Gideon Burton's Blog

The Coming Change in Humanities Publishing (7): The Online Archive

So far in this series I have described two types of publishing we are going to see more of as the humanities (with the rest of academia) retool for the digital age: electronic publication of conventional scholarship, and Open Access publication. In this post, I discuss a third type of electronic publishing: the online archive. But wait a minute, you might say, archiving and publishing are very different things. Scholars publish; librarians archive. Right? Well, the lines have blurred, as has the very definition of what constitutes publishing today. But before discussing the changing nature of publishing, let me quickly define the online archive and sketch how it works.

The Coming Change in Humanities Publishing (6): Open Access

Open Access is the major movement in scholarly publishing today. The humanities are behind other disciplines in understanding and adopting Open Access, but as the sciences are already discovering, Open Access is reinventing the field of academic publishing generally and will ultimately eclipse traditional publishing.

Visit my break-out blog: Academic Evolution

Please visit Academic Evolution, a blog I've broken out from this one. Discussion at Academic Evolution is focused on changes in higher education and issues regarding access, pedagogy, and publishing in the age of new media.

The Coming Change in Humanities Publishing (5): Electronic Conventional Scholarship

In the next four posts I will characterize four general types of electronic publishing, moving from that sort which is most like traditional print scholarship to that which is least so.

The first, "Electronic Conventional Scholarship," can be considered the closest to traditional publishing. It includes online versions of established print journals (such as Modern Philology) or, increasingly, journals with no print history or counterpart (such as Textual Studies in Canada). Also within this category are the many digitized issues of back issues available through collections such as JSTOR.

The Coming Change in Humanities Publishing (3): Opportunities with Electronic Publishing

In the previous post I discussed the problems with conventional publishing in the Humanities and referred to The Modern Language Association’s 2002 statement on the future of scholarly publishing. That report eyed the digital realm and asked the question, "Is Electronic Publication the Solution?"

Its answer was tentative and appropriately qualified--after all, electronic publishing is still in its swaddling clothes and raises as many problems, perhaps, as it may appear to solve (I'll get into all of that soon enough!). Importantly, however, the report presented the electronic realm not simply as a field of potential opportunity for publishing, but as a field already serving the interests of humanities research: "Online journals are already being used by many scholars in our fields, and this use is likely to increase." Citing a Columbia University report, it stated that "scholars in the humanities have become regular users of electronic resources such as bibliographies, encyclopedias, concordances, and databases available through university libraries."No kidding!

The Coming Change in Humanities Publishing (2): Problems with Conventional Publishing in the Humanities

Change in Humanities publishing is being driven in part by what has become known as the "crisis in scholarly communication." This refers to a short-circuit in the publication and research cycle upon which scholarship depends. Published scholarship isn't reaching its destined readers who rely upon it for their own work, and scholarship meriting publication is not getting published. Both problems are due to economic woes: Journal subscription costs have escalated astronomically, causing libraries to cancel them, and academic presses "are being forced to reject high quality scholarship submitted for publication, because they can no longer afford to publish such work" (Cornell, citing MLA).

The Coming Change in Humanities Publishing (1): Introducing the Issues

I offer a series of posts in which I will lay out my understanding of the radical changes that academic publishing is undergoing in general and within the Humanities in particular. This both continues and expands my prior posts and presentations on the Open Access movement. I'll take up each of the following in separate posts--inviting comments from any interested:

1. Introducing the Issues
2. Problems with Conventional Publishing in the Humanities
3. Opportunities with Electronic Publishing
4. Defining Electronic Publishing
5. Type 1: Electronic Publication of Conventional Scholarship
6. Type 2: Open Access Publishing
7. Type 3: The Online Archive
8. Type 4: "Born Digital" Publications
9. Evaluation of Electronic Publications: Peer Review
10. Evaluation of Electronic Publications: Promotion and Tenure