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Brian Dettmer
As mentioned before, as part of my remix contribution to Mark Amerika‘s project site accompanying his new volume Remixthebook (University of Minnesota Press) I will be blogging and tweeting on remixthebook.com during this week. Underneath the blog entry I submitted.
Scholarly Remix: Academia Reassessed
As part of my research practice I explore the potential of remix theory and remix practices to reexamine the basic notions underlying scholarship and scholarly communication. Many of our preconceptions concerning what merits authorship, authority, originality and so on get constructed within certain dominant discourses on what scholarship is and should be (mostly centered on upkeeping, conserving and repeating print-based notions in the digital realm). Remix practices, I believe, have the power to intervene in these constructions, to disrupt traditional discursive practices, and to both theoretically and performatively create new, experimental practices, based on sharing, openness, process and interaction. However, even in our experimental research practices we often end up repeating the established structures we try to critique, as we as scholars are massively embedded within a knowledge system that demands us to perform in a certain way and to adhere to the scholarly reputation economy. Yet I do believe that even small changes are important, like questioning the system as it is currently set up, and thinking about the values that we deem important in scholarship. A first step is to be aware of the fact that many of our preconceptions towards scholarship are constructions: constructions we can reconsider and change.
My research practice can be seen as my own attempt at reassessing scholarly communication, mostly through examining what the future of the book in scholarly communication can be (or should be) and by exploring what potential role remix practices can play in both scholarship and in the future of the book. The remix I made for remixtebook.com is part of my intervention, as is this blog entry and the tweets I will be sharing with you here. These will be contain some fragments of source material from my remix for remixthebook.com, combined with a selection of links and references I have collected over the years related to remix and scholarship. Finally at the end of the week I hope to be able to live-tweet The culture of Remix, the 2nd International Graduate Conference in Communication and Culture, which takes place in Lisbon on 13-14 October 2011, and promises to showcase some exciting new research on the multiple dimensions of remix.
Video Remix: Rick Silva, Audio: Chad Mossholder, Micro-Cam Footage: Mark McCoin, Voice: Mark Amerika
Remix artist and author Mark Amerika recently launched his new book Remixthebook (University of Minnesota Press) together with a complimentary website of remixes based on material from remixthebook. From the blurb on the project site:
The remixthebook.com website is the online hub for the digital remixes of many of the theories generated in the print book and features the work of artists, creative writers and scholars for whom the practice and theory of remix art is central to their research interests. remixthebook author Mark Amerika, along with co-curator and artist Rick Silva, has invited over 25 contributing international artists, poets, and critical theorists, all of them interdisciplinary in their own practice-based research, to sample from remixthebook and manipulate the selected source material through their own artistic and theoretical filters.
I was fortunate enough to have been asked to contribute a remix to this project, which can be found online as part of the project website here, including a short artist’s statement.
Underneath you can find the text of my contribution. As part of my contribution I will also be blogging and tweeting on the remixthebook project site during the week of October 9th. So stay tuned for that. Thanks again to Mark Amerika for this opportunity to contribute to his project, and do check out all the amazing other remixes available here, for instance this Isarithm remix by Rick Silva and Woulg:
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CREATIVITY (Capital C) has been hijacked by the artists
Think of the scholar as a medium. Think of the scholar as a postproduction medium. What does it mean to be an avant-garde scholar tuning their instrument so that they can then BECOME something like a meta-medium? Remix theory takes the inherent properties and the possibilities of the new medium (the Internet) as its basics and not the properties of the specific media it incorporates or reflects upon (be they textual or sound- or image-based). In this regard, think of the scholar as a kind of remixological filter. Even THIS is a kind of generative remix performance where the scholar selectively samples from and filters or manipulates the data as a way to open up more creative potential. The power of remix lies in its selectivity, the filter it imposes, where the ‘author’ becomes a ‘remixer’, the remix an object of interaction. The philosophy of the remix is essentially ‘rhizomatic’, the methodology collaborative and processual, focused on the added value of the various media in the communication process. The remix as concept and practice is not new; new are the increased possibilities and the ease to share and recombine media in the digital environment in a collaborative manner. Notions of authority, originality and authenticity get challenged in remix theory, where the remix is a collaborative crowd effort, the reception point is only one part in the process of information and culture transmission and the producer becomes the consumer and vice versa.
One can observe however how over the course of history the media that scholars work with may change but the assortment of potential trajectories scholars follow tend to stay the same. This serves to show the strength, the reach and the impact notions of stability, authorship, and authority (echoing the rhetoric of printed publications) still have within the digital environment. In reality, the authority of the author is thus not challenged. Does the Internet and its online social networking apparatus open up potentially new trajectories for scholars to “make history”? It already has … but not to the degree it still needs to in order to usher in a dramatic shift in the way we position both the scholar and the scholarly work in contemporary network culture. This serves to show how even in our explorations of the new medium, it is very hard to let go of the kind of essentialist notions that we have inherited from the rhetoric of print publications. There are some ‘knowledge practices’ we have adopted and grown accustomed to, such as authorship, stability and authority. Digital and online media offer the potential to increasingly critique these notions where thinking a knowledge system beyond these notions increasingly seems to become a practical reality. Remix is a liminal concept in this way; it stands on the border of these customary ways of thinking. It shakes them up. It poses a potential crisis.
Here’s a question: if we are all scholar-mediums, how do we trigger novel states of creativity? Remix Theory can be seen as a new way to critically think the potentiality of the book, as a way to think beyond the book, as a strategy to explore its multiple potentialities, to challenge established notions like stability, identity and materiality that are all bound up with (printed) books and at the same time with our current conception and practice of knowledge. Remix is a cultural and a political phenomenon, it can be seen as a resistance against essentialisms. It can be used as means to critique the essentialist doctrines at work within the Humanities. Remix Theory can be a framework to question issues of authorship, stability, authority and originality within these disciplines and within science at large, just as much as it has been a framework to question these in for example music, art and poetry. Finally, the way it mixes theory and practical methodology, and the way it mixes media can be seen as both a commentary on and an inspiration for the (digital) humanities. And although, as we have argued before, it does not fundamentally challenge or alter these concepts, it is a (necessary) step in the right direction, towards a more fluid conception of the humanities. Remix theory is a strategy to explore its multiplicities.
Scholars always have to develop and reconfigure their SENSE of measure over time. Exactly how DO scholars or hackers or creative remixers develop a sense of measure over time? The remix scholar whose sense of measure enables them to BECOME a postproduction medium sampling from the vocabulary of critical thought is what we would call A CONTEMPORARY THEORIST. By re-claiming creativity for the scholar as their birthright we can begin to open up the neural pathways to prophetic illumination.
