arbuckle, Crompton, and Mauro enumerate suggestions made at the gathering proper, and suggest ways forward for the multi-disciplinary group that came together for this event.

Arbuckle, Alyssa, Aaron Mauro, and Lynne Siemens. 2015. Introduction: “From Technical Standards to Research Communities: Implementing New Knowledge Environments Gatherings, Sydney 2014 and Whistler 2015.” Scholarly and Research Communication 6 (2): n.p. http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/232.

Arbuckle, Mauro, and Siemens introduce the proceedings for two Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) gatherings, in Sydney, Australia (December 2014) and Whistler, Canada (January 2015). The editors ruminate on the closing gap between scholarly communication and digital practices, and draw together groupings of papers on relevant topics including collaboration, networked scholarship, knowledge production, prototyping, and pragmatic challenges. Arbuckle, Mauro, and Siemens also detail the alternative peer review method employed for the proceedings. Overall, the editors consider the breadth and depth of current scholarly communication and digital scholarship activities.

*Berry, David M. 2011. “The Computational Turn: Thinking About the Digital Humanities.” Culture Machine 12: n.p. http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/view/440/470.

Berry narrates the formation of post-secondary education, traced back to Immanuel Kant’s notion of reason as the guiding force of the ideal university. Berry maintains that the digital should now be considered the unifying idea of the contemporary university. He argues that the disparate, multiple knowledges produced in the university can unify via digital practice and context; by taking up the digital as form and content for educational institutions, we can move toward a more networked and decentralized “digital intellect” (7). This new ethos need not rely on traditional academic ideals of learning an entire literary canon or memorizing multiple equations. The focus would thus shift from the individual student or researcher to the collective, from the sharply delineated university to the postdisciplinary university.

Besser, Howard. 2004. “The Past, Present, and Future of Digital Libraries.” In A Companion to Digital Humanities, edited by Susan Schreibman, Raymond G. Siemens, and John Unsworth, 557–75. Oxford: Blackwell.

Besser examines the state and trajectory of digital libraries, and argues that further considerations must be made in order for digital libraries to uphold both the tenets and roles of traditional libraries. After briefly surveying the position, history, and standards of the library, Besser concludes that libraries have certain key components that must be acknowledged and upheld in digital substantiations. These components include interoperability, stewardship, service, privacy, and equal access to a diversity of information. Besser argues that these components reflect the ethical side of the library, and need to be considered alongside more obvious priorities of information dissemination and preservation of artifacts.

*Biagioli, Mario. 2002. “From Book Censorship to Academic Peer Review.” Emergences 12 (1): 11–45. doi:10.1080/1045722022000003435.

Biagioli details the  historical  and  epistemological  shifts  that  have  led to the academic peer review system as it is now known. Contrary to its contemporary role, peer review began as an early modern disciplinary technique closely related to book censorship and required for social and scholarly certification of institutions and individuals alike. The rise of academic journals shifted this constrained and royally-mandated position; no longer a self-sustaining system of judgment and reputation dictated by a small group of identified and accredited professionals, (often blind) peer review now focuses on disseminating knowledge and scholarship to the wider community. Biagioli also states that journals have moved from officially representing specific academic institutions to being community owned and operated, as responsibilities, duties, and readership are now dispersed among a group of like-minded scholars.

Borgman, Christine L. 2007. Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Borgman lays out research questions and hypotheses concerning the evolving scholarly infrastructure and modes of communication in the digital environment. She deduces that the inherent social elements of scholarship endure, despite new technologies that alter significantly the way scholarship is performed, disseminated, and archived. Scholarship and scholarly activities continue to exist in a social network of varying actors and priorities. Notably, Borgman focuses on the “data deluge”—the increasing amount of generated data and data accessed for research purposes. The influences of large data sets, as well as how these data sets will be preserved in keeping with library and archival conventions, are subjects of particular significance. Overall, Borgman synthesizes the various aspects of contemporary scholarship, and reflects on the increasingly pervasive digital environment.

Bowen, William R., Constance Crompton, and Matthew Hiebert. 2014. “Iter Community Prototyping an Environment for Social Knowledge Creation and Communication.” Scholarly and Research Communication. 5 (4): n.p. http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/193/360.

