#AcBookWeek: Ecologies of Publishing Futures

Posted on by in Academic Book Week, conference, research and tagged , , , .

On the 23rd November 2015 The Royal College of Art hosted a symposium to discuss the Ecologies of Publishing Futures. The symposium asked ‘How do designers engage in new ecologies and what is the future of publishing?’ Academics, designers, storytellers, publishers, and students spoke about this from international perspectives and debated over the book and its lifecycle, as well as the role of writing, designing, and the processes of mediating, distributing, and reading.

Amongst the speakers was Andrew Prescott, Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Glasgow and an AHRC Digital Transformation theme Leadership Fellow. He spoke from the perspective of a medievalist who has spent great deal of time studying manuscripts and records (writing his PhD thesis on the record of the Peasant’s Revolt 1381). Throughout his research, Prescott stated he was struck by the need to understand the wealth of information as physical artefacts, as well as just reading them as manuscripts. This work inspired him to continue on as a curator at the British Library, where he was part of a digitisation project which used special lighting techniques to discover the hidden letters underneath the repaired manuscript of Beowulf – burnt in a fire in 1731 and repaired in the nineteenth century. (Note: The Beowulf manuscript has been in The British Library’s possession since 1973 and a digitised version is now available to browse on their website, along with some additional information, here:http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/beowulf)

Prescott spoke about how this work and his time at the British Library made him conscious of the hugely varied material forms of textuality. Historical documents can range from clay tablets to sound files and moving images, and, he argued, digital technology can help convey the wide-ranging nature of historical textuality. Digital technology also allows closer contact between libraries, archives, and museums. According to Prescott the important thing to take away from this is that dialogue with artists and designers is essential in articulating fresh perspectives on engagement with historical material. An example he cited was an art project by Fabio Antinori called Data Flags, which was exhibited at the V&A last year. He used conductive ink, which is often thought of as an analogue art form but can turn paper into circuits. Through other examples Prescott suggested that the textuality of art is always changing and shifting with the times and proved that the boundary between primary object, publication and interpretation is starting to be fundamentally restated. Prescott summed up his talk by ending on a somewhat cynical note: while all the possibilities he mentioned are there, people are bit taking advantage of them. His view is that the scholarly environment for an undergraduate today is less media-rich than it was forty years ago. Textbooks during his time as an undergraduate explored the potential of new printing methods, none of which have been followed through on.

Dan Franklin, Digital Publisher at Penguin Random House, had been given a brief to provide a provocation for the event on the state of digital publishing, so what he provided was a ‘where-we-are-now’ overview to provoke discussion and invite debate. He acknowledged the changes digital publishing is making to the publishing industry and talked about it from the perspective of someone who is in the midst of the shifting landscape.

Using an analogy of William Golding’s The Inheritors Franklin compared the plot of that novel, the collision of Neanderthal men and women with Homo sapiens, the people who would inherit the earth from them with the current state of the publishing industry. The analogy here being the moment of transition between print and digital, a short and historical moment of co-existence. And Franklin suggests that they can thrive with each other instead of being viewed as competitors. He recognises the urgency and potentially demoralising nature of change, but adds that it can also be exciting, depending on your viewpoint. As a digital publisher at Penguin Random House he motivates his team to explore the bleeding edges of this publishing transformation.

During this year Franklin stated he has seen some interesting and willful misinterpretations of what is happening in publishing. The fact of the matter is that 25%+ of publishers’ revenues are coming in via digital and that is not going to reverse. The “takeover” however, has not happened as quickly as people thought it would and Franklin states this is a testament to the formidable power of the printed book. Franklin is adamant that the word processor has not stopped writers continuing and developing the novel form so why should the innovation stop there? Franklin urges publishers to continue to be innovative with change and see what can come from it.

Professor Teal Triggs of the RCA stated that by talking about “ecologies” of the publishing industry, we can strive to understand the process of the lifecycle better and whether proposed models are going to be relevant. It’s important to look at the entire lifecycle, not just the editorial or author aspects but the design and distribution as well. Creative people think differently and their design thinking process can be a catalyst for forwar- thinking throughout the whole industry.

 

See Dan’s talk write-up here: https://medium.com/@PRHDigital/an-earthquake-in-the-petrified-forest-86f6ffa5c85d#.jpyxy6pmq

See Andrews’s talk write-up here: https://medium.com/digital-riffs/are-we-doomed-to-a-word-of-pdfs-11f57edaf926#.9r1w3lyh2

See twitter hashtag #bookfutures for more information about the symposium and other related events.

#AcBookWeek: Students and the digital edition. A polemic.

Posted on by in Academic Book Week and tagged , , , .

This post first appeared on the blog of the Institute of Historical Research on November 18, 2015. The Academic Book of the Future is reblogging it for the #AcBookWeek review with kind permission from IHR.

 

This post has kindly been provided for us by Dr Stephen Gregg of Bath Spa University, and is the text of a talk given to the panel session ‘Opening the book: reading and the evolving technology(ies) of the book’ as part of Academic Book Week.

I want to talk about the undergraduate perspective on a particular kind of academic book – the edition. In fact my starting point is that, from the student perspective (and according to some scholars), there is no longer a clear idea of what that is.

The place and perceived value of the printed critical edition seems to be still firmly established. I once asked my students to identify and compare value markers of their printed text in front of them and of an online version of the same text, and they made a pretty good case for the printed text, citing everything from the name of the publisher, to modes of reading, navigation, and interaction, and even pointing to the durability of its medium. And this in a digital humanities module. However, asking them to tell me how and why either of these versions look the way they do was a far more tricky question. So my polemic will be a plea for teaching in a way that puts students themselves in the position of editors and curators of literary texts: and that the best way of doing this is an engagement with digital editing and curating.

But first, I’m going to begin by outlining how a dramatic rise in the online availability of our literary heritage drives certain changes in reading and studying practices.[1] When a lot of academics are running to catch up with the accelerating process in disseminating the world’s literary heritage online – even in their own field, and I include myself – is it any wonder that our students, stepping off the path of the printed set text, also find themselves slightly taken aback and click on the top hit in Google? Because there is indeed a chaotic mass of types of texts they can find. In addition to catalogue entries and Amazon hits, there are texts from web sites and web ventures that essentially depend upon some form of commercial revenue or profit (e.g. Google, Luminarium, editions via Kindle, and even apps), non-profit web organisations (e.g. Project Gutenberg, Poemhunter, Internet Archive, Hathi Trust), nationally-supported or privately-endowed institutions (e.g. Folger digital texts, British Library Shakespeare Folios), University libraries (e.g. SCETI, Virginia, Adelaide, Bodleian), a whole host of academic projects (e.g. Rosetti Archive, EEBO-TCP, the Correspondence of William Godwin, the Walt Whitman Archive) and, of course, via institutionally-accessed and pay-walled commercial publishers (like Cengage or ProQuest). My essential point is that there is a blurring of the definition of the ‘edition’. What we see – for sometimes good reasons – are projects that describe themselves as digital archives, databases, digital library collections, social editions (like Transcribe Bentham), and apps (e.g. Touchpress’s The Wasteland). And texts that come via these platforms look, feel and function very differently.

Between the printed and digital text, there’s a two-way process happening. The easy and quick availability of texts online drives a certain kind of reading of printed editions which makes invisible ‘the history of their own making’ (D. F. McKenzie).[2] At the same time, undergraduates don’t often spot the distinction between the kinds of texts they find online and the one in their printed critical editions. This partly because they see only the text in their editions, and not the ‘edition’ (introduction, textual note, annotations, etc.): the actual edition becomes invisible. I don’t want to denigrate undergraduates’ skills and this isn’t entirely the students’ fault: it’s partly how English literary studies – at least in many seminar rooms – is still running with the idea of the literary text as an immaterial abstraction (despite the influence of various kinds of historicization). It’s this that renders invisible the processes that shape the form of the book in their hands. So I guess my rant is partly a plea for a serious consideration for the materiality of the book and a bigger role for the history of the book in English Studies.

But I’m also thinking about the lack of attention (at undergraduate level) paid to how editions and texts end up on the web in the ways they do. Formats vary hugely, from poorly catalogued page facsimiles, to unattributed HTML editing of dodgy nineteenth-century editions, to scholarly high-standard editing with XML/TEI encoding. But there are still plenty of these digital versions and collections that make it very difficult to see who these resources are for and how they got to look and function the way they do. And, as I’ve hinted at earlier, issues of format and accessibility are linked to how the various sites and projects are funded. In significant ways a lot of texts available digitally do much worse than the print edition at signalling ‘The history of their own making.’

So, the second half of my polemic is about how we should be making our students more aware of how the edition is remediated based on an understanding of the limits and affordances of digital technology and of how the internet works.[3] Because this is where digital technology can open their books in a vital way. I’ve found it intensely interesting that the digital humanities community has been using a variety of material and haptic metaphors to describe what it is they are doing – ‘making’ or ‘building.’[4] For me, this is wonderfully suggestive. In asking my students to understand the processes involved in transforming a material book into an printed edition and then a digital edition is a necessarily haptic experience. This experience – a process that involves decisions about audience, purpose, authority, and technological affordances and restraints – enables a student to understand their literary object of study in a vital and transformative way. It might seem odd that I’m emphasising materiality in a debate thinking through the effects of what is, ostensibly, an immaterial medium, but technology is material and digital editing should involve the material aspects of the book and material work. My undergraduate dissertation student is producing a digital edition of a work by Henry Fielding: she will be going to the British Library to see the source text as an essential part of her learning. In a few weeks time, my students will be building a digital scanner partly out of cardboard; after that even our training in digital markup will start with pencil and a printed sheet of paper.

So I’m arguing that we give students the opportunity to be academic editors of books, and not just in theory but in practice; to enable them to be creators and not merely consumers of texts, because the electronic editions of the future should be powered by an early and vital experience of digital making.

Notes to Students and the digital edition. A polemic.

[1] Leaving aside why there is an increasing use by undergraduates of online texts instead of printed ones in class – though I suspect it’s partly down to the increasing centrality of the mobile device as well as an expectation that everything is, or should be, freely accessible.

[2]D. F. McKenzie, quoted in Jerome McGann, ‘Coda. Why digital textual scholarship matters; or, philology in a new key,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Textual Scholarship, eds, Neil Fraistat and Julia Flanders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 274-88 (p.274).

[3] I’m always reminded of internet hacktivist Aaron Swartz’s maxim: ‘It’s not OK not to understand the internet anymore.’

[4] Most notably Stephen Ramsay, On Building.

#AcBookWeek: The Academic Book of the Future: Evolution or Revolution?

Posted on by in academia, Academic Book Week, academic books, booksellers, libraries, Open Access, Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

 

This post reflects on one of the events that took place during Academic Book Week in Cambridge. A colloquium was the basis of multiple viewpoints airing thoughts on where the future of the academic book lies from perspectives of booksellers, librarians, and academics. 

During the week of the 9th November the CMT convened a one-day colloquium entitled ‘The Academic Book of the Future: Evolution or Revolution?’ The colloquium was part of Cambridge’s contribution to a host of events being held across the UK in celebration of the first ever Academic Book Week, which is itself an offshoot of the AHRC-funded ‘Academic Book of the Future’ project. The aim of that project is both to raise awareness of academic publishing and to explore how it might change in response to new digital technologies and changing academic cultures. We were delighted to have Samantha Rayner, the PI on the project, to introduce the event.

 

The first session kicked off with a talk from Rupert Gatti, Fellow in Economics at Trinity and one of the founders of Open Book Publishers, explaining ‘Why the Future is Open Access’. Gatti contrasted OA publishing with ‘legacy’ publishing and emphasized the different orders of magnitude of the audience for these models. Academic books published through the usual channels were, he contended, failing to reach 99% of their potential audience. They were also failing to take account of the possibilities opened up by digital media for embedding research materials and for turning the book  into an ongoing project rather than a finished article. The second speaker in this session, Alison Wood, a Mellon/Newton postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities in Cambridge, reflected on the relationship between academic publishing and the changing institutional structures of the university. She urged us to look for historical precedents to help us cope with current upheavals, and called in the historian Anthony Grafton to testify to the importance of intellectual communities and institutions to the seemingly solitary labour of the academic monograph. In Wood’s analysis, we need to draw upon our knowledge of the changing shape of the university as a collective (far more postdocs, far more adjunct teachers, far more globalization) when thinking about how academic publishing might develop. We can expect scholarly books of the future to take some unusual forms in response to shifting material circumstances.

 

The day was punctuated by a series of ‘views’ from different Cambridge institutions. The first was offered by David Robinson, the Managing Director of Heffers, which has been selling books in Cambridge since 1876. Robinson focused on the extraordinary difference between his earlier job, in a university campus bookshop, and his current role. In the former post, in the heyday of the course textbook, before the demise of the net book agreement and the rise of the internet, selling books had felt a little like ‘playing shops’. Now that the textbook era is over, bookshops are less tightly bound into the warp and weft of universities, and academic books are becoming less and less visible on the shelves even of a bookshop like Heffers. Robinson pointed to the ‘crossover’ book, the academic book that achieves a large readership, as a crucial category in the current bookselling landscape. He cited Thomas Piketty’s Capital as a recent example of the genre.

 

Our second panel was devoted to thinking about the ‘Academic Book of the Near-Future’, and our speakers offered a series of reflections on the current state of play. The first speaker, Samantha Rayner (Senior Lecturer in the Department of Information Studies at UCL and ‘Academic Book of the Future’ PI) described the progress of the project to date. The first phase had involved starting conversations with numerous stakeholders at every point in the production process, to understand the nature of the systems in which the academic book is enmeshed. Rayner called attention to the volatility of the situation in which the project is unfolding—every new development in government higher education policy forces a rethink of possible futures. She also stressed the need for early-career scholars to receive training in the variety of publishing avenues that are open to them. Richard Fisher, former Managing Director of Academic Publishing at CUP, took up the baton with a talk about the ‘invisibles’ of traditional academic publishing—all the work that goes into making the reputation of an academic publisher that never gets seen by authors and readers. Those invisibles had in the past created certain kinds of stability—‘lines’ that libraries would need to subscribe to, periodicals whose names would be a byword for quality, reliable metadata for hard-pressed cataloguers. And the nature of these existing arrangements is having a powerful effect on the ways in which digital technology is (or is not) being adopted by particular publishing sectors. Peter Mandler, Professor of Modern Cultural History at Cambridge and President of the Royal Historical Society, began by singing the praises of the academic monograph; he saw considerable opportunities for evolutionary rather than revolutionary change in this format thanks to the move to digital. The threat to the monograph came, in his view, mostly from government-induced productivism. The scramble to publish for the REF as it is currently configured leads to a lower-quality product, and threatens to marginalize the book altogether. Danny Kingsley, Head of Scholarly Communication at Cambridge, discussed the failure of the academic community to embrace Open Access, and its unpreparedness for the imposition of OA by governments. She outlined Australian Open Access models that had given academic work a far greater impact, putting an end to the world in which intellectual prestige stood in inverse proportion to numbers of readers.