We need new ways of expanding the narrative of the monograph in a ‘remixed’ manner or fashion. The stable form of the text-based version gets challenged by the input of ‘foreign’ elements, be they from other narratives, other voices or other discourses. For the contemporary writer as interdisciplinary media scholar the lyrical conceptual poetic narrative movements come in wildly assorted forms everything from dance to cinema to performance art to the scribbling of pen or pencil on paper. This enables the postproduction scholar to intuitively mirror the neuron activity of the ones who came before, something that feels like a deep interiorization of someone else’s creative rhythm mediumistically syncing with whatever filters one turns on at any given time during the remix performance. These elements are then inserted (or not really ‘inserted’ as they have increasingly been part of the creation process from the start) into the narration in a continual manner, melting together into a new never-ending ever-updateable ‘form’. We can also go beyond these categorizations, where there is the possibility to include all forms of experimentation in one ‘digital humanities project’ or ‘publication’: a web-based wiki-shaped networked narrative.
Will this be the future of digital scholarship in the Humanities? How would a contemporary remixologist divining their own just-in-time context for the compositional playing field of the moment jump-start a renewable tradition made out of all of the “renewable energy sources” (i.e. scholar-mediums) signaling from the past / present / future? All three forms of experimentation still offer the possibility to create or extract a ‘solid form’, a stable published text, whilst at the same time they give an increased insight into knowledge creation, into the process of Humanities scholarship and communication as it grows and forms and gathers strength and form. In this way these experiments form a beautiful bridge between product and process, between the old and the new, between print and digital, holding on to the best of the print past and the possibilities of the digital future. “How can artist-researchers developing new practice-based initiatives in remixology turn the immediate future into a renewable source of ‘energy’ that fuels their unconscious readiness potential?” Monographic experiments as a new monographic potentiality.
This is why remixthebook – which this composition samples from – is our attempt to cross-contaminate Process Theory with Creativity or creative class struggle — and believe us, if you are a contemporary scholar, no matter what your financial situation, you are suffering through creative class struggle. One of the things remixthebook plays with is how scholars use networked and mobile media technology to discover forms of writing that MAY introduce new patterns of meaning. The acknowledgment of the constructivist nature of stability urges us to conduct a closer analysis of the structures underlying our knowledge and communication system and how they are presently set-up. Just like stability, fluidity is an ideal type, just like openness, it is a rhetorical stance. Within an information environment it can be seen as a paradox; although information might flow, knowledge inherently needs some form of objectification or stability to be called knowledge. True liquidity is thus an impossibility, fluid knowledge is an impossibility, and, at least in our definition of the term, fluid texts are an impossibility. We can only ever achieve quasi-liquidity. This impossibility to achieve real liquidity should however not be seen as a failure, as it still has rhetorical power. As rhetoric it helps us deconstruct the structures of our object-oriented knowledge systems and it enables us to experiment with a way of thinking and practicing that (performatively) challenges these preconceptions and helps us to think and create them differently.
Unless you’re a fatalist, then we should at least consider the aesthetic functions of the scholar as remix performer. It’s important to keep in mind this idea of remix performance as a kind of structured improvisation, because it’s this “always live” PERFORMANCE that enables the remix scholar to ride the wave of intuition. Think of the remixologically inclined performance scholar as a novelty generator, someone who positions their aesthetically fit energy bursts as an intervening sense of measure to be reckoned with. Could we say that the contemporary scholar AS remixologist or provocateur of postproduction art, EMBODIES what it means to FEEL aesthetic? Let’s face it, scholars are always sampling and manipulating other scholars SENSE of measure and this is how they create a formal aesthetic over time. In remix theory the remix is seen as a process, an activity, a verb; it is a process of constantly renewing, building upon and modifying mediated and reworked cultural materials. In this process new creative work is produced: the remix. The remix occurs in a stratified structure, no longer linear but multilayered, hybrid and liquid. The remix is a collage, it combines various elements to build something new. Remixing is part of our digital culture, it is essential to our creativity and one of the main contemporary composing practices
For now we are still in the race but these scholars were the ones who taught us how to haunt the texts that came before us even as these same texts haunted us back. Memory is a form of context shaping, it determines the meaning we attribute to scholarship: we see a repetition of the past in the creation of the new. The mystery and unclear meaning of the texts is in this case what makes it meaningful to the viewer as interpreter, as ‘meaning-searcher’. As a practice-based remixologist filtering the meta-perturbations of Source Material Everywhere the scholar as postproduction medium choreographs an ongoing structural improvisation projected from the deep interior sense mechanisms of other scholar-agents autopoietically postproducing a novel togetherness that reconfigures the world into yet more renewable energy that doubles a source material seducing us into our next remixological becoming. The vacuum of meaning creates potential: it creates a space for interpretation and functions as a reflection of our search for patterns and meaning. It thus offers a meta level in a way, similar to what abstract art does: it is about the search for meaning, about wanting to discover the secret context and inherent patterns in the structure of the text, like in a way abstract art is a reflection on art itself. Patterns are the new real of our society. The visionary scholar always gyrating at pivotal locations throughout the narrative becomes a multitude of flux identities and transformations nomadically circulating within the networked space of flows. This idea of the content creator as the real medium, putting things on its head in a way, literally incorporating and mixing the different media into one single communication expression, in whatever format, could be a nice fit for thinking about what a post literate content producer should be able to do. Success in this area of practice-based research could lead to the scholar becoming a valuable postproduction medium running
… at full speed, in all directions, into the memory, into the future, into the data of the present, to grasp the unexpected, the luminous, stupefying, connections.
But let’s say that you are a “creative writer” or net scholar or live A/V performer or interdisciplinary “code-smith” who accesses all available source material to cobble together your new work of conceptual sculpture. This triggers the question: Is an object finished when it at the same time constitutes a building block for another object? How would we determine the variance of value for each of these outputs? How would we differentiate the stylistic tendencies of scholars who remixologically inhabit a multitude of multi-media forms of language and how would we measure the value of their work as postproduction mediums? Experiments with new way of conducting and publishing monographs in an open manner, like for instance via liquid books or wiki monographs, might be a first step away from an object-oriented approach focused on a finalized product, towards a publishing system based more on constant, collaborative and simultaneous knowledge production.
My friend and colleague Ronald Snijder has written a very interesting forecast related to academic publishing. He asked me to publish it here, which I am happy to do. I would also like to draw your attention to the very interesting article Ronald wrote, entitled ‘The profits of free books: an experiment to measure the impact of open access publishing’ published in Learned Publishing. This article is the culmination of the research on Open Access and books he did for Amsterdam University Press.
You can reach him at r.snijder@aup.nl
The academic publisher in 2020
In April 2020, professor Snijder publishes a title on rubber ducks. It comprises of a discussion of monograph length and a data file. After 6 months it becomes clear the chapter ‘Metafysical Ducks’ is read extensively at Californian universities and pictures of red rubber ducks are downloaded frequently in South East Asia. Based on this, professor Snijder received a grant for research. Working title: ‘Religion and color in bathing rituals’.
