publishing – Page 3 – Alyssa Arbuckle

On “Against Capital,” by Stuart Lawson

January 28, 2018 Alyssa Comments 0 Comment

In the talk “Against Capital,” Stuart Lawson takes aim at the rhetoric of disruption and newness in scholarly communication. They argue that as long as we continue to subscribe to a capitalist and neoliberal higher education system, we will not achieve true progress in democratizing knowledge or reasserting control over the means of academic production. Lawson goes on to demonstrate how neoliberalism manifests in various elements of higher education. They write, “Neoliberalism in education is not just about the overtly…

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On “Back to the Future,” by Bob Stein

November 10, 2017 Alyssa Comments 0 Comment

In “Back to the Future,” Bob Stein discusses SocialBook, an Institute for the Future of the Book project that uses networked technologies to publish and read cultural materials. He argues that prior to the invention of the printing press, reading used to be a collaborative activity in social knowledge creation. People would gather around texts, discuss them, and insert comments into manuscripts via marginalia. Once book production became mechanized, and more people developed literacy skills, reading became a much more…

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On “CommentPress: New (Social) Structures for New (Networked) Texts,” by Kathleen Fitzpatrick

November 10, 2017 Alyssa Comments 0 Comment

In “CommentPress: New (Social) Structures for New (Networked) Texts,” Kathleen Fitzpatrick suggests that electronic publishing should reproduce the organization and structure of the print book, rather than take a skuemorphic approach that mimics the look of the book, and instead of employing more radical, disorienting approaches. To do so, Fitzpatrick offers Commentpress as a potential option, a WordPress theme that allows for side-by-side commenting on academic texts. She argues that by using a platform like Commentpress, one can return to…

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On Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy, by Kathleen Fitzpatrick

November 10, 2017 Alyssa Comments 0 Comment

In the oft-cited touchstone book Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy, Kathleen Fitzpatrick examines the current academic publishing system, and outlines its drawbacks and possibilities. She suggests that the current fixation on the printed book monograph, at least in the humanities, needs to change. For Fitzpatrick, the monograph is part of an undead, zombie logic of the academy, as it represents a mandatory but often dysfunctional system of scholarly communication. Beyond the monograph, Fitzpatrick argues, we…

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On “Dissemination as Cultivation: Scholarly Communications in a Digital Age,” by James O’Sullivan, Christopher P. Long, and Mark A. Mattson

September 21, 2017 Alyssa Comments 0 Comment

In “Dissemination as Cultivation: Scholarly Communications in a Digital Age,” James O’Sullivan, Christopher P. Long, and Mark A. Mattson link form to content in the context of publishing. That is, they argue that the digital realm allows for scholarly content to be presented in more representative forms than print publication can offer. Although this may not ring true for all fields, it can for the digital humanities, which is often characterized by its openness and collegiality (as Elika Ortéga and…

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On “Will Open Access Change the Game?” by Sven Fund

September 7, 2017 Alyssa Comments 0 Comment

In “Will Open Access Change the Game?: Hypotheses on the Future Cooperation of Libraries, Researchers, and Publishers,” Sven Fund considers open access publishing as analogous to the disruptive technologies that have become trademarks of digital technology. He argues that open access will “most likely lead to wanted and unwanted developments and consequences for different actors” (206). Fund rightly suggests that the long term impacts of open access have not been sufficiently considered; he does not, however, answer such a need…

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On “Open Access Publishing and Scholarly Values,” by Dan Cohen

September 7, 2017 Alyssa Comments 0 Comment

In the blog post “Open Access Publishing and Scholarly Values,” Dan Cohen identifies four emotions or values (impartiality, passion, shame, and narcissism), and relates them to the current scholarly communication system that often prioritizes toll-access publishing over open access options. His post is aimed at changing scholars’ minds, in particular. Cohen suggests that impartiality should reign over venue choice; that is, if scholarship is of good quality that should raise it in status rather than whether or not it was…

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On “Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies, and the Future,” by Martin Paul Eve

July 27, 2017 Alyssa Comments 0 Comment

In this thorough volume, Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies, and the Future, Martin Paul Eve introduces readers to open access as a concept and practice. Where Eve’s study differs from other major open access books, like Peter Suber’s Open Access, is in his specific focus on the humanities. Open access is often discussed in relation to the sciences only. This is for a few reasons, including that the earliest, largest-scale open access publishing movement started in physics; open…

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On “In Defense of Open Access: Or, Why I Stopped Worrying and Started an OA Journal,” by Megan Lowe

July 16, 2017 Alyssa Comments 0 Comment

In the article “In Defense of Open Access: Or, Why I Stopped Worrying and Started an OA Journal,” Megan Lowe describes Codex, an open access (OA) journal that she edits. Lowe frames the Codex summary within a larger framework of the critique of OA publishing as not being rigorous enough (especially in a 2013 study done by John Bohannon where he criticizes peer review in OA publications). By contrast, Lowe argues that peer review issues are not endemic only to…

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