Bowen, Crompton, and Hiebert discuss the features and challenges of Iter Community, a collaborative research environment. They also discuss A Social Edition of the Devonshire Manuscript, especially focusing on its human and computer social engagement. The authors organize the article into three sections: (1) a historical and conceptual framework of Iter Community; (2) an update on the state of Iter Community (at writing), and (3) a perspective on A Social Edition of the Devonshire Manuscript. They conclude that Iter Community’s vision is to provide an environment for communication, exchange, and collaboration, which will evolve with its participants’ priorities and challenges.

*Burdick, Anne, Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presner, and Jeffrey Schnapp. 2012. “The Social Life of the Digital Humanities.” In Digital_Humanities, 73–98. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Burdick et al. focus on the social aspects and impacts of digital humanities. The authors argue that the digital humanities, by nature, encompass academic and social spaces that discuss issues beyond technology alone. Key issues include open access, open source publications, the emergence of participatory Web and social media technologies, collaborative authorship, crowdsourcing, knowledge creation, inflauthorization, and dissemination. Burdick et al. also consider the role of digital humanities in public spaces, beyond the siloed academy. The authors address these expansive issues through an oscillating approach of explanation and questioning. While the diversity of the topics in this chapter is substantial, the authors knit the arguments together under the broad theme of social engagement.

*Cohen, Daniel J. 2008. “Creating Scholarly Tools and Resources for the Digital Ecosystem: Building Connections in the Zotero Project.” First Monday 13 (8): n.p. doi:10.5210/fm.v13i8.2233.

Cohen details how the Zotero project exemplifies both a Web 2.0 and a traditional scholarly ethos. He conceptualizes Zotero as a node in an interconnected digital ecosystem that builds bridges instead of hoarding information. Zotero is a widely used, open source, community-based bibliography tool. It exists on top of the browser as an extension, has maintained an API since its inception, and boasts comprehensive user features. As an easy-touse collaborative tool, Zotero acts as both an effective scholarly resource and a facilitator of social knowledge creation.

Cohen, Daniel J., and Tom Scheinfeldt. 2013. “Preface.” In Hacking the Academy: New Approaches to Scholarship and Teaching from Digital Humanities, edited by Daniel J. Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt, 3–5. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. doi:10.3998/ dh.12172434.0001.001.

Cohen and Scheinfeldt introduce Hacking the Academy, a digital publishing experiment and attempt to reform academic institutions and practices by crowdsourcing content. The editors called for submissions to their project with the caveat that participants had one week to submit. Cohen and Scheinfeldt pitched their project with the following questions: “Can an algorithm edit a journal? Can a library exist without books? Can students build and manage their own learning management platforms? Can a conference be held without a program? Can Twitter replace a scholarly society?” (3). Roughly one sixth of the 329 submissions received were included in the consequent publication. The intent of the project was to reveal the desire and possibility for large institutional change via digital means.

Davidson, Cathy N., and David Theo Goldberg. 2004. “Engaging the Humanities.” Profession: 42–62. doi:10.1632/074069504X26386.

Davidson and Goldberg argue that despite marginalization, humanistic approaches and perspectives remain significant for successful, holistic university environments. Rather than taking a fi ecific approach, Davidson and Goldberg propose a problemor issue-based humanities model that allows for a more interdisciplinary approach. In this way, the comprehensive interpretive tools and complex models of cultural interaction integral to humanities work may resolve varied and continuous issues. The authors suggest that a conceptual and physical shift toward interdisciplinarities within institutions (rather than interdisciplinary institutions, models, or methods) offers a realistic and approach to transforming academia and education.

De  Roure,  David.  2014.  “The  Future  of  Scholarly  Communications.” Insights 27 (3): 233–38. doi:10.1629/2048–7754.171.

De Roure discusses how social machines provide a lens into the future developments in scholarship and scholarly collaboration. He considers the enhancement of the article as a mode of scholarly discourse, in ways that do not restrict innovation. De Roure examines scholarship at scale, as well as shifts in scholarship due to digital research and societal engagement. He continues to examine research objects and social machines in order to understand the evolution of digital scholarship. De Roure concludes that the article, the monograph, and the book need to be defamiliarized, and that the focus should shift to future practice.

Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. 2012. “Beyond Metrics: Community Authorization and Open Peer Review.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 452–59. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/7.

Fitzpatrick calls for a reform of scholarly communication via open peer review. She argues that the Internet has provoked a conceptual shift wherein (textual) authority is no longer measured by a respected publisher’s stamp; rather, she contends, the community now locates authority. As concepts of authority change and evolve in the digital sphere, so should methods. Peer review should be opened to various scholars in a field as well as to non-experts from other fields and citizen scholars. Fitzpatrick claims that this sort of crowdsourcing of peer review could more accurately represent scholarly and non-scholarly reaction, contribution, and understanding. Digital humanities and new media scholars already have the tools to measure digital engagement with a work; now, a better model of peer review should be implemented to take advantage of the myriad, social, networked ways scholarship is (or could be) produced.

—.“Peer-To-Peer Review and the Future of Scholarly Authority.” Cinema Journal 48 (2): 124–29. doi:10.1353/cj.0.0095.

Fitzpatrick explains that decentralized and displaced authority structures are taking over scholarly communication, and intellectual authority is shifting to spaces such as Wikipedia. Scholars must therefore embrace similarly open structures and public access, or the academic world will appear divorced from real world practices. For this reason, online peer-reviewed journals should not follow print practices of peer review, but must adapt and shape a new scholarly system. Current peer review processes do not necessarily ensure that the best work is in circulation, and in fact tend to replicate hierarchical and status-based privileges. Fitzpatrick argues for open process, web native modes of peer review in a peer-to-peer structure. Finally, she advocates for the need to articulate these values and standards to credentialing bodies in order for a more appropriate model of intellectual authorization to emerge.

—. Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy. New York: New York University Press. (“Introduction: Obsolescence,” 1–14, and Chapter 3: “Texts,” 89–120, are accessible at loads/234/Fitzpatrick.pdf.)

Fitzpatrick duly surveys and calls for a reform of academic publishing. She argues for more interactivity, communication, and peer-to-peer review, as well as a significant move toward digital scholarly publishing. Fitzpatrick demonstrates that the current mode of scholarly publishing is economically unviable. Moreover, tenure and promotion practices based primarily on traditional modes of scholarly publishing need to be reformed. Fitzpatrick acknowledges certain touchstones of the academy (peer review, scholarship, sharing ideas), and how these tenets have been overshadowed by priorities shaped, in part, by mainstream academic publishing practices and concepts. She details her own work with CommentPress, and the benefits of publishing online with an infrastructure that enables widespread dissemination as well as concurrent reader participation via open peer review.

*Fjällbrant, Nancy. 1997. “Scholarly Communication—Historical Development and New Possibilities.” In Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Libraries e-Pubs. http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1389&context=iatul.

In order to study the widespread transition of scholarly communication from print to electronic formats, Fjällbrant details the history of the scientific journal. Academic journals had emerged in seventeenth-century Europe, and the first of these, the Journal des Sçavans, was published in 1665 in Paris. The first learned societies formed at this time—the Royal Society in London and the Académie des Sciences in Paris—were primarily concerned with the dissemination of knowledge, and the scholarly journal developed out of a desire by researchers to share their findings with others in a cooperative forum. Following the lead of the Royal Society, some of whose members had read the Journal des Sçavans, other societies established similar serial publications. Although there were other contemporaneous forms of scholarly communication, including the letter, the scientific book, the newspaper, and the cryptic anagram system, the journal emerged as a primary source of scholarly communication. It met the needs of various stakeholders: the general public, booksellers and publishers, libraries, authors who wished to make their work public and claim ownership, the scientific community invested in reading and applying other scientists’ findings, and academic institutions that required metrics for evaluating faculty.

*Flanders, Julia. 2009. “The Productive Unease of 21st-Century Digital Scholarship.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 3 (3): n.p. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/3/000055/000055.html.