In 2020 all scholarly titles are published digitally. This has several implications. Firstly, the publications must be formatted in such a way that it is readable on many different devices, ranging from phones to cinema screens. Secondly, it becomes much easier to attach research data, or the data becomes part of the publications. Whether these will be called books, is unclear. To enable this, the publications will not contain one big mash of words; the contents must be saved in a structured format, with separate formatting instructions for screen display. Whether this structure is called XML, ePub, RDF is not really relevant. At the very least, the structure must be understood by all devices; it must follow global standards.
Publishing all information digitally enables the publisher to make it globally available without much trouble. In my opinion, one of the main tasks of the publisher is to make sure that the publications are used by their intended audiences. This is nothing new, but in 2020 usage can be measured in minute detail. At this moment, Google Books enables publishers to measure the amount of pages read, and in which countries those readers reside. This will only become more sophisticated, and that offers new opportunities for publishers. The publisher who can promote its publications to the right audiences better than the competition, has an enormous advantage. This will not only matter for the authors, but also for granting organisations.
Structured publications also lead to other possibilities: it is possible to measure the use of smaller parts of the publication – such as a chapter. Mostly, the term ‘granularity’ is used. Based on this, publishers can give detailed feedback to their authors; again an opportunity. We did see that data are becoming part of the publications. Consequently, publishers need to take the data also into account when organising the peer review process. This is a different specialisation, and publishers may need to expand their list of available reviewers.
A final remark on Open Access. Given the current rise, it will probably be normal practice in 2020. While some publishers have fully embraced OA publishing, it will not remain a distinguishing feature. If a publisher wants to stand out, it is now time to build up expertise on reviewing research data, but mostly on usage statistics.
A few weeks ago the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University brought together a group of digital humanists of diverse disciplinary backgrounds as part of the unique summer institute One Week | One Tool. The aim of One Week | One Tool was to come up with an (open source) digital tool to aid humanities scholarship. The catch was that this whole process of tool-building could take no longer than a week. The tool the group came up with and, as part of the deal, actually build, is called Anthologize. Anthologize, as the tagline proclaims, ‘use(s) the power of WordPress to transform online content into an electronic book.’ The idea is that you can grab content from your own blog or other blogs, order it, determine the layout and publish it, both in print and in different electronic formats.
Next to being a refreshing project and a useful tool, what I found interesting about Anthologize is the (implicit) notion that lies behind it’s conception, namely the idea of what a scholarly book should or can be.
Anthologize it
Let’s take a closer look at a blogpost about Anthologize written by Dan Cohen, the director of the Center for History and New Media. Cohen is a historian who, in his own words, ‘explores—and tries to influence through theory, software, websites, and his blog—the impact of computing on the humanities.’ In the post he wrote to introduce Anthologize, there are a few interesting preconceptions concerning the book. For instance, he begins his post with stating the following:
“A long-running theme of this blog has been the perceived gulf between new forms of online scholarship—including the genre of the blog itself—and traditional forms such as the book and journal.”
This sentence is very interesting for various reasons. First of all Cohen talks about the perceived (and thus not real) gulf between online scholarship, such as the blog, and traditional forms such as the book. Furthermore he states that the book and the blog are both forms of scholarship, they are just different genres. Finally, he refers to how discussions surrounding the scholarly book mostly have been conducted by opposing new online forms of scholarship to traditional print scholarship such as the book and the journal.
Further on Cohen explains more in detail what Anthologize has to offer:
“Today marks the launch of this effort: Anthologize, software that converts the popular open-source WordPress system into a full-fledged book-production platform. Using Anthologize, you can take online content such as blogs, feeds, and images (and soon multimedia), and organize it, edit it, and export it into a variety of modern formats that will work on multiple devices.”
In this sentence it becomes clear that both Cohen and the One Tool | One Week people argue for a concept of the book that goes beyond the print format, where in their view books can be delivered in various formats (including, but not exclusively, print) suitable to be read on (and by) various devices. Furthermore, they—I would say consciously—push for a broad(er) idea of what a book can consist off: in their vision a (scholarly) book can, besides text, consist of all kinds of multimedia content. Furthermore, it can consist of material that has been previously online available—hence published—such as blogposts. Thus with Anthologize a book becomes a selection of online available material which can be expanded with new texts and/or multimedia content. Finally, it offers the creator of the book the possibility to instantly publish the book her or himself, without the help of publishers or self-publishing platforms.
As I will state, with this tool Cohen and the people from One Week | One Tool argue for a concept of the book that goes beyond the idea of the traditional printed scholarly book. Anthologize forms a, perhaps implicit, critique against connotations that are an intrinsic part of the production process of a scholarly book as it is currently common in print publishing: double-blind peer review and quality control and branding by a reputable press. In this way they try to challenge or by-pass the traditional authorities that determine whether a scholarly book is fit to be published.
The New Age of the Supplement
About a decade ago there was another historian that thought about new futures for the book: Robert Darnton. Darnton is a leading expert on eighteenth-century France, a book historian who writes about electronic publishing, and the founder of Gutenberg-e, the electronic monograph series. Currently Darnton is a professor in the History department at Harvard University and the director of the Harvard University Library. In 1999 Darnton wrote the article “The New Age of the Book” published in the New York Review of Books, in which he criticizes the publishing system surrounding the scholarly monograph and opts for a different system based on the electronic publishing of books. In this article Darnton puts forward a concept of the book that again differs from that of Cohen et. al.
In the first paragraph of his article Darnton paraphrases Marshall McLuhan:
“Marshall McLuhan’s future has not happened. The Web, yes; global immersion in television, certainly; media and messages everywhere, of course. But the electronic age did not drive the printed word into extinction, as McLuhan prophesied in 1962. His vision of a new mental universe held together by post-printing technology now looks dated. If it fired imaginations thirty years ago, it does not provide a map for the millennium that we are about to enter. The “Gutenberg galaxy” still exists, and “typographic man” is still reading his way around it.”
Darnton puts the printed book here in direct opposition to the web, and can in this sense be seen as part of the discourse which emphasises the gulf between the online and the book mentioned by Cohen. Darnton casually argues that the world as we know and perceive it is still build on the concept of the printed book. For Darnton a book is foremost distinguishable by its codex format. In his vision the codex is a great technology; it is a format which is great for packaging information, it is superb for storage, and thus for archiving, and remarkably resistant to damage and is therefore good to preserve. Furthermore, it misses some of the tiresome drawbacks one can attribute to electronic publications (such as charging batteries). Most importantly, Darnton states the codex is valuable in that it has been the basic tool for learning for thousands of years.
However, Darnton’s vision for the book is more versatile, as we soon will see. But by equalling the book with the codex here and highlighting the codex’s continued benefits, he seems to be catering to a certain rhetoric in this part of his article, where he refers to the continued fear that electronic publishing will cause people to do away with the traditional book:
“If the future brings newspapers without news, journals without pages, and libraries without walls, what will become of the traditional book? Will electronic publishing wipe it out?”