 

In the questions following this panel, some anxieties were aired about the extent to which the digital transition might encourage academic publishers to further devolve labour and costs to their authors, and to weaken processes of peer review. How can we ensure that any innovations bring us the best of academic life, rather than taking us on a race to the bottom? There was also discussion about the difficulties of tailoring Open Access to humanities disciplines that relied on images, given the current costs of digital licences; it was suggested that the use of lower-density (72 dpi) images might offer a way round the problem, but there was some vociferous dissent from this view.

 

After lunch, the University Librarian Anne Jarvis offered us ‘The View from the UL’. The remit of the UL, to safeguard the book’s past for future generations and to make it available to researchers, remains unchanged. But a great deal is changing. Readers no longer perceive the boundaries between different kinds of content (books, articles, websites), and the library is less concerned with drawing in readers and more concerned with pushing out content. The curation and preservation of digital materials, including materials that fall under the rules for legal deposit, has created a set of new challenges. Meanwhile the UL has been increasingly concerned about working with academics in order to understand how they are using old and new technologies in their day-to-day lives, and to ensure that it provides a service tailored to real rather than imagined needs.

 

The third panel session of the day brought together four academics from different humanities disciplines to discuss the publishing landscape as they perceive it. Abigail Brundin, from the Department of Italian, insisted that the future is collaborative; collaboration offers an immediate way out of the often closed-off worlds of our specialisms, fosters interdisciplinary exchanges and allows access to serious funding opportunities. She took issue with any idea that the initiative in pioneering new forms of academic writing should come from early-career academics; it is those who are safely tenured who have a responsibility to blaze a trail. Matthew Champion, a Research Fellow in History, drew attention to the care that has traditionally gone into the production of academic books—care over the quality of the finished product and over its physical appearance, down to details such as the font it is printed in. He wondered whether the move to digital and to a higher speed of publication would entail a kind of flattening of perspectives and an increased sense of alienation on all sides. Should we care how many people see our work? Champion thought not: what we want is not 50,000 careless clicks but the sustained attention of deeply-engaged readers. Our third speaker, Liana Chua reported on the situation in Anthropology, where conservative publishing imperatives are being challenged by digital communications. Anthropologists usually write about living subjects, and increasingly those subjects are able to answer back. This means that the ‘finished-product’ model of the book is starting to die off, with more fluid forms taking its place. Such forms (including film-making) are also better-suited to capturing the experience of fieldwork, which the book does a great deal to efface. Finally Orietta da Rold, from the Faculty of English, questioned the dominance of the book in academia. Digital projects that she had been involved in had been obliged, absurdly, to dress themselves up as books, with introductions and prefaces and conclusions. And collections of articles that might better be published as individual interventions were obliged to repackage themselves as books. The oppressive desire for the ‘big thing’ obscures the important work that is being done in a plethora of forms.

 

In discussion it was suggested that the book form was a valuable identifier, allowing unusual objects like CD-ROMs or databases to be recognized and catalogued and found (the book, in this view, provides the metadata or the paratextual information that gives an artefact a place in the world). There was perhaps a division between those who saw the book as giving ideas a compelling physical presence and those who were worried about the versions of authority at stake in the monograph. The monograph model perhaps discourages people from talking back; this will inevitably come under pressure in a more ‘oral’ digital economy.

 

Our final ‘view’ of the day was ‘The View from Plurabelle Books’, offered by Michael Cahn but read in his absence by Gemma Savage. Plurabelle is a second-hand academic bookseller based in Cambridge; it was founded in 1996. Cahn’s talk focused on a different kind of ‘future’ of the academic book—the future in which the book ages and its owner dies. The books that may have marked out a mental universe need to be treated with appropriate respect and offered the chance of a new lease of life. Sometimes they carry with them a rich sense of their past histories.

 

A concluding discussion drew out several themes from the day:

 

(1) A particular concern had been where the impetus for change would and should come from—from individual academics, from funding bodies, or from government. The conservatism and two-sizes-fit-almost-all nature of the REF act as a brake on innovation and experiment, although the rising significance of ‘impact’ might allow these to re-enter by the back door. The fact that North America has remained impervious to many of the pressures that are affecting British academics was noted with interest.

 

(2) The pros and cons of peer review were a subject of discussion—was it the key to scholarly integrity or a highly unreliable form of gatekeeping that would naturally wither in an online environment?

 

(3) Questions of value were raised—what would determine academic value in an Open Access world? The day’s discussions had veered between notions of value/prestige that were based on numbers of readers and those that were not. Where is the appropriate balance?

 

(4) A broad historical and technological question: are we entering a phase of perpetual change or do we expect that the digital domain will eventually slow down, developing protocols that seem as secure as those that we used to have for print. (And would that be a good or a bad thing?) Just as paper had to be engineered over centuries in order to become a reliable communications medium (or the basis for numerous media), so too the digital domain may take a long time to find any kind of settled form. It was also pointed out that the academic monograph as we know it today was a comparatively short-lived, post-World War II phenomenon.

 

(5) As befits a conference held under the aegis of the Centre for Material Texts, the physical form of the book was a matter of concern. Can lengthy digital books be made a pleasure to read? Can the book online ever substitute for the ‘theatres of memory’ that we have built in print? Is the very restrictiveness of print a source of strength?

 

(6) In the meantime, the one thing that all of the participants could agree on was that we will need to learn to live with (sometimes extreme) diversity.

 

With many thanks to our sponsors, Cambridge University Press, the Academic Book of the Future Project, and the Centre for Material Texts. The lead organizer of the day was Jason Scott-Warren (jes1003@cam.ac.uk); he was very grateful for the copious assistance of Sam Rayner, Rebecca Lyons, and Richard Fisher; for the help of the staff at the Pitt Building, where the colloquium took place; and for the contributions of all of our speakers.

 

#AcBookWeek: What will the Academic Book of the Future look like? Bristol responds…!

Posted on by in academia, Academic Book Week, libraries, publishing and tagged , , , , , .

This guest post is written by Dr Leah Tether (University of Bristol), who reflects on the debate that took place at Bristol as part of #AcBookWeek.

On Tuesday 10th November 2015, as part of Academic Book Week, we at the University of Bristol were delighted to host a panel discussion with an audience Q&A. The event aimed to offer some answers to one of the central lines of enquiry of The Academic Book of the Future Project – what format our future academic books might take. Our three-strong speaker panel consisted of an academic, a librarian and a publisher, all of whom – we knew – would bring something different to the debate. The offering of this great mix of views led to a fantastic turn-out (with people even sitting on the floor!); audience members came from a wide range of backgrounds: in addition to reflecting the make-up of the panel with publishers, academics and librarians, there were undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as interested members of the public. All of these, of course, are key stakeholders in the wider debate – all will be affected by developments to the academic book – so their vested interests made for an impassioned and rich discussion.

Dr Leah Tether introduces the event

Dr Leah Tether introduces the event

Our first speaker, Professor Helen Fulton (Chair in Medieval Literature, University of Bristol) showed how she had already embraced digital outputs in previous research projects. She used the example of the Mapping Medieval Chester project as a case study for how digital publications can both facilitate collaborative research and pave the way for different kinds of relationships between publishers and universities. She viewed project websites as often representing non-linear equivalents to monographs in terms of their scope and content. She also argued that these can be relied on for quality where support for the project in question has been provided by a recognised body (such as, but not limited to, the AHRC), due to the rigorous peer-review to which such projects have been subjected.

The second speaker, Damien McManus, spoke from his perspective as the Subject Librarian at the University of Bristol for Classics and Ancient History, English, French, German, Linguistics and Russian Studies. Damien focused on the breaking down of content into smaller units (chapters or sections) that is being encouraged by digital and emphasised the potential benefits of accessibility, affordability and sustainability. In practice, though, he recognised that many issues still exist in terms of the library provision of digital academic resources. He cited single-use licences, complicated and divergent user instructions for different platforms, cost implications and the last-minute withdrawal of resources by publishers as key amongst the problems. Damien also wanted to make clear that many resources are simply not available in digital form as yet, so from his perspective – even where issues with digital are ironed out – resourcing will remain mixed for some considerable time to come.

The third and final speaker was Katharine Reeve, formerly the Editorial Director and Senior Commissioning Editor for History and Visual Arts at Oxford University Press. As part of The Academic Book of the Future Project, Katharine has been researching the changing role of the editor in academic book publishing, and she revealed to the audience some of the results of that research. She highlighted that, despite the obvious importance of the close interaction of editor with author in producing the best possible product, editors are increasingly being pulled away from the hands-on side of their role, thus becoming a less visible part of the process. This, she suggested, risked an undervaluing of the editor in the quality control side of publishing, and that she could see this already happening with the opportunities of digital publishing offerings authors the choice to circumvent traditional publication in favour of dissemination via the web. She argued that we need to reinvigorate the role of the editor in digital publication, and understand that – no matter what the format – the academic book of the future still needs to be rigorously processed before it is made available to the reading public.

These richly diverse views provoked a fantastic response from our audience, which took the debate in many important directions. Key amongst these were the opportunities for greater interaction between libraries and publishers, the perceived values (by the Research Excellence Framework and funding bodies, for example) of different kinds of publications (collected volumes vs. monograph); whether innovative digital formats would ever be valued as highly as traditional formats; the funding models surrounding open access and how that would impact different kinds of institutions; the reading practices of young scholars (skimming vs. deep reading); how publishers and higher education institutions could work together more closely to develop products that more closely fulfil the needs of book consumers.

In my role as chair, I was delighted to see such an engaged response to the subject at hand – people really cared about the formats our academic books might take and, perhaps surprisingly, most believed that digital – on the whole – offered more opportunities than hindrances, especially when used as a supplement to traditional publication. Indeed, Katharine Reeve’s suggestion that the best academic book of the future might actually be one offering multi-platform functionality (i.e. a traditional monograph at the heart of the project, but with digital add-ons such as video interviews, apps and social media marketing) was perhaps the most warmly received suggestion of the night. Where our varied Bristol audience was in total agreement, though, was in emphasising that the process of producing academic outputs needs to remain as rigorous as it ever has been – digital should not be allowed to dilute the integrity of academic research, but rather be used as a tool for assisting with its wider dissemination and engagement – a supplement as opposed to a replacement.

Dr Leah Tether is the Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities at the University of Bristol.

 

#AcBookWeek: The Manchester Great Debate

Posted on by in Academic Book Week, academic books, libraries, Open Access, publishing and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , .

On Wednesday 11th November, the John Rylands Library, Manchester, played host to the Manchester Great Debate, a panel discussion dedicated to addressing the future of the academic monograph. The event was one of over sixty organised during Academic Book Week to celebrate the diversity, innovation, and influence of the academic monograph. While opinions remained varied, with panel representatives from both sides of the fence, the discussion always seemed to return to a few key thematic strands. How are people using books? How are people encountering books? And what future lies ahead for the academic book? Melek Karatas, Lydia Leech, and Paul Clarke (University of Manchester) report here on the event.

The reading room of the John Rylands Library

The reading room of the John Rylands Library

It was in the stunning Christie Room of the Rylands Library that Dr. Guyda Armstrong, Lead Academic for Digital Humanities at the University of Manchester, welcomed the audience of publishers, academics, librarians, early career researchers, and students with a shared concern for the future of how the humanities might be produced, read, and preserved over the coming years. Five panellists were invited to present their case to the group before the floor was opened and the debate got into full swing.

The session was chaired by Professor Marilyn Deegan, Co-Investigator of The Academic Book of the Future project. She began by outlining the project’s main objectives and its future activities, details of which can be found at www.academicbookfuture.org. Before commencing with the presentations she asked the audience to quite simply reflect on what they conceived of when trying to define the book. It was this question, with its rather complex and capacious ramifications, that was the fundamental core of the Manchester Great Debate.

The first of the panellists to present was Frances Pinter, CEO of Manchester University Press. Since print runs of academic books have decreased in volume and their prices increased beyond inflation, she firmly believes that the future of the academic monograph will be governed by the principles of Open Access (OA). She contends that although the journey to OA will be difficult, drawing on the Crossick report to highlight such obstacles as the lack of a skilled workforce and the high cost of publication, it is impossible to deny the potential of the digital age to advance knowledge and maximise discovery. She identified Knowledge Unlatched, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to assisting libraries to co-ordinate the purchase of monographs, as a pioneer in overcoming some of these obstacles. Under the scheme, the basic cost of publication is shared, and the works are made readily available as a PDF with an OA license via OAPEN. An initial pilot project saw the publication of twenty-eight new books at the cost of just $1,120 per library. The digital copies of these books were also downloaded in a staggering 167 countries worldwide, a true testament to the benefits of the OA monograph.

Emma Brennan, Editorial Director and Commissioning Editor at Manchester University Press, followed with a convincing argument against the financial restraints of contemporary academic book publishing. The system, she claims, is fundamentally broken, favouring short-form sciences over the humanities. A key to this problem lies in the steep rises in purchase prices over recent years, with the result that a monograph, which once sold for around £50 in a run of five hundred copies, is now sold for upwards of £70 and oftentimes on a print-on-demand basis. However, more crucial still is the disparity between authorial costs and corporate profits. After all, typical profit margins for article processing charges (APCs) reached an astonishing 37% in 2014, undeniably privileging shareholders over authors. Under this current system, university presses are only ever able to operate on a not-for-profit basis whereby surplus funds must necessarily be reinvested to cover the costs of future APCs. Such a fragile structure can only continue in the short-term and so the need for a drastic upheaval is undeniable.