Flanders discusses the role of the digital humanities in relation to the more conventional humanities, and characterizes the digital humanities as possessing a sort of “productive unease”: anxiety concerning medium, institutional structures of scholarly communication, and representation. This anxiety is productive insofar as it brings into clearer focus previously unremarked upon biases in the traditional humanities. Moreover, digital tools and practices present more and different challenges. Of note, Flanders recognizes social software and media as tackling some of these anxiety-provoking issues, and acknowledges digital humanities projects that also strive in the same direction.

Guédon, Jean-Claude. 2008. “Digitizing and the Meaning of Knowledge.” AcademicMatters(October–November): 23–26. http://www.academicmatters.ca/assets/AM_SEPT’08.pdf.

Guédon briefl sketches the recent history of scholarly communication and publishing and meditates on alternatives to the current state of affairs. He concludes that although open source publishing is a relatively recent phenomenon, it adroitly embodies the ethos and traditional practices of scholarship (especially in the sciences). For Guédon, open source publishing represents the open, endless appropriation of knowledge and discipline-wide conversation that has traditionally defi ed academic work. Guédon champions this move toward open, shared knowledge versus the continued exploitation of academics, librarians, and universities by the large corporate publishing companies currently relied upon for scholarly communication and accreditation.

Jones, Steven E. 2013. “Publications.” In The Emergence of the Digital Humanities, 147–77. London and New York: Routledge.

Jones explores the current state of scholarly publishing and the role of the digital humanities. He argues that now, more than ever, academic practitioners are able to take the means of producing scholarly work into their own hands. Rather than relying on scholarly communication systems already in place, researchers can now experiment with different modes, media, and models of publication. Jones considers digital publishing and engagement of academic work as symptomatic of the deep integration and interplay of computational methods with contemporary scholarship in general, and digital humanities in particular.

Kingsley, Danny. 2013. “Build It and They Will Come? Support for Open Access in Australia.” Scholarly and Research Communication 4 (1): n.p. http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/viewFile/39/121.

Kingsley surveys the longstanding, government-supported efforts toward open access scholarship that Australia has made. He focuses on mandates, publications, and repositories, and outlines both areas of success and potential improvement. Kingsley concedes that despite Australia’s historic and widespread institutional and infrastructural commitment to open access, the country has not experienced a markedly higher uptake of open access production than the rest of the world. He points to the difficulty of clarifying and enforcing open access mandates, the inconsistency in funding operations and reporting, and the lack of an open access advocacy body as barriers to progressive movement in this area.

Lane, Richard J. 2014. “Innovation through Tradition: New Scholarly Publishing Applications Modelled on Faith-Based Electronic Publishing and Learning Environments.” Scholarly and Research Communication 5 (4): n.p. http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/188.

Lane explores the popular eTheology platforms Olive Tree and Logos, and the possibilities for uptake of their information management and design models. Lane details the advantages of popular or non-academic digital knowledge spaces and argues for their potential application to secular electronic publishing. The most evident advantage of this proposal may be the suggestion to tailor applications to communities of users, in the way that Olive Tree and Logos do, in order to develop a more integrated and dynamically engaged scholarly publishing system that includes user analysis.

*Liu, Alan. 2004. The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Liu interweaves two distinct threads in The Laws of Cool. He traces the history and ethos of “cool” (culture, trends, popularity, etc.) as well as postindustrial cool: the flux of cool knowledge work. Liu examines how the humanities can contribute to and survive in the new postindustrial cool, corporate landscape. Liu’s sources and interests are widespread; he cites modernist design theory, Lev Manovich’s database narrative, and everything from the Gayaki tribe to William Gibson’s Agrippa. He concludes that the humanities are necessary to keep the corporation humane and informed of the history of its own practices; the humanities, in turn, must learn to negotiate the current cool cultural climate in order to remain relevant and effective.

*—. 2012. “Where is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities?” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 490–510. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/20.