By proposing a new future for the book, Darnton paints a picture of two visions of the book (one print and one electronic) that can exist side-by-side. Furthermore the electronic book is in his view something different, a supplement to the traditional book, not a replacement of it.
In this carefully crafted article Darnton goes on to show how this alternative concept, of the electronic book as a supplement, could even be beneficial for the scholarly book. Darnton’s push towards electronic publishing seems to be triggered essentially by two related problems in the field surrounding monograph publishing: the crisis in scholarly publishing, making it increasingly hard to get a monograph published, and the related problem of attaining tenure for young scholars, were tenure is directly coupled to the publishing of a monograph by a reputable press. In this way we could interpret this article—and the concept of the book put forward here by Darnton—foremost as a rhetorical device aimed at solving these problems.
The possibilities of electronic publishing however lead further than just saving the current print publishing model and the reputation system that is build upon it from extinction. And this is where Darnton carefully sets out his famous vision of the book as a pyramid build up of different layers of diverse data which can expand on and supplement the printed book in an online environment. The function of this electronic book is not so much to be read however, but to serve as an archive, a database, a search engine and a social text were people can interact with the text and with each other. In the final paragraph of his article Darnton sums up his strategy concerning the use of his book concept perfectly:
“Far from being utopian, the electronic monograph could meet the needs of the scholarly community at the points where its problems converge. It could provide a tool for prying problems apart and opening up a new space for the extension of learning.”
Although perhaps in practice Darnton’s vision of the book as pyramid model and Cohen’s et.al. Anthologize model seem to lie not that far apart, there are some clear differences between both visions. In Darnton’s view for instance, putting something on the web does not make something into a book. Here he gives the example of a dissertation:
“Certainly, we can dump unlimited numbers of dissertations onto the Web. Several programs exist for providing this service—and it is a genuine service: it makes research available to readers. But as a rule, this kind of publication provides mainly information, not fully developed scholarship, at least not in most of the humanities and social sciences. Anyone who has read raw dissertations knows what I mean: with few exceptions, they are not books. A world of difference separates them. To become a book, a dissertation must usually be reorganized, trimmed here and expanded there, adapted to the needs of a lay reader, and rewritten from top to bottom, preferably with the help of an experienced editor.”
As Darnton states above, professional editing stays a necessity, electronic publishing is still something that needs to be done by a publisher, who provides a certain amount of authority and adds value to the publication and thus turns it into a full-fledged scholarly book.
Books as Power Tools
In both Darnton’s and Cohen’s articles the concept of the book is part of a larger strategy. Darnton wants to take away the fear concerning electronic publishing by focussing on the remarkable assets and staying power of the printed book. Cohen wants to create a tool that makes it easier for people to publish their own digital book without necessarily loosing the quality offered by professional publishers. Darnton wants to experiment with the new features online publications offer but without loosing the quality control and authority invested upon these online works by professional publishers. Cohen introduces a tool that can serve as an alternative to professional publishing. Darnton wants to heal the scholarly communication system made up of publishers and tenure committees by introducing electronic publishing. Cohen wants to subvert this same system by proposing a system that forms an alternative to the vested authority and quality provisions offered by publishers. But at the same time he doesn’t really touch upon other vested notions surrounding the book such as authorship and the stability of the text, and neither does Darnton, nor do they actively challenge the format of the book as the one being most suitable for (humanities) scholarship. Darnton’s and Cohen’s strategic concepts are also very time-bound. Darnton made a plea for electronic publishing and electronic books when the publishing industry only just began adapting to the online environment. Cohen’s et. al. Anthologize is developed in a time were electronic publishing is a must and Anthologize is one of the many tools that are being developed to encourage online humanities scholarship. Both their concepts of the book are very much part of these specific struggles. And it is not unlikely that Darnton’s vision concerning the book in the last ten years has become more like that of Cohen.
What I wanted to show by conflating these two viewpoints is that there is no such thing as a ‘book’ or an essential definition of the book. The book is a contested concept. As history has shown us a book can be a scroll as well as a codex, a paperback, a PDF or a collection of blogposts. The book is what we make of it. A book consists of possibilities; a book is becoming. As I have tried to show above, definitions and essentialist notions concerning what a book is (or should be, or was) can be seen as rhetorical devices used to argue for a specific knowledge and communication system. Visions concerning the book are being used as a means to control, shape, structure and think these systems. Consciously or unconsciously, the way we define the book, the way we work with and create the book, says a lot about the knowledge system we prefer or would like to have.
However, although I claim that there is no essential definition of the book, this doesn’t mean that in the discourse surrounding the book essentialist notions don’t play a major role. All the same, they should be seen as part of the struggle for, to put it bluntly, a remainder of the status quo, a return to the past or a turn towards another possible future of scholarly communication. Definitions of the book are power tools, books can be seen as discursive weapons to defend a virtual future both for the book and for knowledge. This becomes clear amongst others by the way definitions or essentialist notions surrounding the book often take the form of dialectical oppositions. One of the most common examples is when the book gets contrasted with the ebook. The ebook is opposed to the book as something different, were it connotes a knowledge system based on or turning toward the Internet and digital media. The need for such a distinction is quite strange if we think about it. There is no such thing as an e-song for instance, or an e-album. If we take it closer to home, there is also no such thing as an e-article (although there is an e-journal). The use of the word ebook is part of a struggle, it is a strategical tool used both by proponents and critics of ebooks to connote that here something different is happening. We can broaden this allegory to other fields were the struggle for a new system is felt the most. Think about the digital humanities and electronic literature (again: no digital biology). These dialectical stances are used to defend another notion of the humanities and another notion of literature. Interestingly enough one could argue that once these ‘other’ positions become more mainstream and accepted the additive e- mostly seems to disappear.
Essential Bookfuturism
Another use of this dialectical essentialism can be found in the term bookfuturism. Bookfuturism is a term invented by Joanne McNeill—an American science and technology writer—for a Twitter list following book aficionados. The term also shows similarities with the blog Bookfutures, written by Chris Meade, director of if:book London, a think thank for the future of the book. The term Bookfuturism was picked up and given theoretical grounding by Tim Carmody, self-proclaimed bookfuturist, Wired Gadget Lab editor and writer for various blogs on book technology and media. Carmody started a group blog called Bookfuturism and wrote “A Bookfuturist Manifesto” for The Atlantic. As Carmody explains, Bookfuturism plays with two dialectial oppositions: bookservatism and technofuturism. Carmody describes them as follows:
“Now, even bookservatives acknowledge that things are changing. But they fear that these changes will result in catastrophe, for some part or whole of the culture they love. Because of that, they would prefer that book tech and book culture stop, slow down, or go back. (…) On the other side of the aisle are technofuturists. They’re winning most of the arguments these days when it comes to e-books, so their rhetoric isn’t as wild. Technofuturists are technological triumphalists, or at least quasi-utopian optimists. These are the folks who believe that technology can solve our political, educational, and cultural problems. At an extreme, they don’t care about books at all: they’re just relics of a happily closing age of paper, and we should embrace the future in the form of multimedia and the networked web.”