Next to present their case was Sandra Bracegirdle, Head of Collection Management at the University of Manchester Library. Through a variety of diagrams she was able to highlight a number of curious trends in the reading habits of library users. A particularly interesting point of discussion was the usability of both electronic and print resources amongst student readers. While those who tended to prefer the former valued the mobility of text and the equality of access, readers of the latter tended to prefer the readability of the physical text. Interestingly, 50% of the students questioned said that they were more likely to read a book if it were available digitally, suggesting that “access trumps readability”. The decreased popularity of physical books is reflected further still by the fact that 27% the books held within the library have not been borrowed for some ten years. She continued to suggest that the increased popularity of electronic formats, on the other hand, might be the result of a change in the way people use and encounter information, arguing that different book forms engender different cognitive styles. While she did not appear to have a strong predisposition one way or the other, she did point out the “emotional presence” of a physical book by concluding with a note from Cicero: “a room without books is like a body without a soul”.

She was followed by Dr. Francesca Billiani, Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Arts and Languages (CIDRAL) at the University of Manchester. She fundamentally contends that the materialization of knowledge has in recent years changed beyond recognition and as such so the academic monograph must also adapt. After all, the book is no longer a stand-alone piece of writing for it is firmly rooted within a digital “galaxy of artefacts” comprising blog posts, photos, and videos. Many readers no longer rely exclusively on the academic book itself in their reading of a subject, nor will they necessarily read the work in its entirety choosing instead to read what they consider to be the most relevant fragments. Academics need to embrace these changes in their future writing by composing their monographs in a way that accommodates the new methods of knowledge dissemination. Yet, at the same time, she remained mindful of the fact that the monograph of the future must also retain its academic rigour and avoid falling into the trap of eclecticism.

The last of the speakers to present was Dr. George Walkden, Lecturer in English Linguistics at the University of Manchester. A self-proclaimed Open Access activist, he claims that academic books should not only be free in terms of cost but also in terms of what readers can do with them. He lamented those individuals who, in such a climate of exhaustive copyright limitations, are all too readily branded as pirates for attempting to disseminate knowledge publicly. Although he remains sceptical of what these individuals share with the “cannon-firing, hook-toting, parrot-bearing sailors of the seven seas”, he believes that such labelling elucidates the many issues that have constrained both historic and modern publication practices. In the first instance, publishers should value the transmission of knowledge over their own profitable gain. But, perhaps more crucially, it must be acknowledged that the copyright of a work should remain with its author. He fundamentally contends that academics predominantly write to increase societal wealth and readership, a mission that can only ever really be achieved through the whole-hearted acceptance of Open Access.

Once all of the panellists had concluded their presentations, the floor was opened to the audience and a stimulating debate ensued. One of the most contested issues to arise from the discussion was the ownership of copyright. Many institutions actually hold the copyright of works produced by academics whose research they fund, although they do not always choose to exert this right. Walkden questioned to what extent this practice effectively safeguards the interests of academics, particularly since it is oftentimes too costly for them to even justify challenging this. He argued that academics should be granted the power to make decisions concerning their own intellectual property, particularly regarding the OA nature of their work.

Copyright issues were complicated further by a discussion of Art History monographs, particularly with regards to third party content. The case of Art History is particularly curious since, as Brennan highlighted, print runs have continued to remain reasonably high. After all, many art historians tend to opt for physical books over their digital counterparts since problems can often arise with their visual reproductions if, for instance, the screen is not calibrated to the original settings used in its creation. The discussion then turned to the resurgence of a material culture, whereby consumers are returning to physical artefacts. The increased popularity of vinyl records in today’s digital music society was used to illustrate this point. It was nevertheless argued that such a comparison was counterproductive since consumers ultimately have the freedom to decide the medium through which they access music but do not always have this choice with regards to books. Perhaps the academic book of the future will permit such freedom.

A member of the audience then identified the notable absence of the student in such a discussion. Academics, both on the panel and in the audience, expressed concerns that students were able to access information too easily by simply using the key word search function to find answers. Many felt that the somewhat lengthy process of physically searching out answers was more valuable to developing their research skills. Students within the audience said that while they do like the speed with which they are able to process information, they also value the experience of going to bookshelves, possibly finding other items they had not initially set out to obtain. An interesting discussion followed on whether technology might ever be able to replicate the experience of a physical library, and to what extent learning can be productive within a digital environment.

While the future of the academic book remains unclear, certain issues materialise as central topics of debate. Concerns for copyright, visual reproductions, and third party content, for instance, must necessarily form a basis of this future discussion. But more so than this, authors must begin to write within the context of a rapidly emergent digital world by ensuring that their academic outputs engage precisely with new technological formats and platforms. The opening of the book has only just begun, and perhaps it is only through investment and interdisciplinary collaboration that the academic monograph will have a future.

 

 

Melek Karatas, Lydia Leech, and Paul Clarke are postgraduate students in medieval and early modern languages at the University of Manchester, with research interests in manuscript and print cultures of the literary book.

Three hundred years of piracy: why academic books should be free

Posted on by in academic books, digital, Open Access, Publishers, publishing and tagged , , , , .

This is a repost from George Walkden’s personal blog about Open Access in the context of academic linguistics. The original post can be found here.

I think academic books should be free.

It’s not a radically new proposal, but I’d like to clarify what I mean by “free”. First, there’s the financial sense: books should be free in that there should be no cost to either the author or the reader. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, books should be free in terms of what the reader can do with them: copying, sharing, creating derivative works, and more.

I’m not going to go down the murky road of what exactly a modern academic book actually is. I’m just going to take it for granted that there is such a thing, and that it will continue to have a niche in the scholarly ecosystem of the future, even if it doesn’t have the pre-eminent role it has at present in some disciplines, or even the same form and structure. (For instance, I’d be pretty keen to see an academic monograph written in Choose Your Own Adventure style.)

Another thing I’ll be assuming is that technology does change things, even if we’re rather it didn’t. If you’re reluctant to accept that, I’d like to point you to what happened with yellow pages. Or take a look at the University of Manchester’s premier catering space, Christie’s Bistro. Formerly a science library, this imposing chamber retains its bookshelves, which are all packed full of books that have no conceivable use to man or beast: multi-volume indexes of mid-20th-century scientific periodicals, for instance. In this day and age, print is still very much alive, but at the same time the effects of technological change aren’t hard to spot.

With those assumptions in place, then, let’s move on to thinking about the academic book of the future. To do that I’m going to start with the academic book of the past, so let’s rewind time by three centuries. In 1710, the world’s first copyright law, the UK’sStatute of Anne, was passed. This law was a direct consequence of the introduction and spread of the printing press, and the businesses that had sprung up around it. Publishers such as the rapacious Andrew Millar had taken to seizing on texts that, even now, could hardly be argued to be anything other than public-domain: for instance,Livy’s History of Rome. (Titus Livius died in AD 17.) What’s more, they then claimed an exclusive right to publish such texts – a right that extended into perpetuity. This perpetual version of copyright was based on the philosopher John Locke’s theory of property as a natural right. Locke himself was fiercely opposed to this interpretation of his work, but that didn’t dissuade the publishers, who saw the opportunity to make a quick buck (as well as a slow one).

Fortunately, the idea of perpetual copyright was defeated in the courts in 1774, in the landmark Donaldson v. Becket case. It’s reared its ugly head since, of course, for instance when the US was preparing its 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act: it was mentioned that the musician Sonny Bono believed that copyright should last forever(see also this execrable New York Times op-ed). What’s interesting is that this proposal was challenged at the time, by Edinburgh-based publisher Alexander Donaldson – and, for his efforts to make knowledge more widely available, Donaldson was labelled a “pirate”. The term has survived, and is now used – for instance – to describe those scientists who try to access paywalled research articles using the hashtag #ICanHazPDF, and those scientists who help them. What these people have in common with the cannon-firing, hook-toting, parrot-bearing sailors of the seven seas is not particularly clear, but it’s clearly high time that the term was reclaimed.

If you’re interested in the 18th century and its copyright trials and tribulations, I’d encourage you to take a look at Yamada Shōji’s excellent 2012 book “Pirate” Publishing: the Battle over Perpetual Copyright in eighteenth-century Britain, which, appropriately, is available online under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. And lest you think that this is a Whiggish interpretation of history, let me point out that contemporaries saw things in exactly the same way. The political economist Adam Smith, in his seminal work The Wealth of Nations, pointed out that, before the invention of printing, the goal of an academic writer was simply “communicating to other people the curious and useful knowledge which he had acquired himself“. Printing changed things.

Let’s come back to the present. In the present, academic authors make almost nothing from their work: royalties from monographs are a pittance. Meanwhile, it’s an economic truism that each electronic copy made of a work – at a cost of essentially nothing – increases total societal wealth. (This is one of the reasons that intellectual property is not real property.) What academic authors want is readership and recognition: they aren’t after the money, and don’t, for the most part, care about sales. The bizarre part is that they’re punished for trying to increase wealth and readership by the very organizations that supposedly exist to help them increase wealth and readership. Elsevier, for instance, filed a complaint earlier this year against the knowledge sharing site Sci-Hub.org, demanding compensation. It beggars belief that they have the audacity to do this, especially given their insane 37% profit margin in 2014.

So we can see that publishers, when profit-motivated, have interests that run counter to those of academics themselves. And, when we look at the actions of eighteenth-century publishers such as Millar, we can see that this is nothing new. Where does this leave us for the future? Here’s a brief sketch:

  • Publishers should be mission-oriented, and that mission should be the transmission of knowledge.
  • Funding should come neither from authors nor from readers. There are a great many business models compatible with this.
  • Copyright should remain with the author: it’s the only way of preventing exploitation. In practice, this means a CC-BY license, or something like it. Certain humanities academics claim that CC-BY licenses allow plagiarism. This is nonsense.

How far are we down this road? Not far enough; but if you’re a linguist, take a look atLanguage Science Press, if you haven’t already.

In conclusion, then, for-profit publishers should be afraid. If they can’t do their job, then academics will. Libraries will. Mission-oriented publishers will. Pirates will.

It’s sometimes said that “information wants to be free”. This is false: information doesn’t have agency. But if we want information to be free, and take steps in that direction… well, it’s a start.

Note: this post is a written-up version of a talk I gave on 11th Nov 2015 at the John Rylands Library, as part of a debate on “Opening the Book: the Future of the Academic Monograph”. Thanks to the audience, organizers and other panel members for their feedback.

20 Academic Books that Changed the World: a perspective on the list

Posted on by in academic books, reading and tagged , .

20 Academic Books that Changed the World: a perspective on the list

The list of 20 Academic Books that Changed the World is now closed but had been open to public vote to choose the most influential academic book of all time. The list of 20 books, spanning a wide range of subjects, including science, philosophy, religion, feminism and literature, was generated and voted for by leading academic booksellers, librarians and publishers. Its announcement has sparked debate and prompted questions around what an academic book is. This guest post has been submitted by a member of the public, Emily Tee, and offers one reaction to the list. This post was written before the announcement of the winner. 

Public voting is now closed and the winner has been announced! On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin gained the most votes.

Originally a list of more than 200 titles had been narrowed down to just 20:

  1. A Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking
  2. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman – Mary Wollstonecraft
  3. Critique of Pure Reason – Immanuel Kant
  4. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
  5. On the Origins of Species – Charles Darwin
  6. Orientalism – Edward Said
  7. Silent Spring – Rachel Carson
  8. The Communist Manifesto – Marx & Engels
  9. The Complete Works – William Shakespeare
  10. The Female Eunuch – Germaine Greer
  11. The Making of the English Working Class – E P Thompson
  12. The Meaning of Relativity – Albert Einstein
  13. The Naked Ape – Desmond Morris
  14. The Prince – Niccolo Machiavelli
  15. The Republic – Plato
  16. The Rights of Man – Thomas Paine
  17. The Second Sex – Simone de Beauvoir
  18. The Uses of Literacy – Richard Hoggart
  19. The Wealth of Nations – Adam Smith
  20. Ways of Seeing – John Berger

Whilst I am eager to find out the winner, I am slightly reserved about the decision-making process behind voting. For me, I have only entirely read one of the texts (George Orwell – Nineteen Eighty-Four), and extracts from around five or six others. I’m immediately on the back foot. How many others will be in a similar situation to me? Will this add a certain bias to the voting? There will be very few individuals who have read all 20 texts, and therefore few who can submit a subjective vote.

The subject areas of the nominations are so varied that people are likely to vote for books within the subject that they are interested in or their specialist area. For me, that would be The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Shakespeare has shaped and influenced the arts and literature world in a way that no other within the subject area has, however, has he been as influential on the world as Einstein or Darwin? I would argue that he probably hasn’t.

Significantly, there are only four women on the list. Three of those are writing about feminism, which seems rather niche compared to the male-authored books on the list. Although feminism is important, some variety would have been welcomed.

The list is also dominated by English speakers. Could it be culturally biased, or is this bound to happen in a world where the English language is dominant?

However, I’ll base my shortlist on what I know:

  • Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief History of Time’ has sold more than 20 million copies and has simplified science and physics so that it can be understood by non-academic readers;
  • Mary Wollstonecraft was the first woman to voice her opinion on a woman’s place in society and their equality to men, ultimately changing the way women are perceived to this day;
  • Albert Einstein gave us the world’s most famous equation and is now synonymous with the word ‘genius’;
  • Charles Darwin wrote the foundation of evolutionary biology
  • Plato explained to us why we need justice in ‘The Republic’.

All of these touch on pivotal moments in the world’s history and it’s academic progress, ranging from 380BC to the present day. I am now a few steps closer to determining which book I’m going to vote for, but I’ll have to wait until Academic Book Week in November to find out the winner.

Who will you vote for?

Emily Tee, 27, is a lifelong reader, writer and reviewer of books. Currently working for a large international organisation in the professional area of business proposal writing. Whilst juggling life with two young children, she reads and recites stories on a daily basis and shares her thoughts on them via her personal blog, which also includes her original poetry and short stories. This year she has started to study towards a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing.

 

Check out Emily’s blog here: http://mrsemilytee.blogspot.co.uk/

#AcBookWeek Events!

Posted on by in academic books, conference, Digital Humanities, Open Access, reading and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Academic Book Week (9-16 Nov) is next week! With a constellation of events being showcased all around the UK from Sussex to Edinburgh, this week highlights the wonderful work done by booksellers, libraries, academics, and publishers, and discusses the academic book across a spectrum of perspectives. Here we have collected events by location so scroll through to see what is happening near you!