Liu surveys the state of the digital humanities in relation to the humanities at large. He argues that, thus far, digital humanities projects have often lacked the self-reflexivity and cultural criticism necessary for the ethical development of humanistic projects—thereby denying the digital humanities a real or full position in the humanities. Because the digital humanities avoid cultural criticism, they frequently become subservient or merely instrumental to the humanities as a whole, functioning as either a moneymaker or tech support. Liu claims that the digital humanities could deconstruct the hierarchy by becoming both self-reflexive and invaluable, thereby leading the humanities into the academic future.

Lorimer, Rowland. 2014. “A Good Idea, a Difficult Reality: Toward a Publisher/Library Open Access Partnership.” Scholarly and Research Communication 5 (4): n.p. http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/180.

Lorimer comments on the state of scholarly publishing in Canada. He offers thorough insight into the financial, social, and cultural obstacles that arise as academic institutions move toward an open access model of knowledge mobilization. Lorimer argues that although the idea of open access is desirable to academic and academic-aligned researchers, practitioners, and organizations, the reality of a complete open access model still requires considerable planning and implementation. Lorimer emphasizes the importance of long term thinking in order to support Canada’s research libraries as open access hubs of orderly, sustainable, and productive information.

*—.2013. “Libraries, Scholars, and Publishers in Digital Journal and Monograph Publishing.” Scholarly and Research Communication 4 (1):   n.p.   http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/43/118.

Lorimer briefly details the last forty years of scholarly publishing to explicate the current state of affairs. He asserts that a reorganization of the academic publishing infrastructure would greatly encourage forthright contributions to knowledge, especially concerning academic journals and monographs. The splitting of the university press from the university (except in name), coupled with funding cuts and consequent entrepreneurial publishing projects, has hampered the possibilities of academic publishing. If all of the actors of digital scholarly communication—libraries, librarians, scholars on editorial boards, technologically-inclined researchers, programmers, digital humanists, and publishing professionals—were brought together in an inclusive collaboration, digital technology could yield significant benefits for the future of scholar ship and knowledge creation.

Losh, Elizabeth. 2012. “Hacktivism and the Humanities: Programming Protest in the Era of the Digital University.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 161–86. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/32.

Losh scans the instantiations of, and relations between, hacktivism and the humanities. She contends, along with scholar Alan Liu, that through an increased self-awareness the digital humanities can actually effect real political, social, public, and institutional change. Losh examines the hacking rhetoric and actions of scholar Cathy Davidson, via the HASTAC collaboratory; the Radical Software Group and its director Alexander Galloway; and the Critical Art Ensemble, with a focus on CAE member and professor Ricardo Dominguez. Losh concludes by acknowledging criticism of the digital humanities, and suggests a solution: digital humanists should engage in more public, political collaborations and conversations.

*Manovich, Lev. 2012. “Trending: The Promises and the Challenges of Big Social Data.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 460–75. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/15.

Manovich elaborates on the possibilities and limitations of performing humanities research with Big Data. He asserts that although Big Data can be incredibly instructive and useful for humanities work, certain significant roadblocks impede this project. These roadblocks include the fact that only social media companies have access to relevant Big Data; user-generated content is not necessarily authentic, objective, or representative; certain analysis of Big Data requires a level of computer science expertise that humanities researchers do not typically possess; and Big Data is not synonymous with “deep data,” the type of data procured through intense, long-term study of subjects. Nevertheless, Manovich looks forward to a future where humanists can overcome these boundaries and integrate Big Data with their research aspirations and projects.

Maxwell, John W. 2014. “Publishing Education in the 21st Century and the Role of the University.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 17 (2): http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0017.205?view=text;rgn=main.

From his perspective in the Canadian Institute for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University, Maxwell ruminates on the current state of universitylevel training in publishing studies, as well as its future role. He considers the shifting economy, and the rise of digital media and practices, as major factors in the current Canadian academic and non-academic publishing scene. Maxwell suggests that the university has a pivotal role to play in reinvigorating publishing by encouraging a supportive community of practice as well as openness to creativity, innovation, and flexibility. Overall, Maxwell underlines the importance of academic publishing studies in the evolving publishing scene.

—. “Beyond Open Access to Open Publication and Open Scholarship.” Scholarly and Research Communication 6 (3): n.p. http:// src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/202.

