Browsed by
Category: open social scholarship

On Living Books by Janneke Adema

On Living Books by Janneke Adema

Comments 0 Comment

Janneke Adema considers the contemporary scholarly book and how it could transition from a fixed, bound object to a more fluid and evolving entity. She argues that humanities scholars should reconsider their role as authors and strive to engage with knowledge production in more open, critical, and experimental ways. Adema challenges new media scholars (such as Lev Manovich and John Bryant) and print historians (such as Elizabeth Eisenstein and Adrian Johns) for their perpetuation of the book as an unchangeable,…

Read More Read More

On Reassembling Scholarly Communications by Martin Paul Eve and Jonathan Gray

On Reassembling Scholarly Communications by Martin Paul Eve and Jonathan Gray

Comments 0 Comment

Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access draws together various chapters on the current and future state of scholarly communication, especially in relation to open access and open scholarship movements. Eve and Gray have incorporated perspectives from around the globe in this collection, with an emphasis on critical approaches to open scholarship endeavours and activities. For instance, Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou argues that open access can be quite detrimental in Africa, where the pressure to publish…

Read More Read More

On The Poethics of Scholarship, by Kaja Marczewska, Janneke Adema, Frances McDonald, and Whitney Trettien

On The Poethics of Scholarship, by Kaja Marczewska, Janneke Adema, Frances McDonald, and Whitney Trettien

Comments 0 Comment

In this self-declared “open access pamphlet,” the editors (and authors)— Kaja Marczewska, Janneke Adema, Frances McDonald, and Whitney Trettien—take a critical approach to open, digital scholarship. They frame such an approach within the concept of a scholarly “poethics,” or, an ethical poetics. This conception is present throughout the three short essays that make up this pamphlet. Marczewska offers “The Horizon of the Publishable in/as Open Access: From Poethics to Praxis,” where she rails against the co-opting and corporatization of the…

Read More Read More

On Generous Thinking, by Kathleen Fitzpatrick

On Generous Thinking, by Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Comments 0 Comment

In the recently published Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University, Kathleen Fitzpatrick ruminates on the current state academia, with a focus on dominant trends toward competition and individualism and weakening public support. “The university has been undermined,” she writes, “by the withdrawal of public support for its functions, but that public support has been undermined by the university’s own betrayals of the public trust” (xi). She argues that a substantial shift in academia is required in order…

Read More Read More

On “Who Do You Think You Are?”: When Marginality Meets Academic Microcelebrity,” by Tressie McMillan Cottom

On “Who Do You Think You Are?”: When Marginality Meets Academic Microcelebrity,” by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Comments 0 Comment

Using her own extensive experience as an intellectual blogging and writing in public spaces, McMillan Cottom examines the politics at play in being an engaged academic online. She argues that despite the current call for social engagement and visibility, not all public intellectuals are treated equally online; that is, women and people of colour are often targeted and harassed for speaking publicly on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or their own blogs. McMillan Cottom writes: Put simply, all press is good…

Read More Read More

On “The Impact Platform,” by Jefferson Pooley

On “The Impact Platform,” by Jefferson Pooley

Comments 0 Comment

In “The Impact Plaform,” Jefferson Pooley weighs the pros and cons of the recent development of websites like The Conversation, which showcases scholarly pieces written for a non-specialist audience. Pooley argues that “The impact platform is flawed and problematic, but also a real gain for open scholarship” (n.p.). This sort of publication venue is “flawed and problematic” for Pooley because it encourages the data-driven reliance on quantitative metrics to judge the value of academic work. Many feel as though this…

Read More Read More

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

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

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…

Read More Read More

On Social Media in Academia: Networked Scholars, by George Veletsianos

On Social Media in Academia: Networked Scholars, by George Veletsianos

Comments 0 Comment

In Social Media in Academia: Networked Scholars, George Veletsianos aims to nuance the conversation around academics’ participation on social media networks like Facebook and Twitter. Contrary to the common focus, Veletsianos  urges his readers to consider the role of social media for academics as individuals. By contrast, social media is usually discussed in relation to increasing citation count or status as a public intellectual (106, 107). “To understand scholars lives,” he writes, “we need to examine more than just their…

Read More Read More

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

Comments 0 Comment

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…

Read More Read More

On “Publications,” by Steven E. Jones

On “Publications,” by Steven E. Jones

Comments 0 Comment

A chapter on publications in Steven E. Jones’s 2014 book The Emergence of the Digital Humanities” might seem out of place at first. (As in, “Hey, this is a DH book, why are we talking about scholarly communication?!”) But Jones is quick to point out the close ties between the digital humanities and publishing, which he frames under the conception of publishing as a means of the academy’s own production. Digital humanists, Jones argues, “are in a good position to…

Read More Read More