We have also just announced some competitions and offers that will be happening during the week! Including but not limited to winning an #AcBookWeek tote bag, winning a special leather-bound edition of “The Complete Works of Shakespeare”, and 50% of all academic books and classics at Southcart Books. Find out about them more on this page and keep checking because more are being added all the time!

Cambridge

Cambridge will be hosting an exhibit for the entire week at the University Library, presenting a selection of books showing examples of the way readers have interacted with their textbooks from the fifteenth to twentieth centuries. And on the 9th November Dr Rosalind Grooms and Kevin Taylor explore how Cambridge has shaped the world of academic publishing, starting way back in 1534.

Oxford

There are four events taking place in Oxford throughout the week. On the 9th November Frank Furedi, Professor of Sociology at University of Kent, discusses his new book “The Power of Reading”. Furedi has constructed an eclectic and entirely original history of reading, and will deliver a similarly exciting discussion on the historical relevance of the reader. Peter Lang Oxford are showcasing a book exhibit presenting the past and present of the academic book from the 9th-16th November, this event requires no registration so just drop in anytime to have a look! On the 11th November Peter Lang again presents J. Khalfa and I. Chol who have recently published “Spaces of the Book”, exploring the life of books ‘beyond the page’. This launch will be followed by a drinks reception and discussion of the aforementioned week-long exhibit. The Oxford events culminate on the 12th November with a panel discussion on The Future of the Academic Monograph; four panelists and two respondents will address issues from their personal perspectives including academic librarianship, academic publishing, and academic bookselling.

Edinburgh

Edinburgh plays host to a series of debates around digital text during the week. The first is on the 9th November and the debate will cover online text and learning, the second on the 10th covers digital text and publishing, the third on the 11th covers open access textbooks, and the fourth on the 12th covers online learning. With speakers from eclectic backgrounds and unique perspectives these offer informative and insightful discussions. The week in Edinburgh finishes up on the 13th with a debate on the subject Is the Book Dead? This promises to be an interesting event with speakers from the Bookseller’s Association and Scottish Publishing covering issues about the future of books and reading.

Liverpool

Liverpool launches their Academic Book Week events with a talk at the University of Liverpool with Simon Tanner, from King’s College London, and member of the project team, as keynote speaker, and a subsequent overview of the week’s events. Simon will speak on ‘The Academic Book of the Future and Communities of Practice’ with Charles Forsdick and Claire Taylor responding from the perspectives of Translating Cultures and Digital Transformations, respectively. On the 10th November Claire Hooper of Liverpool University Press and Charlie Rapple from Kudos present ideas on how to promote your academic book via Kudos and social media, a fitting topic when thinking specifically about the future of the academic book. On the 11th Gina D’Oca of Palgrave MacMillan will speak about open access monographs and a representative from Liverpool University Press will give their perspective. The last event in Liverpool takes place on the 12th and will focus on the academic book as a free available source for students. Academics, librarians, and university presses should work together to create free open access sources for students, but how? Find out here!

Glasgow

John Smith’s Glasgow hosts all of the events taking place in the city throughout the week. The first night on the 9th the bookstore will stay open late and from 5:30-7:30pm all customers will receive special one-night-only discounts on items not already discounted! There will also be refreshments so there’s no excuse not to come and celebrate the longstanding partnership between John Smith’s and the University of Glasgow. On the 10th the bookstore hosts the launch of Iain Macwhirter’s new book, “Tsuanmi: Scotland’s Democratic Revolution”. On the 11th – purposefully coinciding with Armistice Day – John Smith’s caters an evening of discussion and readings exploring Edwin Morgan’s unique contribution to Scotland’s poetry in response to war. With readings and contributions from friends and trustees of Edwin Morgan this evening will be a personal and creative contribution to the week. John Smith’s unique events don’t stop there! On the 12th Louise Welsh, Professor of Creative Writing at Glasgow University, discusses her recent novels and the editing of a new anthology of supernatural stories – a perfectly atmospheric evening for the cold autumn evenings. John Smith’s last event takes place on the 13th, author and astronomer (what a combination!) Dr. Pippa Goldschmidt discusses co-editing a new collection “I Am Because You Are”. She will be joined by contributor Neil Williamson as they talk science and fiction. 

London

London has a large amount of events happening starting with a debate focusing on how the evolving technologies of the book have changed the way we read at The School of Advanced Study. The 10th sees two other events: Blackwell’s at UCL hosts the book launch of Shirley Simon’s “Narratives of Doctoral Studies in Science Education” and Rowman & Littlefield International offer a panel event on interdisciplinary publishing and research. The question being asked is how do academics and publishers reach a diverse, multidisciplinary audience and the panel will be followed by a Q&A session. The 11th plays host to two events: Palgrave MacMillan’s premiere academic series in the history of the book is being launched and elsewhere Charlotte Frost outlines the future of the art history book. She asks ‘what should the art history book of the future look like and what should it do differently for the discipline to evolve?’ Since 2015 marks the 400th anniversary of Richard Baxter’s birth, a symposium to honour his life and assess his significance takes place on the 13th, as well as a panel discussion at the Wellcome Collection specifically targeting questions related to STM publishing and issues facing humanities research. The 12th November also sees The Independent Publishers Guild Autumn Conference with representatives from Academic Book Week, Dr Samantha Rayner, Richard Fisher, Eben Muse and Peter Lake, speaking on a panel.

Hertfordshire & Cardiff

We have one event happening in Hertfordshire in conjunction with the University of Hertfordshire Press and Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies! This is for anyone considering getting their research published as it addresses local history and publishing combined in an effort to help and advise about writing book proposals and approaching publishers. Similarly, in Cardiff there is an event on the 11th November utilising a forum to discuss innovative Open Access academic publishing ventures.

Manchester & Bristol

In Manchester on the 11th there will be a panel discussion presented by Digital Humanities Manchester and the University of Manchester Library as they get to the root of the issues presented in academic publishing. Multiple perspectives will make this a fascinating event as panelists attempt to answer questions such as what is the future of the academic long-form publication in the evolving publishing landscape? And is there still a future for the physical book? And in Bristol on the 10th November a panel tackles the questions facing the academic book from the perspective of the panel and the audience.

Sussex & Sheffield

In Sussex on the 11th there is a similar panel discussion; three speakers from different backgrounds grapple with the transformation of the academic book and what that will mean for the future. On the 11th in Sheffield an important and fascinating question is asked: Should we trust Wikipedia? Librarians and scholars from a range of backgrounds discuss the validity of information on there and address questions of integrity surrounding digital publishing. Sheffield finishes off Academic Book Week on the 13th with an open afternoon in the University of Sheffield Library’s Special Collections, introducing visitors to treasures from their collection.

Dundee & Stirling

Dundee and Stirling partake in the excitement of the week also! On the 11th November Dundee presents the Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon as part of the NEoN Digital Arts Festival and on the 13th a mini-symposium focused on the intersection of tradition and craft with the digital transformation of art and design. In Stirling on the 12th John Watson, Commissioning Editor for Law, Scottish Studies & Scottish History at Edinburgh University Press will be speaking to students of the Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication about academic publishing and his role as a commissioning editor.

Leicester & Nottingham

When we mentioned that events were happening all over the country we really mean it! If you are near the Midlands, DeMontford University is bringing together PhD students to think about the future of the English PhD and the future training of English academics. And last but not least on the 12th in Nottingham Sprinting to the Open FuTure takes place – a panel discussion event bringing together those who interact with academic books to explore questions about how students and staff publish, and the challenges they face.

With so much happening, it will be hard to choose  – we know we are already having trouble deciding between events. Come to as many as you can, and help support the future of the academic book!

Audio-Visual Resources and Academic Books of the Future

Posted on by in digital, libraries and tagged , , , .

Steven Dryden is a Sound & Vision, Reference & Technical Specialist at The British Library. The British Library is currently undertaking a major campaign called Save Our Sounds which offers the opportunity to question the connection between text, sound, and moving image in media-rich content research. In this post he invites researchers to take part in a survey on how they use audio-visual resources in their work.

ABFpictureStevenDryden

Steven Dryden

In early 2015 I was fortunate enough to catch Rebecca Lyons giving a presentation on The Academic Book of the Future Project. Aside from the fascinating debates about what constitutes ‘academic’, what constitutes a ‘book’, and what an ‘academic book’ might be in the current research landscape – I was struck by the potential applications of the project to the collection I am vested in at The British Library: sound.

The British Library sound archive is an extraordinary collection of over 6.5 million recordings dating back to the birth of recorded sound in the early 19th century. If you were to listen to our entire collection back to back, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no holidays or breaks, it would take you over 140 years – plus the collection is growing daily! It is a unique research resource, comparable only to the Library of Congress sound collections in the USA. Find out more about our collection here

Sound recordings are the closest thing to time travel that we have as a research tool. Take for instance this audio clip of JRR Tolkien visiting a tobacco shop. We are instantly transported to 1929 when the recording was made, and it is easy to feel that you are being addressed directly. The time that has passed between then and now seems to vanish.

Listen to a conversation between Prof. A Lloyd James and J.R.R. Tolkien, recorded in July 1929: Early spoken word recordings – English Conversation: At the Tobacconist’s

The Save Our Sounds project

Many of the British Library’s recordings are under threat of disappearing as technologies change and some formats begin to naturally decay, and in response to this challenge the Library has launched a major campaign to digitise our historic sound collections.

As well as enabling us to future-proof our collections, the Save Our Sounds campaign is a unique opportunity for us to take stock of our role as audio heritage archivists, cataloguers, librarians, and collectors. Part of this includes considering access and the ways in which our collections are used by researchers. It is here, at the crossroads of research & engagement, that linking up with The Academic Book of the Future Project becomes very exciting.

At the moment, if an ‘academic text’ includes audio or visual resources, these tend to be included as DVDs, CDs, and perhaps even CD-ROMs (yes, they are still floating around out there!). As the technological landscape of the world changes, the ability to access and play CDs, DVDs and most definitely CD-ROMs will become increasingly limited. From the initial survey work that has been done for the Save Our Sound project, the main preservation concern is not that the recordings themselves are at risk of disappearing, but the obsolescence of the playback equipment.

So, how will audio-visual resources be included in academic books of the future?

In current and emerging contexts in which content is increasingly digitised and media-rich, how will the ability to incorporate audio-visual research directly into research outputs change the way in which these outputs are created, accessed, and referenced?

We hope that working with The Academic Book of the Future Project to address some of these questions will offer important insights into how researchers are using sound and moving image resources, and highlight common issues and concerns across disciplines.

If you are or have used sound and/or audio-visual materials for research please complete our short survey. (This survey will remain open until Easter). 

In due course a symposium/workshop will be arranged to discuss the findings of the survey. We are keen to encourage dialogue between publishing houses, app developers, and researchers. We hope the symposium/workshop will address and encourage ways of working together to fully explore the potential of audio-visual components in the academic book of the future.

Find out more about Save our Sounds at Save our Sounds, follow @BLSoundHeritage for live updates from our digitisation studio, @SoundArchive for tweets from the sound team, and use #SaveOurSounds to join the conversation on Twitter.

Open Access: A Personal Take

Posted on by in Uncategorized.

In the second of our blogs this week on OA, following on from Open Access Week last week, Alastair Horne gives his personal reflection on the challenges ahead…

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I have a few reservations about Open Access.

In some respects, that’s hardly surprising. After all, I work for a big publisher – not, admittedly, an Elsevier, but still one of the world’s largest university presses, one of those not-for-profit organisations whose deep differences from the likes of Elsevier are too commonly elided in the recurrent syllogism that ‘Elsevier is a publisher; Elsevier is a profiteer; publishers are profiteers.’

On the other hand, it’s also very surprising indeed. I’m an instinctive socialist who broadly supports concepts like Labour’s long-abandoned Clause Four, who still regards ‘the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange’ as a laudable aspiration, and who would happily vote to renationalise the railways, for starters. On that basis, why wouldn’t I support a system that seeks to liberate scholarly research from private enterprise and make it freely available to those who need it?

A third factor in this complicated relationship with open access is that I’m also a humanities researcher manqué; an English graduate with an unfinished PhD thesis (which celebrated its twentieth anniversary last year; there wasn’t a party). As it happens, the debate on open access that I attended last Friday – the prompt for all this self-indulgent soul-searching – took place at Cambridge’s Divinity School, where I sat the last of my undergraduate exams in English twenty years ago, and made such a singularly bad fist of writing essays on twentieth century poetry that I imperilled my funding for that PhD.

But enough about me – for the moment, at least – and let’s focus on the debate itself, held under the auspices both of the global Open Access week and Cambridge’s own Festival of Ideas, an annual series of events ‘celebrating the arts, humanities, and social sciences’. Under the chairmanship of Stephen Curry, described as ‘the world’s most amiable open access advocate’, four academics debated whether ‘society can afford open access’. Representing the humanities (in practice, if not necessarily in theory) were Dr Daniel Allington, researcher in Digital Cultures at the University of the West of England, and Professor Peter Mandler, President of the Royal Historical Society; representing the sciences (again, in practice rather than in theory), were Dr Theo Bloom, Executive Editor at the BMJ, and Dr Danny Kingsley, Head of Scholarly Communications for Cambridge University.

Given the festival’s focus, it was perhaps unsurprising that the debate tended more effectively to question whether the humanities and social sciences, rather than society itself, can afford open access. Mandler’s key point – and one that I found largely persuasive – was that since the principles of open access weren’t designed for humanities research, the humanities should therefore not be bound by them. Open access was developed first to solve problems encountered by creative artists, and then by scientists; not those experienced by humanities researchers. The Finch report that informed subsequent UK government policies on open access, he told us, was drawn up by a committee that lacked any representation from the humanities. Any subsequent accommodations that policy-makers had ultimately made towards the humanities had been hard won through vigorous intervention.

One such accommodation could be found in politicians’ reluctant acceptance of Green open access as a legitimate alternative to Gold. Much humanities research is unfunded – Allington insisted that almost all of his own had been – and even the funded research was supported by budgets that were tiny compared to those supporting scientists. When Bloom pointed out that research conducted by an academic whose salary was paid by their university was still publicly-funded, even though it was not directly supported by a funding body, Allington responded that many academics in the humanities are either part-time or paid only for teaching, and as a result, have neither the cash nor the moral imperative to pay the article processing charges required to make their work available through Gold open access. Curry’s suggestion that making humanities research open access might somehow attract more funding seemed, to my mind, somewhat optimistic.