As Carmody rightfully proclaims however, there is no such thing as a bookservatist or a technofuturist, these are simply stances people can uptake to argue for something:
“Almost nobody is a pure bookservative or technofuturist. Rather, these are rhetorical positions that anyone can take up, from moment to moment and case to case. Moreover, each is dependent on the other, because each imagines their opponent as the other. They are easy caricatures. But sometimes we ARE caricatures.”
Bookfuturists, in Carmody’s vision, refuse both positions. He sees it as a way of thinking about the book that is critical to both positions. Again here the book becomes a rhetorical device, a metaphor to think about new technology and its impact on knowledge:
“We’re usually more interested in figuring out a piece of technology than either denouncing or promoting it. And we want to make every piece of tech work better. We’re tinkerers. We look to history for analogies and counter-analogies, but we know that analogies aren’t destiny. We try to look for the technological sophistication of traditional humanism and the humanist possibilities of new tech.”
Although, as I have argued above, there is no essential definition of the book—only positions—that does not mean it is not interesting to analyse the different positions people take up and the different characteristics or essential notions they assign to the book to argue for a certain knowledge system. For although the book has been a contested concept for ages (as the history of the book has shown), the specific (dialectical) positions we take in when it comes to the book at this moment, say a lot about the particular issues we are struggling with at the dawning of the digital age. How do we create a knowledge system that might in the future no longer be build upon the book (exclusively) anymore and which will perhaps mean a definitive shift away from the previously cited Gutenberg Galaxy and Typographic man?
To explore what these essential notions are that get attributed to the book by specific groups these days—for instance the stability of the printed book vs. the limitless networked book—is crucial, as it says a lot about not only the book but about our age as well. The struggle for the book is a struggle to keep up with technological change and a reaction against these upheavals. However, the discourse surrounding the book at the same time structures the way we use and adopt new technology. Media transform but they are also invented at the same time.
Furthermore, as I will argue next, it might prove essential to deconstruct these notions that we have attributed to the book to see what we actually value about them and how we can either adopt them or transform them concerning our needs and the possibility offered by digital technology. Some of the deepest essential notions that seem to stick with the book (and have been part of the discourse on the book since its conception), even in the digital age, have to do with authorship, stability and, especially in scholarly communication: authority. Fresh insights and experimental practices might be a necessity to bring these notions up to the next level and to expose and confront them to new possibilities and alternative futures. Futures in which the book is never just a book.
Ted Striphas, author of The Late Age of Print (2009) recently published an interesting article in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies on the inconsistencies in the current journal publishing system, focusing specifically on the situation within the field of Cultural Studies. In his article, entitled Acknowledged Goods: Cultural Studies and the Politics of Academic Journal Publishing, Striphas gives a very clear and concise summary of the problems this system of ‘academic capitalism’ has created. The article is a must-read for anyone who sees her/himself as a critical scholar (and anyone else for that matter). It is freely available via the wiki accompanying Striphas’ blog Differences & Repetitions, where it was already published as a working draft or paper-in-progress in 2008.
Striphas main argument is that the current political programme dominating journal publishing, has led to a restriction of access to much of the material produced within the field of cultural studies, therewith diminishing the potential (political) impact of cultural studies. I strongly feel the situation Striphas describes matches the situation in most of the fields within the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS). Striphas would probably agree to this thesis, as he, in his article, often takes the situation of the HSS as a starting point, after which he zooms in on Cultural Studies as a specific case study. However, Striphas feels the situation is more grave in the latter field, as this is (one of the) field(s) that is known for its critical stance and disposition towards the (economical and political) structures behind the production of culture. Striphas criticizes the field for its passive position concerning its own political economy of production, which is increasingly in the hands of neo-liberal market and profit oriented firms. In this economy the main reason of communicating one’s research results—making the work accessible to one’s peers—has been exchanged for the gathering of large profits. Saying that the current system is broken is only a half-truth. As Striphas writes, “the system is functioning only too well these days—just not for the scholars it is intended to serve.”
He claims that the situation for scholars has grown worse with the rise of multinational monopolistic publishing houses, making academic practices increasingly dependent on them. Publishers have been producing more and more journals to gain a larger profit. This overproduction has led to a qualification-inflation. The crisis of overproduction has led to the paradoxical situation were one now has less of a change to be noticed and read.
Striphas’criticism of the political economy surrounding academic publishing ends up to be a larger criticism of the academic system as a whole. As he states:
“Broadly, the goal of present-day academic capitalism is not merely to apply business precepts piecemeal to the running of academic institutions (…) Instead, the goal is to make the latter over in the image of the former, fundamentally, by imposing new norms of efficiency, productivity, and competitiveness on university employees.”(9)
Not only the current publishing system, but the whole system of academic capitalism is affecting the dissemination, accessibility and thus the potential impact of scholarly research results.
A few remarks. First of all Striphas’ approach to the so-called monograph crisis seems to be a bit fuzzy in this paper. Although he does state that he focuses mainly on journals, somewhere halfway his paper he writes down the following mysterious sentence: “The humanities’ enduring commitment to books thus has shielded its constituent disciplines and fields, cultural studies included, at least somewhat from the harshest effects of academic publishing’s recent transformations.”(16) In the subsequent paragraph he goes on to explain exactly how monographs were harshly influenced by the whole crisis, severely downgrading his earlier sentence. Why then the need to write down this earlier statement? In any case, Striphas only mentions one side of the monograph crisis, the decline of library acquisitions’ budgets and the subsequent dwindling sales of monographs. He does not go on to mention the fact that this situation consequentially led to big decreases in monograph print runs. Not only does this mean publishers are increasingly taking the less-risk-option—preferring more commercially viable titles over the publication of for instance highly specialized research and research written in non-English languages—the titles they eventually do publish are not nearly disseminated as widely as they were in previous era’s.