Maxwell considers and comments on the state of scholarly communication. He suggests that online scholarly communication platforms have simply been a means to expedite and render more efficient traditional writing and publishing practices. Maxwell contends that digital scholarly communication, in its current manifestation, is in fact rather conservative. Rather than settling for a traditional and limited production system, academics should move toward more agile, social, and flexible publication modes that consider reader attention and relevance. Maxwell asks scholars and practitioners to reconceive of publishing and publication in the digital age as an opportunity for truly open scholarship.

*McCarty, Willard. 2005. Humanities Computing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

McCarty examines the field of humanities computing and explores both its limitations and potential. He frames much of his exploration through the mantra that digital humanities can be much more than merely “convenient vending machines for knowledge” (6); the focus must be shifted from automation and delivery to the possibilities for new knowledge creation through digital humanities practices. To this end, McCarty celebrates the tendency toward modelling and manipulation. Drawing heavily on Clifford Geertz’s model of/model for theory (and privileging the “model for” concept), McCarty explores how models and unfinished prototypes can be productive spaces of work, knowledge, and play. Models provide invaluable information when they dysfunction, either through inexplicable successes or failures. Of note, he incorporates Martin Heidegger’s concept of manipulating the world through technology.

McGregor, Heidi, and Kevin Guthrie. 2015. “Delivering Impact of Scholarly Information: Is Access Enough?” Journal of Electronic Publishing 18 (3): n.p. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0018.302?view=text;rgn=main.

McGregor and Guthrie write on open access from their perspective at ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization that focuses on the wide dissemination of knowledge and is most well known for JSTOR, a large-scale digital library service. The authors argue that free access alone is not sufficient for ensuring the broad dissemination, uptake, and impact of knowledge. They then shift focus from access to what they term “productive use,” and outline a series of conditions that they deem necessary for a scholarly resource to be considered effective from a knowledge-building perspective. These conditions include literacy, technology, awareness, access, know-how, and training. McGregor and Guthrie conclude that a sustained commitment to these conditions will inevitably heighten scholarly impact and bring the world one step closer to the goal of universal access to knowledge.

Meadows, Alice. 2015. “Beyond Open: Expanding Access to Scholarly Content.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 18 (3): n.p. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0018.301?view=text;rgn=main.

Meadows examines the impact of current major public or low-cost open access initiatives worldwide, focusing on the Journal Donation Project, Research for Life, the International Network for Access to Scientific Papers, patientACCESS, Access to Research, and the Emergency Access Initiative. She emphasizes the wide-ranging value of these initiatives to researchers, professionals, and the public, especially in developing nations or in countries (such as those in the former USSR) that have a history of information bans. Meadows concludes that public or low-cost open access initiatives benefit many different groups of people, including publishers, and should be supported moving forward.

O’Donnell, Daniel, Heather Hobma, Sandra Cowan, Gillian Ayers, Jessica Bay, Marinus Swanepoel, Wendy Merkley, Kelaine Devine, Emma Dering, Inge Genee. 2015. “Aligning Open Access Publication with the Research and Teaching Missions of  the  Public  University: The Case of the Lethbridge Journal Incubator (If ‘if’s and ‘and’s were pots and pans).” Journal of Electronic Publishing 18 (3): n.p. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0018.309?view=text;rgn=main.

O’Donnell et al. introduce the Lethbridge Journal Incubator: a project based out of the University of Lethbridge that considers the sustainability of open access publishing in the university. Committing to open access has been a historically difficult choice for academic institutions, as its business model often relies on the complete financial support of the institutions themselves (compared to a subscription system, in which resources can be negotiated across publishers and publications). The Lethbridge Journal Incubator acknowledges the “hidden value” of open access publication, and asks institutions to subsidize this activity in the name of public good as well as to improve the institution’s own research and teaching abilities. This model relies on reconceptualizing the scholarly communication production process as one with intrinsic value: for the Lethbridge Journal Incubator, the value lies in the research and training opportunities available for graduate students who are engaged in the project.