Allington and Mandler also raised concerns about the creative commons licenses required by many funding bodies in order for researchers to comply with their open access policies. Allington pointedly described the author of these licenses, Lawrence Lessig, as essentially a Google-funded advocate, and expressed strong objections to having his work remixed and reworked without his consent. Though Bloom insisted that CC licenses’ requirement for attribution meant that Allington need not worry about being misrepresented, I found Kingsley’s response more persuasive: the open access movement needs to acknowledge that different disciplines have different requirements for CC licenses, and – presumably – work with researchers to create the new licenses needed. Mandler’s assertion that he’d been told by politicians that different disciplines could not have different licenses was worrying.

Discussion turned to the possible impact on journals and societies – and specifically the good work they do in other areas – of losing the money they make from subscriptions. Bloom questioned why that work should be funded through the money they make from research, and was answered pragmatically by Mandler, who pointed out that that was where the money was. Asked by a member of the audience why journals even needed to exist, Kingsley responded that individual researchers tended not to be interested in self-organising (though the development of initiatives such as the Open Library of the Humanities by Caroline Edwards and Martin Eve suggests that this is thankfully by no means universal).

The attitude towards publishers was thankfully more nuanced than is sometimes the case, despite – in a statement whose subtleties I undoubtedly missed in the rush of live-tweeting – Kingsley at one point suggesting that large publishers belonged in the same category as tobacco companies. The panel agreed that with open access creating greater transparency over what publishing actually costs, it was harder now for publishers to justify profits of 30-40%. Bloom was happy with profit being reinvested by publishers, but not with it leaving the system to enrich shareholders. (And on this we were in rare agreement.)

So, where does all this leave me, and the concerns I expressed at somewhat self-indulgent length at the start of this piece? The debate rather brought them into focus: though I support Open Access in principle, I fear the consequences of it being over-rigorously applied to the humanities and social sciences. I’d have liked to hear more about some of the initiatives that – rather than insisting that the humanities and social sciences will be just fine under a model that ignores their particular requirements – are actually trying to find ways to make open access work for these disciplines. (Though the Open Library of the Humanities was briefly mentioned in passing early on, this could have been discussed at more length, and there was no mention made of, say, Knowledge Unlatched’s experiments in funding monographs, or UCL press.)

I’m also still a little concerned about the zeal with which some advocates pursue open access. Perhaps I’m just over-sensitive, but even in the faultlessly polite debate I saw on Friday, there still seemed at times traces of an inflexible rigour that worried me: the belief, however civilly expressed, that the opponents of open access must be either misinformed or exhibiting bad faith. In his opening speech, moderator Stephen Curry asked whether publishers might be dressing up fears about profit margins as concerns for sustainability; in the discussion on funding, there seemed a marked reluctance to believe that the money just isn’t there in the humanities. More often, though, there was an open-mindedness that reassured me. Kingsley’s insistence on the diversity within the open access movement – that though many people round the world supported its ideals, they disagreed on how to achieve them – encouraged me to believe that ways will be found to find models that will work for the humanities and social sciences, and that publishers will have a role to play in them.

Alastair Horne runs webinars and a blog for language teachers at Cambridge University Press; he tweets as @pressfuturist, blogs occasionally at www.pressfuturist.com and is currently working on a novel set in a Parisian cemetery.

This blog post can also be found on Alastair’s own blog, here: http://pressfuturist.com/2015/10/25/open-access-a-personal-take/

Open Access and Academic Publishing

Posted on by in academic books, Open Access, Publishers and tagged , .

Independent information services professional Ian Lovecy suggests that there are a number of questions – philosophical and practical – which need to be answered before open access could be a sound and sustainable method of academic publishing. This post makes no attempt to answer them, but rather to identify them and perhaps open up some of the issues involved to discussion.

What do we mean by “open access”?

Time was, I could walk into my public library, ask for a book or a journal article, and if they didn’t have it they would obtain it for me through inter-library loan; that was open access to information, and it died in the ‘70s and ‘80s. In those decades, access remained open, but subject increasingly to charges, primarily to cover the administrative costs of the service. Increasingly, requests became subject to a form of censorship, requiring proof of need or (in Universities) a tutor’s signature.

Today we have the Internet, and access to much of the information on it is available to anyone with access to a computer. (This is theoretically anyone in the UK since computers are available in public libraries and Internet cafés, although opening hours, location, costs, line speed and computer literacy may all impose limitations.) Not all the information is available free of charge, but subject to questions of privacy and confidentiality, public interest, security and government policy on access, it is available to all.

Two questions relating to academic information immediately become apparent:

  • Do we mean free open access?
  • Do we mean open access to the entire world?

Equally, in the case of inter-library loans, it was understood that the material was governed by copyright legislation; frequently, especially in cases where material was provided as a photocopy, recipients had to sign a declaration that they would observe copyright. Items published on the Internet are, or at least can be declared to be, subject to the same legislation, but the enforcement is even harder than it is with library books (and I am sure many lecturers have used the occasional copyright photograph in their lectures without seeking permission). In theory, enforcement should be easier in the case of electronic access, since such access can be traced; in practice, with multiple access by people in several different jurisdictions control is effectively impossible. A further question is therefore:

  • Do we want to put restrictions on the use of the information?

 

What are the reasons for open access publishing?

A frequently-heard justification is that since public funding pays for the research the results should be publicly available. This is at best a slightly tenuous argument – even after the passing of the Freedom of Information Act there is still a great deal of publicly-funded information to which the public most decidedly do not have access. It can, in any case, apply only to a subset of research, primarily that funded wholly by the Research Councils. However, the current intention is that all material, if it is to be included in the REF, must be available on open access.

In the past, there has been an underlying assumption that all research undertaken in Universities is publicly funded; this is no longer tenable. Even ignoring the existence of entirely privately-funded Universities, much research – particularly in medicine, biochemistry and the social sciences – is jointly funded by research councils and either charities or business (or sometimes both); there may be restrictions on the amount of information which can be published because of commercial considerations. Many academic posts in the Humanities are now funded entirely by student fees – surely that cannot count as public funding?

It should not be forgotten that there exists also a group of independent researchers – retired academics, former students who have gone into non-academic work and self-taught members of the public with a keen interest in a specific topic. None of these is likely to be submitting material to the REF (with the possible exception of the first group) and they are not therefore under pressure to use open access publishing; they will, however, be affected by some of the consequences of it considered below.

There can be few researchers who do not wish their work to be read, appreciated and cited by others, and for many who publish in the form of journal articles this is indeed the only reward they have. It is understandable that they may feel exploited when they see the price charged for the journals in which they publish; it is even more understandable that institutions resent paying a high price to buy back the results of work which they feel they have funded. Is the correct answer to this problem making the information available to all? What about monographs? – in this case the authors may receive a (small) financial reward in the form of royalties. Are they to be denied this? After deciding what we mean by open access, the next question to answer is:

  • Is there any moral or philosophical justification for insisting on open access publishing?

What might be the practical effects of open access publishing?

The practical effects can be considered under five headings: the value of information, effects on conventional publishing, location and language of publication, universality of access and costs.

The value of information

A professor (of English literature, no less!) once told me there was no need for subject librarians because “all students had to do was use the Internet to find things”. I put the following fairly specific search into Bing: “studies in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII”. That is, of course, one of the most minor of the plays; the search returned 23,500,000 hits. The first 20 included a Wikipedia entry, several references to Spark notes, summaries and quizzes, one text, one (Spanish) production, and several references to A study of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII by Cumberland Clark. Which is doubtless an excellent book; but a similar search in Birmingham University Library’s catalogue shows in addition, in the first 10 items, books by Larry Champion, Alan Young, Sir Edward German, Tom Merriam, Maurice Hunt and Albert Cook, a text with a preface by Israel Gollancz, and a production by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Some of the books are on detailed aspects of the play or its authorship. It is a manageable list, and represents the selection (you could call it censorship) by a group of scholars over a number of years of books which say something worth reading about the play.

That selection is made in a number of ways, such as the reputation or place of work of the author, the reputation of the publisher, reviews in newspapers and professional journals. There can be dangers in all of these: an author may have a reputation as a maverick and be scorned by established academics; just because an academic doesn’t work in a Russell Group university it doesn’t mean he or she is not good; Mills and Boon might publish a scholarly book; reviewers may have personal axes to grind. However, behind all of this is the publisher: it is the publisher who publicises the book, sends around lists of forthcoming volumes to libraries and academics, sends out review copies. Going back one step, publishers’ editors decide which books to take on, and there can be problems here for those with radically new ideas; the existence of a flourishing, competitive industry is one way of minimising the risk of censorship.

In an open access world, the radical and the maverick are in less danger of being stifled by the establishment; but they have an even greater risk of being lost in the mass of irrelevance which comes pouring out of a search. Only their institution might help to refine the search, and even this might not assist given the lack of sophistication of most search engines: adding “published by Universities” to my search had some effect – it reduced it to a mere 9,300,000 hits. So a vital question in relation to open access is:

  • How do we sort the wheat from the chaff?

Effects on conventional publishing.

If open access publishing of monographs became the default option – as it might if open access became a requirement of the REF – the effects on the academic publishing industry could be severe to catastrophic. Much would depend on a question asked above, and explored further below: is open access to be free access? Electronic publication is not necessarily free – e-books are often cheaper than printed copies, but librarians would question whether even this is true of e-journals – but payment is made by somebody in some way. If, however, open access were to mean free or cheap access, academic publishing could become unsustainable; even today margins are small and there is often cross-subsidy within major publishers from more lucrative parts of the list. University presses are often subsided by parent institutions, usually as part of institutional marketing.

A significant decline in the number of academic publishers would (as indicated above) greatly affect the way in which published research was publicised. It would also leave independent scholars outside the university system with little or no choice of where to submit a manuscript, thus potentially reducing the amount of information and scholarship to which the world has access.

However, despite talk of “webs” and “clouds”, it must be remembered that the Internet is a very physical thing at heart: it needs servers which hold the information. Storage of digitised material is becoming ever cheaper; costs of maintenance of equipment are not. Servers sometimes go down – ask any customer of the Royal Bank of Scotland! – and the more information on a single server the more inconvenience caused when this happens. One way of minimising this problem is to scatter the information on a number of machines; another is to duplicate it on more than one server. Might publishers become involved in this? Would every university want to dedicate machines and staff time to such an operation? Who would publicise new monographs, or persuade people to review them? These questions could be summed up as:

  • Would there be a place for academic publishers in an open access system?

Location and language of publication

In the age of the Internet, research collaboration across national borders is common; however, with the important exception of the United States commitment to open access publication is not. For institutions and scholars in many countries, publication in respected journals which are not open access may be important for prestige or career purposes. Hitherto in the UK, this conundrum has usually been solved by the open access “green” version of a paper (the penultimate draft), leaving the final version to be published normally; the “green” version is acceptable to the Research Councils (and so far to the REF) as satisfying their conditions.

If it is decided that all material for submission to the REF must be available as open access, a further problem arises. Researchers in linguistics or the literature of other languages and cultures frequently publish in non-English languages in journals published in the relevant country. Open access journals in, for example, Mandarin or Sanskrit, Latin or even French, may be hard to find! Open access publication of monographs might be possible, but probably only through a UK publisher – depending on the answers to questions above; This could affect the breadth of the reception of the item, which as well as diminishing any royalties which might still be available could significantly reduce the impact in respect of a REF submission.

An important question to be considered if open access academic publishing is to become the default expectation is:

  • Are foreign language publications to be exempted, and if not what provision is to be made for them?

Access to “Open access” and its costs

As suggested above, “open access” is usually interpreted as free access, but this is not without cost. At present universities have been willing to place science articles on local servers at marginal cost; if humanities publishing and monographs are added, the costs of maintenance over the next fifty years will probably be less than marginal in research-intensive universities. Moreover, there will be a need for more sophisticated search software, akin to that in use by libraries – and as librarians will confirm, such software is not cost-free.

Moreover, the costs of indexing may be increased. If articles are not collected into journals, indexers will have to search over a hundred sites for potential material. This could be carried out by software, but again such software would have a cost; and there would be the added problem that software working by gleaning key words from titles or full text may not take account of the context. (It sometimes happens with human cataloguing – I have seen a book on Keats entitled The mirror and the lamp classified as optics!)

Alternatively, material (at least articles, although not monographs) could be collected into online journals. This could ease the problems of refereeing and therefore selection of useful material, although it would bring back the possible problems with the current system of refereeing – which have recently included the costs in terms of time if not of money. But online journals would need editors and some level of administrative staff – publishers, in other words – and there would be costs involved. Who would pay them? If it is expected to be users, we are back to the question of whether open access is to be free; and if it is paid for by institutions we are likely to find those who do not belong to such an institution disenfranchised.

There are also hidden costs in terms of the use of materials. Screens and readers are improving all the time (although that is also a cost – I don’t need equipment to read a book) but many people still find prolonged use uncomfortable. Hyperlinks can facilitate the movement from index to relevant page, but activities which require having more than one volume open at a time – comparing two editions, for example, or reading a critical work in conjunction with a text – can be awkward.

A book published 400 years ago is (generally) as easy to read as one published four days ago; computer software is upgraded frequently, and although upward compatibility is often included, there are sometimes step changes – Windows 10 has provided examples, and many word processing systems confine upward mobility to perhaps the last five versions. In my research I used a number of books and articles published 100 years previously, and probably little-used in between; how accessible will material published today be in 100 years, and what will be the costs of keeping it accessible?

There are a number of questions arising under this heading:

  • Will there be a need for new indexing and/or searching software, and if so who will pay?
  • Will in-built upward compatibility in software cope with material published a century earlier, and if not how will upgrading be managed?
  • If there are costs in respect of open access which are born collectively by institutions rather than by the end-user, will some potential end-users find themselves without access?
  • How can the problems related to potential inconvenience of use be overcome?

Ian Lovecy MA,PhD, Hon FCLIP, FCLIP, MAUA

What do you think of the issues and questions raised in this post?

Are there others?

Get in touch below!

Acts of Reading: when, how, and where do academics and their audiences read in the digital age?

Posted on by in academic books, reading and tagged , , , .