Secondly, I feel Striphas could have given some more attention to the protest that is and has already risen against these political and economical superstructures. Although at the end of his paper he gives an elaborate list of possibilities for scholars to pursue in order to make a stand against the current system, to me it seems these could have gotten a bigger position in the body of his article and I feel they should have been a more vital part of his argumentation. Only mentioned briefly in the end, the Open Access movement—also a presence in the field of cultural studies—is not getting the credit it deserves. Particularly in the last couple of years this movement has grown significantly, in the HSS too, and also in Cultural Studies—why is Culture Machine not mentioned for instance?—and has become a true alternative to the current subscription-based publishing system. Furthermore, Striphas does not discuss activities that have been happening at the fringes of scholarly communication, where perhaps, one could argue, the true activism is taking place. The rise of informal communication through blogs (such as Striphas’ own), discussion lists, Twitter, wiki’s etc. has grown over the last years, creating an ‘alternative space’ to the one dominated by the larger publishing monopolies. Even more on the edges, on P2P file-sharing sites such as Scribd and AAAAARG.org, people are actively challenging the publishers’ distribution channels by taking the dissemination of scholarly texts into their own hands, and freely spreading them over the internet via distributed networks. Perhaps a real institutional field-wide change has not yet come about in Cultural Studies and perhaps this is what Striphas is aiming at. Nevertheless, things have been happening that I feel could have gotten some more attention in this paper.
This does not alter the fact that I love the recommendations Striphas gives at the end of his article, urging people to no longer play the passive card but to actively try, collectively, to change the current system. One of the things he stresses is to change our research practices, to experiment with new, more open forms of communication: we need to experiment with form, content and process and we should try to leave aside our paper-centric notions. And this change starts at the individual level. It is all a matter of choice. Concerning the capital intensive value-added services Striphas mentions and which publishers are currently marketing as a necessity, I would like to add that many of these services are available in a freely and open source varieties on the web. Open Source software and platforms like OJS, OMP and Zotero—just to name a view—are meaningful choices in a highly politicized publishing industry.
Finally I agree with Striphas take on how we, as well as the publishing industry as a whole, need to become more transparent. Especially in this digital age we need a wider discussion on what it is a publisher exactly does, what kind of value he adds, and what the price-tag for such a service should (maximally) be. How much should the publishing function cost within a structure based mainly on publicly funded research (especially in the HSS). We need more transparency with regards to how these underlying structures are set-up and function. And even more importantly, we need more transparency where it concerns the structures of governance that determine and control the political economy of the publishing industry and of academia as a whole. In this respect, Striphas paper is an important exhortation.
Or better yet, who should own research? Last Thursday CRASSH―the Cambridge based institute for Cultural Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities―assembled an expert panel from the publishing and library community to tackle this question. Linda Bree (Cambridge University Press), Rupert Gatti (Open Book publishers), Gary Hall (Open Humanities Press) and Elin Stangeland (DSpace Cambridge), engaged in a discussion with the CRASSH Postdoctoral community on copyright and ownership of research. The exchange soon evolved into a wider debate on subjects as diverse as authorship, (Open Access) publishing and business models, peer review, branding and credibility, and deposit mandates and PhD theses. Google Books, Internet control and plagiarism also seeped into the discussion. The atmosphere was open and the crowd in a problem-solving mood. All the more surprising (and fulfilling) considering the fact that the principles of the panelists and the audience could be located on a sliding-scale from more traditional to highly experimental.
Linda Bree described herself as “the one in traditional publishing”, which, according to her, entails giving away forms of control. By default, she explains, the system revolves around the single author doing a substantial research (preferably in the form of a book). This research is then reviewed, published, disseminated and marketed. The researcher gains in this process by gathering career benefits, where the publisher receives a financial gain―which in academic publishing mostly means not going bankrupt. So, Bree explains, we find ourselves in a semi-commercial situation. In this context the publisher is not so much involved content-wise, but s/he does have a big say in the way research gets presented. This is an important aspect of the publisher’s work and is based on the possibility of presenting a work within certain financial limits. Because all of the above mentioned processes cost money, from reviewing to marketing. And they are all essential in the end for the scholar to, as Bree calls it, get a “nice published book” and to achieve the idea of “I wrote this”.
Although you could say that giving away this amount of control over one’s work costs quite a lot for an author, Bree defends her and CUP’s position by stating that the transference off control to the publisher is a necessary process. The publisher has invested money along the way and needs to attain revenue. And CUP does give some rights to re-use the work (often fee-based). However, the current technological changes in the publishing process have now given individual scholars the possibility to assert more control over their research (through Open Access and electronic publishing). The individual scholar now has much more choices than in the traditional model (which as Bree admits, is in many ways not sufficient anymore). The seminal question an author thus needs to ask himself is what kind of added value traditional publishing gives him (in forms of branding and other benefits) and whether this is worth the loss of control?
Elin Stangeland from DSpace Cambridge explains the special position Cambridge scholars have in the UK, where they (and not their universities) actually hold the copyright to their research. Giving away forms of control can take place in various settings, as an author can also give a publisher a license to publish (as with a Creative Commons license). Other options for a scholar to keep more in-control include publishing your work with an Open Access book or journal publisher (according to Stangeland, half of the journals in the DOAJ are HSS journals) and self archiving. Scholars can also try to retain their rights from a publisher. Often traditional publishers—like CUP—also provide a hybrid option, where the author can opt to make his specific work openly available. DSpace—which can both be used for books and articles—takes care of the storage and dissemination of the researchers work. They also offer services and advice, like the copyright toolbox (developed by SURF and JISC), and provide information on funders’ policies concerning self-archiving requirements. And they are looking ahead, actively thinking about the archiving of research data (and the management hereof), new citation and reward systems for publishing in the digital humanities and developments concerning the social and semantic web.
Rupert Gatti explained how he—an economist at Trinity College—started Open Book Publishers out of frustration: publishers were not responding quickly enough to the digital developments. Publishers will not sell books they deem to be in un-publishable areas (even though they match their quality criteria) and if they are published, these books are only bought by elite libraries in the west. But the POD revolution and the Internet brought new possibilities to disseminate research. And as Gatti states, dissemination is an important justification of research. Society needs access to research, were the current model prevents dissemination. Open Book publishers takes another route where their publications are completely searchable though Google Books and authors and readers have the freedom to transform and distribute the research. As publishers they have a non-exclusive right to publish (via a CC license). And they don’t give in on the quality aspect: OPB’s books are just as rigorously peer-reviewed as books in the traditional model. OPB is not for profit (and in case they do make a profit they share it 50/50 with their authors) and for a large part counts on the work of volunteers. And they take care of the ‘lap value’, as Gatti calls it, where they publish (affordable) hard and paperback copies of their publications—using the same printer as CUP does, Gatti adds. As Gatti concludes, there are alternatives to the traditional model and they are growing quickly.
After shortly describing the development of the Open Humanities Press—an international Open Access publishing collective—Gary Hall focused on one of the more experimental projects the press is undertaking. For next to more traditional forms of publication, OMP wants to experiment—through its Liquid Book Series—with changing the physical conception of the monograph. Liquid books offer open editing and free/libre content on a Read/Write basis and can for instance consist of a collage of different media and texts; snippets, pages, references, podcasts, youtube clips, etc.. This form of publishing directly confronts the idea of the author. Remembering Barthes, Hall explains how by giving a text an author, we at the same time give it a limit. Liquid Books are an experiment with the decentralization of the author. In a way this decentralization is already on its way. With the massive rise of authorship through the online medium the (discourse on the) author has again become more open, decentralized and distributed. With Google as our major spotlight and Internet filter, the performers of different roles (authors, editors, compilers) are not always identifiable. Everyone is potentially an author or an editor online.