Pearce, Nick, Martin Weller, Eileen Scanlon, and Sam  Kinsley. 2010. “Digital Scholarship Considered: How New Technologies Could Transform Academic Work.” Education 16 (1): n.p. http://ineducation.couros.ca/index.php/ineducation/article/view/44.

Pearce, Weller, Scanlon, and Kinsley establish a definition of digital scholarship: embracing open values and new technologies in order to benefit the academy and society. They explore how digital technologies create new possibilities for open practice. The authors suggest that changes happening in several industries will appear in higher education, either for economic reasons or to adapt to the net-generation of students. They rely on Ernest L. Boyer’s dimensions of scholarship from Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (1990)—discovery, integration, application, and teaching—in order to discuss the impact of digital technologies. The authors conclude that digital tools can lead to new, open ways of doing scholarship, and call for more research toward establishing effectiveness of the digital tools across disciplines.

Powell, Daniel, Raymond G. Siemens, and William R. Bowen, with Matthew Hiebert and Lindsey Seatter. 2015. “Transformation through Integration: The Renaissance Knowledge Network (ReKN) and a Next Wave of Scholarly Publication.” Scholarly and Research Communication 6  (2):  n.p.  http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/199.    

Powell, Siemens, and Bowen, with Hiebert and Seatter, explore the first six months of the Andrew W. Mellon-funded Renaissance Knowledge Network (ReKN). The authors focus on the potential for interoperability and metadata aggregation of various Renaissance and early modern digital projects. They examine how interconnected resources and scholarly environments might integrate publication and markup tools. Powell et al. consider how projects such as ReKN contribute to the shifting practices of contemporary scholarly publishing. For a detailed exploration of the planning phase of ReKN, please see the entry for Powell, Siemens, and the INKE Research Group (2014), immediately below.

Powell, Daniel, Raymond G. Siemens, and the INKE Research Group. 2014. “Building Alternative Scholarly Publishing Capacity: The Renaissance Knowledge Network (ReKN) as Digital Production Hub.” Scholarly and Research Communication 5 (4): n.p. http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/183.

Powell, Siemens, et al. report on the status of the Renaissance Knowledge Network (ReKN), an Advanced Research Consortium node. ReKN is a largescale collaborative project that spans the University of Victoria, the University of Toronto, and Texas A&M University. The authors detail the planning phase of ReKN, a project that aims to centralize and integrate research and production in a single online platform that will serve the specific needs of early modern scholars. Powell and Siemens aim to develop and implement ReKN as a dynamic, holistic scholarly environment. For a further update, please see the entry for Powell, Siemens, and Bowen, with Hiebert and Seatter (2015), above, an article that reflects on the first six months of ReKN development.

*Rosenzweig, Roy. 2006. “Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past.” Journal of American History 93 (1): 117–46.

Rosenzweig envisions a model for history scholarship based on the open access, multi-author Wikipedia framework. He concedes that Wikipedia represents an exciting—and perhaps even more ethical—structure of sharing and creating knowledge. Although Rosenzweig thoroughly and comprehensively acknowledges all of the criticisms of Wikipedia from an academic standpoint, he nonetheless proposes that history scholars become more open to incorporating Wikipedia in their scholarly practice. Rosenzweig heralds the many benefits of wiki-based learning and projects for both research and teaching purposes.

San Martin, Patricia Silvana, Paola Caroline Bongiovani, Ana Casali, and Claudia Deco. 2015. “Study on Perspectives Regarding Deposit on Open Access Repositories in the Context of Public Universities in the Central-Eastern Region of Argentina.” Scholarly and Research Communication 6 (1): n.p. http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/145.

San Martin, Bongiovani, Casali, and Deco report on a survey and qualitative study they conducted regarding the dissemination of open access publishing scholarly work. The authors focus on issues related to usability, navigation, and accessibility of institutional repositories in Argentina. For open access institutional repositories, Martin et al. identify a need to manage different types of heterogeneous resources alongside distribution, description, and treatment activities. They consider the barriers to participation in institutional repositories, but suggest that these barriers may be overcome, and that the “physical-virtual campus” (11) that institutional repositories promote and form a part of is possible at a national scale. Overall, the authors see the movement toward broadly instituted open access institutional repositories as a positive and progressive change in the organizational culture of scholarly production in Argentina.