How academics and their audiences read is a topic inextricably tied in with the future of the academic book. On the 24th September 2015, Professor Andrew Prescott, Dr Bronwen Thomas, and Professor Miri Rubin, chaired by Dr Sara Perry, discussed Acts of Reading as part of The British Library’s ‘Digital Conversations’ series of events. The event was held at The British Library and co-organised by The Academic Book of the Future project, and was prompted by a previous blog post on a related topic by Prof. Andrew Prescott.

The panel considered such questions as: Have acts of academic reading changed in recent years and are they still changing? What formats and devices are academics reading in and on, and how has this affected their research and writing? What is the future of academic reading, and what consequences will this have for the academic book? How have these changes impacted public consumption of academic research and might this portend for academia and the public in the future?

panel

The panel, as captured by a talented attendee! (© Lisamaria Laxholm: https://twitter.com/LLaxholm/status/647133130697121792)

Migratory reading

Dr Bronwen Thomas (Bournemouth University) began by outlining new opportunities that digital reading offers. She uses email and her university’s Intranet not only for collecting and aggregating links, but also for sharing them with her students. Reading becomes an act of community, of social connection and discussion, but the act of reading is also put off until the links themselves are clicked.

Digital reading offers a greater array of options for academics than hard-copy reading alone. “Even if a book is on my shelf, I am more likely to find a specific quote using a digital search, e.g. on Google Books.” But conversely, as Thomas highlights, citing Naomi Baron’s Words Onscreen (which she brought with her to the event – in hard copy format) people tend to do more re-reading in print. The reasons for this are various, although the main one for Thomas is that with physical books there are less likely to be Internet-related distractions, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, emails.

Some researchers have also argued that when reading a physical book there is a greater sense of the internal topography and structure of the book, with readers having more of a sense of themselves within the space of the book, as well as an awareness of external space, and a memory of the situations of reading: How much is left of the book? Where was I when I read this – on the bus, in my office, in the bath? Thomas asks: what counts as reading? Does it finish when you finish the book, or does an insight strike you 5 years later?

Thomas described herself as a migratory reader – migrating between different kinds of modalities and media. She referred to the “PowerPoint state of mind”, an argument often cited with reference to digital reading. It describes a fragmentary style of reading; dipping in and out of texts. This type of reading, Thomas suggests, can occur with both physical and digital texts, but is arguably being heightened by an increase in digital reading.

You can read Bronwen Thomas’ reflection on the event here: http://www.digitalreadingnetwork.com/academic-acts-of-reading-event-at-the-british-library/.

Academic ebooks: pdf hell?

Prof. Andrew Prescott (University of Glasgow, AHRC) reflected on the issue of reading in blog posts before (https://academicbookfuture.org/2015/03/19/my-acts-of-reading-andrew-prescott/) and after the Digital Conversations event at The British Library (http://digitalriffs.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/acts-of-reading-redux.html).

He agreed with Thomas’ assertion regarding the sense-memory of physical books, recalling “one cold Christmas in the 1960s”, when he had received a book as a gift and taken it back to his warm bed to read. Prescott went on to explain why and how he had gradually turned to digital reading, because of the great advantages it offers: ebook devices are lighter to carry than most hard-copy books; there is immediate access to content through downloads, and faster access to recently published books. He described himself as an “e-reading convert” but expressed dissatisfaction with the cost of academic books – he often still has to consult academic books in a library, rather than buying his own copy or e-version. “We need,” he suggests, “an academic text version of iPlayer.”

But has there been a transformation in reading practices, prompted by digital text? Prescott suggests that he doesn’t use his phone or device to do anything that he didn’t already do before: “Pleased as I am with ebooks, they are very very boring products.” Academic ebooks have not, he argues, capitalised on the advantages offered by digital technology for scholarly purposes. For example, it would be incredibly useful, in a history ebook for instance, to link directly to the primary source it refers to – a digitised version of a medieval document, a database of coins, a virtual tour of a long-gone city. Instead, ebooks tend to be glorified pdfs, and fairly flat. “My dystopian view of the future,’ says Prescott, “is that journals will consist of pdfs of journal articles.”

He then went on to say: “this is partly why I got into the Digital Humanities. I want to see ebooks that encourage me to read more deeply.”

Contextual deep reading

Prof. Miri Rubin (Queen Mary University of London) referred to the linguistic turn of the 1990s and the intertextuality of texts, and how this is a useful frame through which to consider academic reading: everything that humans produce and how we communicate with and understand each other is coded in texts. Rubin explained how we have become “supple, multi-skilled readers of text” by learning to deconstruct texts and to acknowledge the importance of context.

Nowadays scholars undertake a great deal of research via databases and searches. Often, we aren’t physically embedded in reading contexts – we are no longer immersed in journals in the stacks, or flicking through pages of physical text, accidentally discovering other information in the process. Rubin asks: Does this new reading change the way we understand content? She gives an example of a colleague who was researching the 1975 referendum. Due to copyright issues, he had to look through the original articles in physical newspapers, rather than viewing them in a digital context. Seeing them embedded in their original contexts, surrounded by the adverts and other articles on the page, the referendum articles took on new meanings and relevance. This is not something that can always be fully appreciated when using digitally-reproduced sources.

But, Rubin asks, what about reading poems, or cult or sacred literature? Are there inherent issues in reading the Lord’s Prayer, for instance, in a fragment? Rubin suggests the “notion that the reading act is not complete until it is complete.”

The academic book of the future: born digital?

Bronwen Thomas recently wrote a textbook that included links to relevant web pages, but she admitted that this is an “unsatisfactory way of trying to connect. The links will probably be dead by the time the book is published.” Seeking permissions for images can also discourage the kind of engaging, interactive e-text that Prescott would like to see. Despite this, Thomas thinks that the academic book of the future will be born digital – conceived as digital right from the outset, and including audio-visual content, links, and interactive features. Rubin added to this, suggesting that academic books of the future should be able to create a completely holistic reading experience for research and writing, for example when researching the Magnificat, the music itself could be playing in the background via an ebook.

On the other hand, Thomas suggests that the idea of the ‘digital native’ is a “mythology” – her students wanted paperbacks, because they thought e-reading devices to be ugly and like something their parents would use. “Books,” Thomas suggests, “are becoming retro, like vinyl, and going into bookshops is visually exciting, so books still hold charm and appeal.”

Measurement and evaluation

Sara Perry highlighted that there are strong links between the analogue and digital, and our ways of reading. Perhaps, she suggests, there are “larger concerns around the sharing economy: bureaucratic shackles, politics, longer-term engagement, personal safety, the divides between communities, surveillance and data analysis, and corporate control.” She questions how acts of reading are affected by the academic contexts in which we find ourselves, for example academics are subject to the REF, the impact agenda, metrics, etc. She cited one of her PhD students who has created video games to advance archaeological research, deploying them alongside the trowel or camera as a toolkit of the archaeologist. This student wants her examiners to literally play her thesis, rather than read it, but she is being forced to battle with the assumption that the PhD should be a monograph. Hence, the game will probably become an appendix at the end of her thesis, eliminating the potential and possibility of it.

AHRC funding encourages people to collaborate and create new book forms and potentially new reading experiences, but whether that is a REF-able output is another matter. Andrew Prescott explains that someone submitted a totem pole to the recent REF, and it was accepted. But whether this is encouraged within the frameworks of individual institutions and their structures is another question. He sees this it as a problem that we have in terms of the structure of knowledge, which “is now being driven more by Wikipedia than academia.”

Finally, there were some thought-provoking questions from the audience:

 

“I usually forage – for a particular quote or piece of information, but when I find a book I enjoy, I tend to buy it and read it for a different reason. What do you think of re-reading, and what academic books do you re-read and why?”

AP: Vivian Hunter-Galbraith’s book on using Public Records: it has haunted me since I was about 20. Now it is only available in a 1960s reprint. I constantly refer back to it. I would probably buy the ebook, like you said, to find a particular quote more quickly.

BT: For me re-reading is literary re-reading, like reading Jane Eyre 50 times. I re-read it every time I teach it. I don’t read ‘academic’ books in that way.

MR: I do the foraging and the researching but then if like it I buy it and re-read it more fully.

 

“If you could have access to everything EVER published on something the size of a matchbox, would you say yes?”

AP: It’s not something I would turn down if you offered it to me, but I would point out that this idea is a deception, because in the foreseeable future I don’t think it could exist. Take the example of Tristram Shandy: Sterne went to great effort and expense to insert a DIFFERENT piece of marbled paper in every single one of the first copies of this book. How would you recreate something like this?

BT: Absolutely not: It would be meaningless! Going back to the idea of foraging, part of the process of reading is the discovery, the creation of my own library of content – it would be a meaningless mess of everything.

MR: Yes, absolutely!

 

 

 

 

Why Do We Write?

Posted on by in academic books, libraries and tagged , , .

Today’s guest post is by Anne Welsh, Lecturer in Library and Information Studies, University College London. Anne considers the implications of writing in a vocational discipline where theory and practice are integrated; how writing in these areas are considered within evaluation processes such as the REF 2014; and asks what this might mean for the academic book of the future in vocational disciplines.

“It’s not the people who write the book who make the future. It’s the people who read the book and implement it.”

Ela Szubarczyck

Practical Cataloguing in practice at RUSI Library

This statement on my Facebook page was sparked by a question about influence on Twitter last weekend. It got me thinking about the somewhat bigger questions of why we write, and whether there are any distinctive qualities about vocational disciplines that make writing and action linked in a visceral way.

I’m very interested in the pedagogical underpinning of vocational disciplines within the academic setting. The fast-approaching centenary of our department (the oldest library school in the UK) has taken me to a place in my research exploring not just our history, and Library Education’s move from learning-on-the-job to study-at-university, but, more generally, the concept of Professionalization and what Watson (2002) has described as the reinvention of certain occupational groups as professions. In a forthcoming book chapter (Welsh, 2016), I argue that university became the natural location for Library and Information Studies because, as Jarausch (2004) has highlighted with regard to other professions, “it was not expertise as such, but its certification which created cultural capital” (p. 367).

Be that as it may, vocational subjects integrate theory and practice, and, from the publication of Dewey’s (1916) Democracy and Education onwards, it has been recognised that this balance requires active learning in the classroom; that learning by doing is as important as learning by reading. Of course, Dewey and subsequent theorists have had an influence across the board in Education, not solely in vocational areas, but there’s a logic to the idea that when we are educating professional groups, there is a direct link between what happens in the classroom and what happens in the workplace. Elsewhere (2013) I’ve described how in my own field we are working within Kolb’s (1984) dynamic process that shows experiential learning occurring within an equilateral triangle with corners labeled “Education”, “Work” and “Personal Development.”

From this point of view, our aim as educators is to draw on each of these areas to progress students through the hierarchy of Bloom’s (1984) taxonomy: from knowledge, through comprehension, application, analysis and synthesis to the highest order of learning, evaluation. Significantly, in vocational subjects, the end result of a student’s university education might be that they continue to further academic study, but it is likely, in most cases, to be that they progress into the workplace to apply the knowledge they have gained ‘in the real world.’

This means at least three things with regard to ‘the academic book of the future’ in the context of vocational disciplines:

  1. Academics have the potential to directly impact their field through their books (and other outputs).
  2. There is competition, both for academic publishers and for authors who are academics, since experienced practitioners are also publishing.
  3. In order to achieve (1) there are effects on (2) with regard to such important concepts as subject-matter (the books commissioned by publishers), diction (the dry, dull language favoured by some sectors of the Academy will not reach as wide an audience as engaging language) and pricing (monographs that outprice their market will not sell either their pages or their ideas as widely as books that do not).

In brief, the academic book of the future within vocational disciplines has a wide audience that is not only ready-made, but is made, in some respects, by the authors themselves. For example, former students who learned in class from my book Practical Cataloguing are now emailing me asking when my next book Cataloguing and Decision-Making in a Hybrid Environment will arrive with them, because as practising librarians, they have the book on order to help them with their current role.

More importantly, I think that in vocational disciplines authors have decisions to make based on our motivations. For REF2014, I was advised not to include Practical Cataloguing despite its having sold thousands of copies. The REF panel in our area is very wide, and it was suggested that people who have never catalogued might not see the academic value of a book that discusses the seismic shift in the intellectual models underpinning our international standards and its predicted impact. More recently, a senior colleague in the Faculty told me that the book was regarded as “knowledge transfer” rather than research, “because of the series”. “It’s not in a series,” I said, and he responded, “You know what I mean. Facet – they publish for librarians.” Biting my cataloguer’s tongue (Facet is a publisher, not a series), I smiled as he continued, “But it’s excellent for impact. If you didn’t put it in for REF2014, maybe it can be an impact study for REF2020.” Because a ‘secondary market,’ beyond the couple of hundred academics who might read a monograph, is, in academic terms, “public.” Because a book on an apparently dry topic that I wanted to be read by busy professionals needs to be written in a style that makes them want to keep on reading, and that’s not the language of the Academy. Because a ‘manual ‘that instructs people how they might do something can’t possibly involve research, can it? Not even when it’s the first to look at a new international standard and interpret it and theorise how it might be applied.

And that brings me back to my opening comment. The question that triggered all of this asked simply “Who are your most influential new thinkers about the library of the future?” The answer, for me, was simple: “All of the students. Not just the ones here [at UCL]. It’s the quieter majority that will make ‘the library of the future.’” Because, in my eyes, they will. Writing a book or giving a conference paper (or having thousands of followers on Twitter) may be “influential”, but only if people in the world take up an idea and put it into practice. Without that, all our writing, all our speaking, all our thinking, in fact, goes nowhere but the library shelf (or university repository).

I can touch some of the things my students and former students have implemented when I walk into their libraries. Colleagues at the Bartlett can literally touch the walls and ceilings and floors their students have designed. Slade colleagues could even bid on the artworks their alumni exhibit (if the academic life pays them enough money). And when we write, it’s not solely for the few experts in our own fields, it’s not solely for current students, it’s for the whole professional group to which we belong. My senior colleague’s right about me, but for the wrong reasons. My books aren’t Academic-with-a-capital-A. Not because I’ve missed my market: let my research articles take care of the REF, I say. My books are written for anyone who catalogues who wants them, and specifically for anyone who wants to change cataloguing to think about and mull over, and build something new in the real world. For the opportunity to do that, I’m very grateful to my publisher, Helen Carley at Facet, and I’m even more grateful to the wider cataloguing community.