The discussion that followed focused for a large part on the differences between the traditional subscription and the new Open Access models. Worries about the sustainability of Open Access models and their quality assurance were systematically taken away by the panelists. As all panelists confirmed and agreed upon, there is no such thing as one sustainable model for publishing books. In the future there is likely to be a mix of eclectic models with various revenue sources. Where it comes to quality standards, Gatti for one emphasized that the thorough peer review methods of OBP confirm to the highest standards (comparable to those of CUP for instance). Bree however emphasized that for young authors—publishing their first book—the brand of a publisher also plays an important role. She clearly advised young authors to think about this when making their choice on where to publish. Gatti replied by stating that the more open availability of Open Access publications (and in OBP’s case the lower pricing of their print books) is also an important aspect of the marketing and dissemination of publications.
In this respect it is again about the added value of the publisher and about which addition you value the most. And as this seminar showed, with the increased possibilities for authors to publish their research online, publishing is now more than ever about making choices. What the right choice is in this respect, especially concerning the ownership of research, is up to the researcher. Perhaps now more than ever, s/he is in control about how and where to publish.
Another thing I would like to draw your attention to is an excellent speech given by Michael Jensen at the Association of American University Presses’ (AAUP) annual meeting last June. Michael Jensen is the Director of Strategic Web Communications at the National Academies Press, one of the oldest Open Access publishers. As Wikipedia states: ‘The National Academy Press (as it was known in 1993) was the first self-sustaining publisher to make its material available on the Web, for free, in an open access model’. Jensen combined in his plenary presentation the urge for an Open Access business model with the need for environmental changes in publishing. I met Michael Jensen last June as part of the external stakeholder group meeting of the OAPEN project, for which I am doing research, and found him a very passionate Open Access believer though at the same time a very pragmatic person, where he stated, amongst others, that our project should not try to solve all the problems facing Open Access at once but should rather focus on its main goal, on what it set out to achieve in the beginning and work from there. And this shows in my opinion how Jensen is at the same time a man who is not afraid to be both a practical problem solving guy as well as a man who reflects on broad strategic future visions, as set out for instance in his AAUP presentation. The Open Access movement should be proud to have him on its side. I also like the way he says in his presentation that he is not an Open Access zealot but a firm believer in Open Access as the only sustainable publishing model for academic publishing in the years to come:
“I believe that we must shift our business models — publicly, transparently, intentionally, thoughtfully, but radically — to a digital one, with open access as the backbone of scholarly publishing. We must do this to survive a tremendously turbulent next decade, and to ensure that our mission, and its survival, continues to be fulfilled.”
His plea goes out to a model in which print is no longer the main course but rather a side-product of publishing, reducing the environmental strain that comes with the physical dissemination of books and journals:
“Scholarly publishing is a vital part of a larger scholarly communications system, and must be preserved. University Presses also recognize that we have a societal responsibility. We recognize that the lifecycle energy and CO2 costs of printing, shipping, storing, and distributing physical books must be radically curtailed. […]Scholarly publishing’s role in the world must be de-linked from print publication. The print book must become the exception, not the rule, as soon as possible.”
Underneath you will find his speech as given. You can find the full text here. Underneath the You Tube movies you can find some more inspiring lines from Jensen’s speech.
“To retain the qualities of scholarly communication, we’ll radically shift, if you’ll step up to the plate.
Does that mean giving up some control? Yes.
Does that mean collaborating more? Yes.
Does that mean innovating our way out of a failed system? Yes.
Does that mean embracing various forms of open access in exchange for institutional support? Yes.
Does that mean rethinking the economics, and the cost recovery systems, and the sustainability models of scholarly publishing, based on a collapsing physical world? Yes.
Within the context of a world in crisis, we *must* demonstrate that we’re radically rethinking our relationship to the future. We must demonstrate that we are part of the solution, not part of the problem. We must seize initiative now, and start making changes as fast as we can.
Open access + digital publishing will help get us to a sustainable world, and keep us in the mix.”
Publishing, Peer Review and Quality Certification in the Digital Age
November 8, 2009 in Ebooks, Information and knowledge, Lectures and Conferences, Open Access | Tags: Academic Publishing, arXiv, AUP, Book Salon, Branding, Cees Andriesse, CrossCheck, CrossReff, Digital Publishing, Eelco Ferwerda, Filter, Geert Noorman, H-Net, Hindawi, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, MediaCommons Press, NUV, OHP, Open Access, Open Peer Review, Peer review, Quality, Reputation, Usage Statistics, User Comments | 1 comment
Questions leading the discussion were: What is a publisher? What is its function in the digital era and how is the Internet affecting the publisher’s value proposition?
Professor Andriesse, the first speaker, stressed that the main incentive for scientists to publish is reputation building and not money-making. Their foremost aim, even though this might seem ideological, is the improvement and enlargement of human knowledge. In this respect publishing is a must: scientists can only deepen their insights through dialogue with fellow scientists scattered over the earth. To ensure the growth of (accurate and valuable) knowledge, scientists let their fellow researchers judge their work on originality and correct reasoning. They then give a (honest) judgment on the value of the research, mostly in a nuanced manner with suggestions for improvements. Of course this system knows its critics, but as Andriesse states, it is the only true way to establish quality: the scientific journal is what it is today because of peer review and the organization thereof. And this is the primary task of the publisher; together with his editorial board and secretariat, the publisher is to ensure the proper functioning and arrangement of the peer review.
Andriesse goes on to consider what the influence of the Internet is on scientific publishing and thus on the peer review process. How does the Internet influence and shape peer review? As Andriesse states, being a publisher is increasingly a question of personality and networking. It is the personal qualities of a publisher that makes his or her name and brand and this will continue to be the case in the digital era. He also states that when it concerns the arrangement of peer review, a lot of discretion is needed. Andriesse ends his talk by discussing two famous Elsevier publisher-scientist combinations: Roosenvelt and Frank (Nuclear Physics) and Akert and Remarque (Brain Research). He concludes by stating that although the shape and the communication of peer review has become digital, this has not accelerated the process significantly. Emerging models like PloS and Biomed are on the rise but they are not really a distraction from all the, as Andriesse states, crap on the Internet. Andriesse clearly states that the Internet can add near to nothing to the scientific journal and its peer review.
Eelco Ferwerda, the second speaker, takes another starting point and discusses two young publishing companies, both Open Access, but each playing a different role. He states that Open Access is a growing phenomenon, where for instance the Dutch funding organization NWO has recently chosen to pursue an open access policy. This rise of Open Access is a direct result of the nature of science and the new possibilities for publishing: computers play a tremendous role in the gathering of information, and re-use should not be prohibited via copyright. Creative Commons and free licenses offer possibilities in this respect, Ferwerda states.
