Little Reviews

On “Networked Participatory Scholarship: Emergent Techno-Cultural Pressures Toward Open and Digital Scholarship in Online Networks,” by George Veletsianos and Royce Kimmons

On “Networked Participatory Scholarship: Emergent Techno-Cultural Pressures Toward Open and Digital Scholarship in Online Networks,” by George Veletsianos and Royce Kimmons

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In “Networked Participatory Scholarship: Emergent Techno-Cultural Pressures Toward Open and Digital Scholarship in Online Networks,” George Veletsianos and Royce Kimmons explore the possibly causal, possibly correlated relationship between contemporary scholarly practice and technology. In particular, they focus on the emergence of specific scholarly practices that are situated in online social practices. Veletsianos and Kimmons nominate such scholarly activity as “Networked Participatory Scholarship.” “Networked Participatory Scholarship,” the authors write, “is the emergent practice of scholars’ use of participatory technologies and online…

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On “Developing an Open, Networked Peer Review System,” by Nina Belojevic

On “Developing an Open, Networked Peer Review System,” by Nina Belojevic

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In “Developing an Open, Networked Peer Review System” Nina Belojevic seeks successful methods to combine the scholarly and the practical in digital projects. Digital scholarship is increasingly legitimate in the academy, especially in the realms of digital humanities and new media. But digital project development, Belojevic argues, could benefit from certain game- and other creative-industry project management and design practices. To demonstrate her argument, Belojevic provides the Personas for Open Peer Review project as an example. In developing the Personas…

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On “Exploding, Centralizing, and Reimagining: Critical Scholarship Refracted Through the NewRadial Prototype,” by Jon Saklofske

On “Exploding, Centralizing, and Reimagining: Critical Scholarship Refracted Through the NewRadial Prototype,” by Jon Saklofske

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In “Exploding, Centralizing, and Reimagining: Critical Scholarship Refracted Through the NewRadial Prototype,” Jon Saklofske discusses NewRadial, an Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) prototype. In Saklofske’s own words, “NewRadial is a data visualization environment that was originally designed as an alternative way to encounter and annotate image-based databases” (n.p). Here, he situates NewRadial within the larger context of INKE’s focus (at the time) on alternative models for journals and monographs. Saklofske argues for the value of multimodal, non-linear interaction with cultural…

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On “Building Expertise to Support Digital Scholarship: A Global Perspective,” by Vivian Lewis, Lisa Shapiro, Xuemao Wang, and Jon E. Cawthorne

On “Building Expertise to Support Digital Scholarship: A Global Perspective,” by Vivian Lewis, Lisa Shapiro, Xuemao Wang, and Jon E. Cawthorne

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“Building Expertise to Support Digital Scholarship: A Global Perspective” is a Council for Library and Information Resources (CLIR) report compiled by  Vivian Lewis, Lisa Spiro, Xuemao Wang, and Jon E. Cawthorne. The authors comment on the rise of digital scholarship centres internationally, but the lack of research regarding best practices for running such a centre. Lewis et al. stress the importance of gathering information about digital scholarship expertise, institutional structures, and requisite competencies. To remedy the want of pragmatic information…

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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

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

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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 “Measuring Altruistic Impact: A Model for Understanding the Social Justice of Open Access,” by Margaret Heller and Franny Gaede

On “Measuring Altruistic Impact: A Model for Understanding the Social Justice of Open Access,” by Margaret Heller and Franny Gaede

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In “Measuring Altruistic Impact: A Model for Understanding the Social Justice of Open Access,” Margaret Heller and Franny Gaede consider open access repositories in the context of social justice. This is not, perhaps, what it might seem at first glance: Heller and Gaede move beyond the standard argument that open access is a public good, and de facto social issue (although they do use this argument as a theoretical foundation). Rather, Heller and Gaede run an experiment to determine the…

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On “North American Campus-Based Open Access Funds: A Five-Year Progress Report,” by Greg Tananbaum

On “North American Campus-Based Open Access Funds: A Five-Year Progress Report,” by Greg Tananbaum

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In “North American Campus-Based Open Access Funds: A Five-Year Progress Report,” Greg Tananbaum reviews and provides a status update on the SPARC Campus-based Open Access Funds initiative. This initiative provides seed funding to libraries that authors can access as need be in order to publish open access. Tananbaum provides impressive statistics on the relative uptake of the initiative, including papers (3863) and unique authors (3121) funded to date. But he also outlines challenges that have arisen: namely, enticing and sustaining…

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

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

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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

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

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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

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

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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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