I don’t know if what I’m finishing at the moment is what you would consider an ‘Academic Book’, but I reason that as long as universities are running vocational courses like the MA Library and Information Studies on which I mainly teach, books for librarians will be a part of my future. As a non-publisher, I suggest that, more widely, books for the professions that sell in their thousands are, perhaps, as much a part of ‘The Academic Book of the Future’ as monographs for academics that sell in the hundreds … or even the tens.

 

Image: RUSI Library, with thanks to Ela Szubarczyk, who appears in the photo. If you are interested in a cataloguing internship at RUSI, please email library@rusi.org in the first instance.

 

Bloom, B.S. 1984. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The classification of educational goals. New York: Longman.

Dewey, J. 1916. Democracy and Education: An introduction to the philosophy of Education. New York: Macmillan, https://archive.org/details/democracyeducati1916dewe

Kolb, D.A. 1984. Experiential Learning: experience as the source of learning and development. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Jarausch, K.H. 2004. “Graduation and Careers.” In A History of the University in Europe. Volume III. Universities in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (1800-1945), ed. W. Rüegg, 363-389. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Watson, T. 2002. “Professions and Professionalism: Should we jump off the bandwagon, better to study where it is going?” International Studies of Management & Organization 32(2): 93-105.

Welsh, A. 2013. “Experiential Learning in Historical Bibliography.” In Ambassadors of the Book: Competences and training for heritage librarians ed. R. Mouren. Berlin: de Gruyter. 147-162.

Welsh, A. 2016. “‘Expertise – Certification – Cultural Capital’: The education of librarians in the UK.” In Educating the Profession: 40 years of the IFLA Section on Education and Training ed. M. Seadle, Clara Chu and Ulrike Stöckel. Berlin: De Gruyter. (In press).

 

 

Investigating the REF2014 as another means of understanding academic books

Posted on by in Uncategorized.
In this blog post, Simon Tanner reveals some of the early results of his research into the last REF, looking at Arts and Humanities panels and their submissions.

The recent Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) 2015 International Conference presented a session on the Academic Book of the Future, chaired by Richard Fisher. The session, Something Understood Scholarly Communications, included a presentation by Simon Tanner from the ABoF project and also significant contributions from Professor John Holmwood (University of Nottingham and past President of the British Sociological Association) and Professor Peter Mandler (University of Cambridge and President of the Royal Historical Society).

You can find an ALPSP blog covering the whole session here (insert link: http://blog.alpsp.org/2015/09/the-academic-book-of-future.html)
The ALPSP have also provided a full video of the whole session here (insert link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALOS2G_PYpc)

In this blog post we would like to focus upon the aspect of Simon’s presentation that considered the REF 2014 book submissions. You can find Simon’s ALPSP presentation slides here (insert link or maybe embed in blog: http://www.slideshare.net/KDCS/the-academic-book-of-the-future-progress-ref2014-data)

The REF 2014 submission data provides a rich data set that Simon is investigating as a means of finding out more about the academic books submitted in the last REF cycle. The analysis of the data will provide useful indicator data about academic book writing and publishing, and will further augment the analysis already provided by HEFCE.

The research focuses upon the Main Panel D for Arts and Humanities. Within this Panel, data can be investigated by Unit of Assessment Subject Area and by Research Output Type. A broad slice can be taken across the whole Panel or Output Type, then each Subject Area can be interrogated in detail, providing information about the publishing trends in these subjects, as well as the REF submission trends.

One useful area of exploration is the identification of preferred publishers. These can be presented in terms of the actual numbers or proportions of books submitted and will indicate for each Subject Area which publishers have precedence in REF and also identify those specialist publishers which are submitted only a few times. This information may be surprising to academics, publishers and libraries alike – it would certainly provoke a debate in those communities. In this phase of the project this is one of our objectives – to raise evidence that will challenge or confirm received opinion and thus stimulate a community response.

Another possible avenue of investigation might be to correlate of publishers’ lists of published monographs against those that were submitted to REF to find out why some books are submitted and others not, without making any assumptions about the quality of the books. Further, an investigation of whether and which books are cited in Impact Case Studies would provide an indication of how books connect to the impact factors described in the REF. A whole series of other queries can be made once we have the dataset. For instance, looking at gender of authors, book format/length etc, books per submitting institution, number of open access books etc. Some of these measures may prove more achievable than others, given the available data but are worth considering.

Our goal in this phase of investigation is not to prove any particular point but to see where the data leads us and what discussions can thus be stimulated.

Figure 1 shows an initial investigation of the proportions of research output type by Subject Area. It throws up some interesting comparisons and these are further explored in Figures 2 and 3. As can be seen there are some strong similarities in the proportions of books, book chapters and journal submissions made across subject areas. But we also observe that certain subject areas, such as Music, Drama, Dance & Performing Arts or Art & Design, show enormous shifts in output types to include a broader range of research outputs for these subjects, including Compositions, Exhibitions, Performance and Design for example.

Figure 1:

Tanner_ABoF_ALPSP_Presentation_2015-Figure001

Figure 2:

Tanner_ABoF_ALPSP_Presentation_2015-Figure002

Figure 3:

Tanner_ABoF_ALPSP_Presentation_2015-Figure003

Considering Publishing and History – REF 2014 Unit of Assessment 30

Having compared subject we can deep dive a specific subject, in this case History. It should be noted that extracting this data is time consuming and relatively complex due to the variations in the data provided by academics to the REF. We see books with no ISBN, books with publishers so obscure they did not appear in search engines and the variant use of publisher name (such that Oxford University Press for instance is expressed in over a dozen different ways).

For History we found:

  • 1657 Books in the following output types
    • Authored Books (1320),
    • Edited Books (290) and
    • Scholarly Editions (47)
  • 295 unique Publishers were found
  • Top 10 most used Publishers = 930 books or 56%
  • 258 Publishers (87%) had 5 or fewer books submitted
  • 171 Publishers (57%) had one book submitted – mostly non-UK
  • 761 books submitted (46%) were from a University Press
    • Outside the top 5 these were mostly non-UK publishers

We can also provide a list of the only Publishers with >10 books submitted for History in the REF 2014.

  • 213 Oxford University Press
  • 162 Cambridge University Press
  • 143 Palgrave  Macmillan
  • 98 Manchester University Press
  • 74 Ashgate
  • 70 Routledge
  • 52 Boydell & Brewer
  • 51 Yale University Press
  • 40 Brill Academic Publishers
  • 27 Continuum International Publishing
  • 27 Edinburgh University Press
  • 21 I B Tauris
  • 21 Pickering & Chatto
  • 20 Harvard University Press
  • 19 Bloomsbury Publishing
  • 16 Penguin
  • 14 Allen Lane
  • 14 British Academy/Oxford University Press
  • 14 Liverpool  University Press
  • 14 University of Wales Press
  • 12 University of Chicago Press
  • 11 Reaktion Books

Your Thoughts?

As we said earlier, our goal in this phase of investigation is not to set out to prove a point but to see where the data leads us and what discourses are thus stimulated. So please do get in touch and share your thoughts. Do these results confirm or contradict your expectations? Do you have further data you’d like to share with the project to augment this provided here?

Creative Writing Research Discoverability

Posted on by in academia, research and tagged , , , , , .

In this week’s guest post, Dr Susan L. Greenberg (Senior Lecturer in the University of Roehampton’s Department of English and Creative Writing) highlights particular issues facing research visibility in the discipline of Creative Writing, and the implications this has in a ‘be discovered or die’ academic culture. She also highlights plans to address these issues, and invites readers to get involved.

Universities in the UK are preparing to store a growing quantity of research on their repositories, to meet new rules on Open Access for the REF 2020.

It is part of a wider shift in the culture of higher education – from “publish or perish” to “be discovered or die”. In this environment, invisibility can have a negative impact on the status not only of individuals, but also of entire fields of research.

The discipline of Creative Writing, a relative newcomer to higher education, faces particular challenges when it comes to research visibility. These have come under fresh scrutiny as the number of PhD theses in the discipline grows. And so the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) is taking action to understand the key elements of those challenges, and respond to them. In the process, its enquiry may provide a useful case study for research and policy in Information Studies and Publishing, as well as assisting the development of Creative Writing in the academy.

To some extent, there is a “discoverability” problem for all doctoral theses. In the UK, theses are searchable on EThOS, which harvests metadata from individual HEI repositories. Overseas researchers also find and read articles within repositories via Internet searches. The quality of information thus mined depends on how the repositories are run – but practices vary enormously, and many thesis submissions are missing metadata such as keywords and abstracts that would help discovery. At present, there is little or no subject classification: this normally only applies to formally published works, listed in the library catalogue.

In addition to all the above, creative writing theses face particular challenges:

  • In some subjects, the thesis title provides a reliable guide to contents. In Creative Writing, the title is often suggestive or metaphorical rather than explicit.
  • The typical creative writing thesis comes in two related but distinct parts: the creative portfolio and the critical analysis. The latter could help with subject identification, but it is not usually given a separate entry in the repository. The creative portfolio itself often becomes lost in a wide range of identifiers related to genre or subject, rather than “creative writing” as a discipline.
  • Creative Writing students face specific issues relating to intellectual property, as trade publishers generally will not publish anything that has already appeared on a repository. The 2015 Crossick Report on ‘Monographs and Open Access’ acknowledges this problem and recommends that creative works be exempt from the open access rule. If implemented, this would answer concerns about copyright, but would also limit the completeness and discoverability of the repositories.

NAWE is therefore planning a brainstorming meeting for next May 2016, working with The British Library under the umbrella of the “The Future of the Academic Book”. The aim is to identify practices, problems and trends across the UK, as a step towards recommendations for change in the handling of Creative Writing doctoral theses. The discussion would involve multiple stakeholders, namely:

  • Authors and teachers
  • Information specialists
  • Publishers
  • Research leaders in higher education

We are also drawing up best-practice recommendations on discoverability for its members, to be included in its research benchmark statement. This is likely to include greater emphasis on the need for abstracts; separate cataloguing of critical and creative elements; and further training for both research students and faculty in the use of metadata. NAWE is in dialogue with the Association of Publishing Education (APE) about the potential to work together on a suitable training framework.

In the longer term, NAWE would like to identify relevant research funding ideas, and to begin a conversation with trade publishers about the changing role of university repositories, and the ways in which this may change the publishing landscape. Among other things, the conversation can explore the question, are there ways of anticipating this in a creative way that enhances rather than detracts from trade publishing concerns?

Meanwhile, NAWE members will be exploring the subject at a special panel discussion on Friday 13th November 2015 as part of Academic Book Week, at the organisation’s annual conference this year, held in Durham.

Anyone with an interest in any part of this discussion is welcome to contact me.

 

Dr. Susan L. Greenberg is a member of the HE sub-committee of the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE).

Specialist perspectives: the Project works with the Miltonists

Posted on by in academic books, conference, digital, Open Access and tagged , .

The Project was recently invited to speak at the Eleventh International Milton Symposium (University of Exeter, 20-24 July) by Professor Thomas Corns. Prof. Corns is a member of the Project’s Advisory Board as well an eminent Milton scholar – he was recently awarded a British Academy Fellowship in recognition of his contribution to Milton studies – and is therefore ideally situated to channel (and provoke!) conversation between the Project and this group of specialist researchers. This post is a summary of the issues, thoughts, concerns, and ideas that arose during this session.

Thanks to @RichardACarter for live-tweeting the session! Credit: @RichardACarter

                    Thanks to @RichardACarter for live-tweeting the session! Credit: @RichardACarter

After a brief presentation from Rebecca Lyons to introduce the Project, outline its aims, summarise progress to date, and explain why the Project was at a symposium on Milton, Prof. Corns took over. He started off with a quotation:

‘The monograph is something that every academic wants to write, few academics want to read, and no academic wants to buy’, as a distinguished commissioning editor once provocatively remarked.

Prof. Corns then put into play the view that the monograph constitutes the ‘gold standard’ for arts and humanities scholars, a view that certainly shaped institutional thinking across the sector in preparation for the recent REF, but he asked: if very few people want to read these books, and even fewer are buying them – what is the rationale behind this status? Why is the monograph still supreme?

A member of the audience responded, considering disciplines besides those in the arts and humanities:

 

‘I frequently work with colleagues in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), and when you ask them to read a book, they’re reluctant because they work in articles. I love the book, but insisting on the monograph as the gold standard keeps the arts and humanities segregated from these other areas, and therefore somewhat limited.’

 

The issue of ‘monograph vs journal article’ has cropped up fairly regularly in Project conversations with other stakeholder groups and communities, from a range of angles – including the idea of ‘thesis-by-articles’ as an alternative to the 80-100,000 word monograph that has hitherto been the standard model. There have been a variety of responses to this proposal, ranging from enthusiastic to the horrified, so this was a pertinent point.

Another participant offered an alternative response:

 

‘If we bow to pressure to exclusively publish articles rather than books, then we will lose what we do really well in the arts and humanities. Yes, we can write very good articles too, and yes, it is a very good idea to engage with our counterparts in science and engineering – but it is not necessary to give up the long form monograph in order to do these things.’

 

The conversation shifted slightly, considering the implications of monographs and journals, hard copy and digital, for libraries and their expenditure on research resources. A Miltonist working in the US stated:

 

‘There is a huge crisis in library funding. My institution’s library has been cut so far to the bone that we don’t even automatically buy books published by the big university presses anymore like we used to. More and more we are relying on digital resources. Articles provide a much more accessible and immediate resource.’

 

But again, there was an alternative view (from another US-based scholar):

 

‘We have the opposite situation – my institution’s library doesn’t automatically buy all books but will buy all books on reading lists made by academics. It does not, however, subscribe to all the online journals as this is too expensive for our budgets.’

 

He went on to make the point that some universities feel “walled out” by subscription prices combined with restricted budgets:

 

‘$100 for one academic book is still cheaper than a $1000 journal subscription that expires within a year. And at least you get to keep the book! Digital, online content is not this egalitarian utopia it’s sometimes made out to be.’

 

Another comment on this came from another scholar, citing the need to distinguish long-term and short-term consultation of material:

 

‘There are several examples of texts that I’d want to access for five minutes, just to check something, but only a few where I’d actually want to own them.’

 

The subject of available institutional funding for the purchase of books and subscriptions seemed to be a pivotal concern. The conversation continued with a suggestion:

 

‘How about the interlibrary loan of digital texts? It’s what happens with physical books – why not digital ones?’