*Siemens, Raymond G. 2002. “Scholarly Publishing at its Source, and at Present.” In The Credibility of Electronic Publishing: A Report to the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, compiled by Raymond G. Siemens, Michael Best, Elizabeth  Grove-White, Alan Burk, James Kerr, Andy Pope, Jean-Claude Guédon, Geoffrey Rockwell, and Lynne Siemens. TEXT Technology 11 (1): 1–128.

Siemens’s introduction to this report focuses on the rethinking of scholarly communication practices in light of new digital forms. He meditates on this topic through the framework of ad fontes—the act, or conception, of going to the source. As he argues, scholars should look at the source or genesis of scholarly communication. For Siemens, the source goes beyond the seventeenth-century inception of the academic print journal to include less formal ways of communicating and disseminating knowledge—i.e., verbal exchanges, epistolary correspondence, and manuscript circulation. In this way, scholars can look past the popular, standard academic journal and into a future of scholarly communication that productively involves varied scholarly traditions and social knowledge practices.

*Vaidhyanathan, Siva. 2002. “The Content-Provider Paradox: Universities in the Information Ecosystem.” Academe 88 (5): 34–37. doi:10.2307/40252219.

Vaidhyanathan warns against the increasing corporatization of American universities and other knowledge institutions. He argues that universities have begun to commodify knowledge, and that this tactic will eventually lead to the dissolution of the university as a credible source of education. Unfortunately, Vaidhyanathan does not offer an alternative model through which universities can address widespread funding and budget cuts. Nevertheless, taking a similar approach to that of Willard McCarty in Humanities Computing, Vaidhyanathan reminds his readers that education is not simply information, and should not be treated (or sold) as such.

Vandendorpe, Christian. 2015. “Wikipedia and the Ecosystem of Knowledge.” Scholarly and Research Communication 6 (3): n.p. http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/201.

Vandendorpe argues for the broad uptake of Wikipedia across the academy, contending that researchers need to edit on Wikipedia and to share their specialized knowledge with the rest of the world. In this way, Vandendorpe argues, scholars can easily share their findings broadly and publicly. He emphasizes online, popular, and open access environments in the growing media ecology that supports scholarly communication. Vandendorpe champions the opportunities afforded by serious academic engagement with Wikipedia.

Van de Sompel, Herbert, Sandy Payette, John Erickson, Carl Lagoze, and Simeon Warner. 2004. “Rethinking Scholarly Communication: Building the System that Scholars Deserve.” D-Lib Magazine 10 (9): n.p. doi:10.1045/september2004-vandesompel.  

Van de Sompel, Payette, Erickson, Lagoze, and Warner ruminate on transforming scholarly communication to better serve and facilitate knowledge creation. They primarily target the current academic journal system, which they see as constraining scholarly work because it is expensive, diffi to access, and print-biased. The authors propose a digital system for scholarly communication that more accurately incorporates ideals of interoperability, adaptability, innovation, documentation, and democratization. This proposed system would be implemented as a concurrent knowledge production environment instead of as a mere stage, annex, or afterthought for scholarly work.

Van House, Nancy A. 2003. “Digital Libraries and Collaborative Knowledge Construction.” In Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and Evaluation, edited by Ann Peterson Bishop, Nancy A. Van House, and Barbara P. Buttenfield, 271–95. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Van House reminds her readers that libraries are more than just storehouses; libraries comprehensively support and foster knowledge creation. Consequently, Van House claims, designing and building effective digital libraries depends on a thorough understanding of knowledge work. For Van House, the emergence of digital libraries represents a significant shift in how individuals and communities create knowledge. Digital libraries often foster transgressive, situated, distributed, and social networks of research and knowledge production. Notably, she reinforces the concept that artifacts are not knowledge in and of themselves; knowledge is a complex social phenomenon rooted in contact, daily practice, and partial mediation by artifacts. As such, digital libraries function differently than as mere conduits— digital libraries are boundary objects, and they affect knowledge work significantly by introducing variation in terms of manipulability, credibility, inscription, access, and organization.