He starts by discussing Hindawi a STM publisher which has since 2007 been completely Open Access. And they make a profit. They make use of a very ‘reductionist’ model: they do not have any direct contact with their editorial boards, everything gets handled by mail. Ferwerda states that the business model of Hindawi is completely focused on growth and profit making and on the development of new journals. By doing market research in Web of Science they search for the best scholars in a certain niche and build up a new journal around them. According to Ferwerda Hindawi thus uses a modern and strictly commercial model with a quantitative and a-personal approach to quality. Open Humanities Press on the other hand follows a different strategy.
Founded by academics in 2006, their aim is to remove the cultural barriers that inhibit scientists to make full use of the digital possibilities; their strategy is centered on trust and quality. They seek out the best, well-known scholars to support their product (also e-monographs) and they give a home and a quality stamp to journals set up by academics. By establishing connections with the Library of the University off Michigan and the Public Knowledge Project (with their OJS software) they hope to work more efficiently. They operate on a volunteer basis. As Ferwerda says, they don’t offer money but quality through both their business model and their network. The question is however, as Ferwerda ponders, if this will be a sustainable model in the future. Amsterdam University Press is somewhere in between these models: although they are in many ways a lot like OHP, AUP is a professional publisher that needs to make money. For them Open Access is not so much an enthusiasm as it is a real business model. But as OHP shows, the web has led to a renaissance of scholar-lead publishing which is forcing publishers to rethink their value: they are foremost brand builders, organizers, sellers and distributors in the digital age.
Geert Noorman, the final speaker, brings the focus back to issues of peer review and the Internet. First of all he states that not every article needs an extensive discussion. Peer review also fulfills another function, namely that of ranking research. Being a reviewer is even a form of ranking or reputation building. And doing peer review is important work. And it is still work done by human beings that are fallible, which means mistakes are also still being made. However, as Noorman states, peer review is the only instrument to classify the results of science. It is hard work however, with, as he estimates, between 1-1,5 million articles published yearly. Do we still have enough reviewers (who can and want) to perform this job? Hasn’t peer review become old-fashioned and shouldn’t we replace it by usage statistics? Noorman clearly urges against this notion, citing figures showing that peer review is still very popular. According to these figures only 20% of the people think the current or classical system of peer review is no longer sustainable. 86 % however states they find it very valuable work to do and 91,5 % of the authors says it helped improve their work. When it comes to the digital developments, 73% of the reviewers say digital technologies has made their work easier the last 5 years. What is missing however, says 56 %, is proper information about how to conduct peer review. As to the future of peer review, the research shows processing tools will definitely increase in importance. And this is where, as Noorman states, publishers and universities could play an important role. The Internet could mean a lot to peer review: it builds communities, enlarges communication and it assists peer reviewers in doing their work faster and more efficient and it also enables meta-analysis.
These kinds of tools will make sure peer review remains alive and kicking in the digital age. Noorman states there should be more attention towards peer review in post-doctoral education, as it is a skill that needs to be trained and it is increasingly part of ones scientific responsibility. Noorman concludes by stating that usage statistics in some cases can be useful but that they miss the discussion element. And scientific discourse will always stay essential..
In the following discussion it becomes even clearer that the participants feel that the review of scientific publications remains essential. However, as Eelco Ferwerda states with pre-print repositories like arXiv, it gets a different function: peer review is more essential for ranking and branding afterwards, and less for direct scholarly communication. Peer review in this sense can be seen as a certificate, it is the end of a discussion, a final qualification: without this qualification you will not be admitted to the scientific annals, it serves as a threshold. With the online comments and the discussion on the preprint version a lot of rubbish also gets sifted out. In the end every article will have to be certified some where, some time.
The problem, I felt, of the whole discussion on peer review as reflected on above, is that the speakers most of the time seemed to conflate peer review with (one of) its function(s): the certification of research as being qualitative. What the panelists seemed to essentially agree on was foremost the importance of the certification of scientific research by other scholars (the filter function), for which peer review is just one method. The lack of definitions used to describe peer review during the evening (not one definition was mentioned, if you don’t count ‘classical’) seemed to ignore the fact that not only there are already different levels and manners of doing peer review (from open to semi-open to blind etc.) there are also different methods to perform peer review per field. The difference is also huge between how peer review (often more an editorial process) is conducted in the HSS and in the Sciences. Statements made during the evening like ‘peer review will remain important in the digital age’ thus became quite meaningless with a term and a practice that can have so many meanings and manners. More important to question is what kind of peer review will become more important, and even more, how can we help it, advance it, adjust it or complement it in the digital age with the (alternative) tools and methods at our disposal (which are the more interesting questions concerning peer review I feel).
Next to that we might also start thinking about alternatives to peer review that still fulfill the same basic function as peer review in order to make this process more efficient. In this respect the article ‘On the future of peer review in electronic scholarly publishing’ by Kathleen Fitzpatrick gives many insights, where she separates the structure of peer review from the purposes it serves (and those purposes we want it to serve and those it actually fulfills).
She distinguishes two functions of peer review: fostering discussion and improving the work, and quality filtering (two functions Ferwerda and Noorman also already touched upon briefly during their presentations). However, the first can also already take place during the research process in an open setting, using user comments on the preprint and focusing more on the communication between scholars. Fitzpatrick goes on to establish the benefits these kind of open peer review systems offer to scholarly communication:
“Vast amounts of scholars’ time is poured into the peer review process each year; wouldn’t it be better to put that time into open discussions that not only improve the individual texts under review but are also, potentially, productive of new work? Isn’t it possible that scholars would all be better served by separating the question of credentialing from the publishing process, by allowing everything through the gate, by designing a post-publication peer review process that focuses on how a scholarly text should be received rather than whether it should be out there in the first place? Would the various credentialing bodies that currently rely on peer review’s gatekeeping function be satisfied if we were to say to them, “no, anonymous reviewers did not determine whether my article was worthy of publication, but if you look at the comments that my article has received, you can see that ten of the top experts in my field had really positive, constructive things to say about it”?”
It is this discussion on how to really improve scholarly communication foremost (which in my opinion comes before quality – not saying that quality establishment is not also of the utmost importance) with the digital possibilities which I felt was missing[*] in especially Andriesse’s and also Noorman’s discussion of this system and which made the evening into a not very exiting all-agreeing praising of systems we now actually have the chance to improve – apparently not during these kind of panel discussions however.
By the way, Kathleen Fitzpatrick is currently offering her book manuscript, Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy for public review via MediaCommons Press.
[*] Next to a further discussion on the rise of scholarly- and library-led publishing initiatives, which can certainly be seen as threatening the traditional roles of the publisher when it comes to both arranging peer review and to arranging the production and distribution of scientific content.