 

Here the conversation turned to other digital matters – starting with Open Access (OA). One scholar condemned OA in no uncertain terms:

 

‘It is the spume of the devil.’

 

Others had questions:

 

‘At places like the British Library or Library of Congress is there, or will there be, an obligation for digital books to be made available, as physical ones are?’

 

Or concerns, about the present state of things:

 

‘Intellectual property is an issue: if one of your books is available digitally – what it to stop it being misused? Many of us have seen agreements violated, for instance, and PhD theses sold immediately, despite an embargo. The more we move into the digital, the more likely this is to be a problem. We must be aware of how our work makes it into the public sphere – it has become necessary to Google ourselves and check regularly what is out there.’

 

As well as the future:

 

‘In the 2020 REF monographs will be excluded from the obligation to be OA, whereas articles won’t be – what will be the implications of this?’

 

Other concerns centred upon business models:

 

‘I work for a journal and if we are made to open up our content for free then we will disappear.’

 

Or career issues:

 

‘If your thesis is OA then it can problematic to have it published. It becomes an issue of hiring and tenure. The American History Society advised all graduate students not to have their thesis as OA.’

 

There were also suggestions:

 

‘Could University Presses create a consortium to open books up for a small subscription fee, like Spotify for books?’

 

Here the conversation shifted to the authors and how the drive towards OA affects them:

 

‘Academics as authors are increasingly threatened by these forces – we need better rights to protect the authors.’

 

Another scholar also commented on these ‘forces’, using the analogy of airlines in the US that are conglomerating:

 

‘You get less and less choice for more and more money. I am worried that this is happening with publishing and platforms. In terms of authors and editors, our individuality and choice is being taken away.’

 

I couldn’t help but think of huge supermarkets here, where small organic groceries have sprung up in response. Or instances where people start to grow vegetables themselves instead. Will people publish themselves in the future?

Some attendees wondered about teaching in a digital world – how do students use books, create their own content, and what other content do they use such as the excellent Milton Reading Room hosted by Dartmouth College (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/contents/text.shtml). How is teaching going to be affected by these new books, materials, and new contexts?

 

One scholar commented:

 

‘I work at an institution that has a footprint in one place but also has commitments in education elsewhere (Palestine), so the digital content that we subscribe to has a great reach, and is really valued by these students who wouldn’t be able to access this content otherwise.’

 

Prof. Corns was forced to draw the conversation to a close due to time constraints, but it was clear that we had only just started to scratch the surface. One final closing comment from an attendee resonated, not only with the aims and scope of the Project, but with the rest of the scholars in the room, and probably beyond:

 

‘The questions and comments are all too small. This is not about the Future of the Academic Book. This is about the Future of the Humanities.’

 

 

Do these points resonate in your discipline?

Are there are others for you and your colleagues?

Do you vehemently disagree with any of the above?

Get in touch using the comments below!

 

Note: The views given above are not necessarily those of the Project or its partners, or Milton scholars en masse! The Project has attempted, insofar as possible, to accurately capture the views and opinions expressed at this event. All opinions and comments have been anonymised.

Building a career: ECRs in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Posted on by in academia, careers and tagged , , .

Brigitte_ShullUsing Greg Semenza and Garret Sullivan, Jr.’s recent blog post on life-building in the Humanities as her point of departure, in this post Brigitte Shull (Head of Editorial and Author Services & Publisher, Literature at Palgrave Macmillan), switches to the other side of the coin: how to build a career in the Humanities and Social Sciences: starting with publishing your research.

Early career researchers (ECRs) are under tremendous pressure to find a tenure-track job despite scarce resources, and they’re expected to publish, give papers, and teach a full course load (among many other things), right off the bat.

As reinforced by the recent findings of a survey of over 200 ECRs after the Research Excellence Framework (REF), conducted by Charlotte Mathieson of the University of Warwick, the increasingly competitive job market is “focused solely on ‘REFable’ publications”. To quote Benjamin Bowman, a final-year PhD student at the University of Bath, in a recent article in the Times Higher Education Supplement: “When you are an early career researcher, one of the things you really have to do is get a publication or an understanding of the publishing process.” The importance of publishing for an academic career is undeniable in the rest of the world too. So where does this leave the ECR? How are they supported on the path to publication?

Organisations and universities tend to favour grants, research support, and awards over true career development. Many of the bigger initiatives, such as the European Research Council, tend to be oriented towards scientific research. While beneficial for the ECR, no doubt, there still is a lacuna between the support of research and the jump to getting that research published.

Resources about publishing exist, but very few of them come from publishers themselves. At conferences, I often find myself having conversations with ECRs who refer to advice they’ve received that is full of misinformation about the publishing process. A quick Google search looking for ECR information on publishers’ websites pulls up Elsevier’s robust site but very little comes up from humanities and social science publishers. Most academic conferences have publishing panels but the fact that these are so well attended further points to a real gap in practical and personal advice for junior scholars.

I recently attended the Society for Scholarly Publishers’ annual meeting. In the panel “The Researcher’s New Big Picture,” one of the takeaways was that publishers need to be doing more to make researchers’ lives easier. At Palgrave Macmillan, we embrace transparency as the best approach for our authors and have set out to demystify the submission, peer review, revision, and publishing process as much as possible. To that end, we have created advice and content around the usual pain points including proposal writing dos and don’ts, a glossary of publishing terms, advice on revising their thesis to monograph, among other things. For the ECRs reading this, I hope that our new hub will be a valuable resource. I also hope that the hub will be a jumping off point and something we can continue to add tools to and fill gaps through collaboration. When we think about the academic book of the future or the author/researcher of the future, it’s important that publishers don’t forget that postdocs make up a rising percentage of academic researchers (a postdocalypse, as some call it!). If we’re really serious about making our authors’ lives easier, we should keep in mind what impact shifting demographics will have on the tools and services we offer.

There is so much potential for publishers to support researchers in every stage of their career—from fostering interdisciplinary connections to demonstrating impact to helping new sub-fields get off the ground. I encourage everyone to keep the conversation going by commenting on this post, emailing me directly, or chatting with one of our editors at a conference. We look forward to collaborating!

SHARP 2015: Generations and Regenerations of the Book

Posted on by in conference and tagged , , , , , .

Montreal 7 – 10 July 2015

SHARP 2015 was a bilingual conference hosted by the Groupe de recherches et d’études sur le livre au Québec, the University of Sherbrooke, McGill University and the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. The conference included lectures, keynote addresses, a digital projects showcase, roundtables, lightning papers presented by doctoral students, a poster exhibition featuring the work of master’s students as well as workshops. Over 350 people attended the conference, which was held in three locations over four days. Nick Canty writes this conference report.

SHARP_July2015_2

Credit: Mel Ramdarshan Bold.

The theme of the conference – Generations and Regenerations of the Book – was highly appropriate to discuss in a round table the future of the academic book. The round table consisted of Nick Canty, UCL, Christoph Blasi, Gutenberg University Mainz, Claire Squires, Stirling University and Siobhan McMenemy, University of Toronto Press. The event was chaired by Alexis Weedon from the University of Bedfordshire. Each participant briefly addressed the topic. Nick Canty outlined the AHRC Academic Book of the Future project, Claire Squires asked how SHARP could consider the question and where the topic sits in the context of Book History before addressing the definitions – what is a book, what should we consider an academic book and how what timeframe should we consider for the future. Siobhan McMenemy set out the publisher perspective with a focus on costs, monograph print runs and commercial imperatives with a sobering thought that a monograph in Canada costs C$ 32,000 to produce. Christoph Blasi saw the topic from two perspectives; bottom up driven by technological advances and the ability for content to be manipulated and distributed in radical grass-roots ways, and top down driven by institutional requirements – such as the UK REF. While we cannot know what the future holds there are some reformist top-down approaches in universities.

The debate was then opened up to the floor and started with a discussion around predatory publishers of the sort found on Beale’s List which try to hoodwink naïve researchers wanting to get their work published. This sort of publishing activity however should be seen as a symptom of the environment and not the cause. There was however a recognition that there needed to be a value shift and a questioning of whether the monograph was appropriate for all disciplines and in particular emerging disciplines – does the monograph give more authority to these as the discipline builds its infrastructure and seeks academic recognition? There are questions here around legitimacy and innovation which have yet to be resolved. Early career researchers may consider publishing a monograph from their PhD but they may achieve more visibility by publishing papers in a journal instead.

The question of funding and money was addressed which was seen as a significant issue for Arts & Humanities disciplines where the cost of Open Access books is prohibitive. Publishers are certainly experimenting with new business models such as the University of California Press community business model which a member of the audience saw as a possible solution here although this initiative is currently funded by the Mellon Foundation only for a limited period. A further suggestion was that university presses might alleviate competition by honing their publishing lists so they (the publishers) are unique. This route is being actively pursued by the Association of Spanish University Presses which is encouraging its members to specialise by discipline. The University of Toronto Press expect Open Access models to reduce profits by 50%.

The functionality of print and digital books was debated at some length with some members of the audience disliking Ebooks which were seen as less easy to navigate than paper despite innovations from publishers allowing users to annotate the content. This led on to a discussion around whether we are witnessing the slow demise of the library as a space for learning and whether students and universities needed a physical space any longer. The University of Toronto built a new library but has changed the name to a student learning space and provides limited access to print books. Ebooks should enable a convergence of content and pedagogy through virtual learning environments although this presents challenges for publishers who risk their business models changing from institutional sales to libraries to selling to the individual student.

The round table concluded with an acknowledgement that the future of the academic book will be shaped by discipline and technology but we are likely to exist in a hybrid print and digital world for the foreseeable future, and at least until there is an institutional recognition of content taking novel and innovative forms.

While the round table finished, the debate continues and follow-up activities will include blog posts for the Academic book of the Future website and a post by forum chair Alexis Weedon. The discussion will be taken forward through numerous and varied activities as part of the AHRC project and specifically during Academic Book Week, 9-16 November 2015.

Academic Book Week aims to encourage discussion around the future of the academic book while looking at how scholarly work in the arts and humanities will be produced and read in coming years. The week will see academic books discussed, showcased and even written across a number of events – notably a launch event with academic publishers at Stationers Hall in London on Monday 9 November and the Opening Up the Book Debate with Kathryn Sutherland, University of Oxford and Marilyn Deegan, King’s College London, while the British Library will host an academic book showcase ceremony and Palgrave Macmillan put the writing of an academic book into practice with a faster publishing model aiming to publish a book in a month.

Through The Academic Book of the Future project the opinions of all those who read, write, sell, produce and use academic books can be heard and the topic will be discussed at the next SHARP conference in Paris in 2016, an issue Claire Squires was keen to see addressed and saw as an issue central to the mission of SHARP.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Towards an Ethics of Circulation: A Manifesto in Tweets

Posted on by in Community Coalition and tagged , , .

On 19 June 2015 a group of anthropologists and ethnographers met at RMIT Europe in Barcelona to discuss The Academic Book of the Future project. The aim of the workshop was to situate the future of the book in the context of broader anthropological engagements with how knowledge circulates, the form knowledge takes, and the ethical questions that these engagements raise. What follows is a series of principles designed to engage with the Project, composed by the anthropologists and ethnographers that took part in the workshop: it is their manifesto (with a twist).

The principles are written for Twitter-friendly dissemination (under 140-characters) in order to maximise their circulation and impact within the world of publishing and academia. Our manifesto highlights our dissatisfaction with the contemporary climate in the UK (and other national contexts) for Open Access, and acknowledges the limitations and closed nature of many of our conversations about the circulation of academic texts, which all too often do not really take into account our obligations to readers. In an era of ‘Impact’, we seek to re-centre our focus upon engaging in conversations with the people we work with, the public and other academics, challenging assumptions about why they may not be understood as one and the same.

  1. UK defined Gold+Green #OA support the status quo of commercial publishing. Both are inadequate responses to our ethical responsibilities.

  1. Readers matter most! Who are our readers? Who should be our readers?

  1. Do not fetishise the digital. We need a mixed media ecology in order to disseminate our work smartly.

  1. Practice Slow Publishing. The academic book’s greatest threat is denial of the time it takes to produce truly insightful and enduring work.

  1. Dismantle the academy’s fetish for individual authorship in favour of a recognition of the value of collaboration across all levels.

  1. Metrics cannot measure our full value. We also need to acknowledge value through ethical and human principles.

  1. A publication is not simply a closed and bounded object or commodity. It lives on and proceeds into an uncertain world.

 

signed Haidy Geismar (@haidygeismar), Heather Horst (@hahhh), Daniel Miller (@DannyAnth), Sarah Pink (@pinkydigital), Mary Murrell (@M_Murrell), Elisenda Ardevol (@Mediacciones), and Christiane Brosius.

 

This manifesto is intended to be thought-provoking, and to prompt further conversation. Do you agree or disagree with any parts of it, or have any questions? Get in touch!

 

The full programme, along with abstracts and speaker bios from the workshop are available here.

 

 

Project Activity Snapshot: July 2015

Posted on by in About the project.

As the 2014/15 academic year draws to a close, conference season has played out in its usual wild frenzy of networking and inspirational talks, and preparations begin for the 2015/16 academic year, the Project has decided to take stock. A huge amount of activity and planning has taken place already, thanks to the energy and enthusiasm of our Community Coalition, Project Partners, and of course the core Project Team – and this post celebrates all that has happened, and looks forward to what is still to come.

So, to date…

The Project has engaged with:

  • 15 publishers
  • 12 libraries
  • 24 academic institutions in the UK
  • 10 academic institutions outside the UK
  • 3 booksellers
  • 24 organisations and societies
  • 95 individual collaborators

The Project Team has also:

  • attended 19 events
  • given 12 talks
  • initiated 55 events and mini-projects
  • published 16 blog posts
  • gained 571 Twitter followers
  • had 173 Facebook ‘likes’

Project activity has extended across several countries, including:

  • UK
  • Japan
  • USA
  • Canada
  • Australia
  • Spain
  • Italy
  • Germany
  • Sudan
  • The Netherlands

The Project has also launched a special website, to promote and celebrate all the wonderful events happening across the UK and internationally during Academic Book Week (9-16 November): http://acbookweek.com/

A huge THANK YOU to everyone in our Community Coalition, our Project Partners, and the AHRC for the enthusiasm, support, and collaboration so far – we look forward to continuing to work with you all!

 

All figures correct as of 29/07/15.