Open Scholarship Press Collections: Community/Scholarly Communication

Contemporary Issues

Adema, Janneke. 2021. Living Books: Experiments in the Posthumanities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Adema considers the contemporary scholarly book and how it could transition from a fixed, bound object to a more fluid and evolving entity. She argues that humanities scholars should reconsider their role as authors and strive to engage with knowledge production in more open, critical, and experimental ways. Adema challenges new media scholars (such as Lev Manovich and John Bryant) and print historians (such as Elizabeth Eisenstein and Adrian Johns) for their perpetuation of the book as an unchangeable, authored object. Adema complexifies her discussion of book history and new media by considering the importance of more radical approaches to open scholarship that do not reify the commercial control of academic knowledge production. Overall, Adema advocates for a more processual, experimental, ethical, and conscientious approach to scholarly communication in the twenty-first century.

Agate, Nicky, Gail Clement, Danny Kingsley, Sam Searle, Leah Vanderjagt, and Jen Waller. 2017. “From the Ground Up: A Group Editorial on the Most Pressing Issues in Scholarly Communication.” Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication 5. https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2196

Agate, Clement, Kingsley, Searle, Vanderjagt, and Waller—in their roles as Editorial Board members from the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication—share their perspectives on scholarly communication. The contributors were asked to consider specific prompts on the subject, and responses ranged from the critical opposition of profit-making publishing to open access (Waller), to the value of working with non-traditional publication formats (Searle), to the business problems of current approaches to open access in libraries (Vanderjagt). Agate takes a marked stance, suggesting that the monetization and corporatization of academic labour is one of the greatest challenges to scholarly communication, whereas Kingsley provides an introspective response to the lack of recognition that scholarly communication gets as a field unto itself. Clement argues that a more mindful approach to collaborating with authors would improve scholarly communication. Overall, this editorial provides a concise, multi-perspective meditation on challenges to scholarly communication in the twenty-first century, and the actions necessary for lasting change.

Φ Alperin, Juan Pablo, Carol Muñoz Nieves, Lesley Schimanski, Gustavo E. Fischman, Meredith T. Niles, and Erin C. McKiernan. 2018. “How Significant Are the Public Dimensions of Faculty Work in Review, Promotion, and Tenure Documents?” https://doi.org/10.17613/M6W950N35 (Φ Public & Community Engagement > Public Scholarship & Public Humanities)

Φ Canadian Scholarly Publishing Working Group. 2017. Final Report. Canadian Scholarly Publishing Working Group. https://www.carl-abrc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/CSPWG_final_report_EN.pdf (Φ Open Social Scholarship > Open Scholarship)

Boon, Marcus. 2014. “From the Right to Copy to Practices of Copying.” Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating Canadian Culture Online, edited by Rosemary J. Coombe, Darren Wershler, and Martin Zeilinger, 56–64. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Boon argues in favour of copying and suggests that the current interpretation of intellectual property is far too restrictive. The author suggests that intellectual property and copying should not be regulated by private organizations like Access Copyright, and he argues that such organizations act as proxies for the Canadian publishing industry that funds them. Rather, Boon counters, copying is a key cultural practice that should be encouraged and facilitated, not criminalized.

Borgman, Christine. 2015. Big Data, Little Data, No Data: Scholarship in the Networked World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Borgman presents a thorough overview of research data across the disciplines. She argues that data are not very well understood but are also critical for the sustenance and sustainability of scholarship. Borgman compares how data are developed, manipulated, and stored in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and repeatedly suggests that better and more comprehensive research data management practices and knowledge infrastructures are needed. Of note, she also considers the ways in which data interplay with the open scholarship movement.

† Cohen, Daniel J. 2012. “The Social Contract of Scholarly Publishing.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 319–21. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/27

Cohen remarks on the social contract of scholarly publishing—the contract between the producers (authors, editors, publishers) and the consumers (readers), or the “supply side” and the “demand side.” According to Cohen, individuals on the supply side have become increasingly experimental in recent years, but there has not been enough attention paid to the demand side. Cohen asserts that a thorough consideration of the demand side is necessary for the social contract to endure into the digital age. To accomplish this, academics must think more socially and become increasingly cognizant of the design, packaging, and outreach of their publishing ventures.

† Cohen, Daniel J., and Tom Scheinfeldt. 2013. Preface to Hacking the Academy: New Approaches to Scholarship and Teaching from Digital Humanities, edited by Daniel J. Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt, 3–5. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/dh.12172434.0001.001

Cohen and Scheinfeldt introduce Hacking the Academy, a digital publishing experiment and attempt to reform academic institutions and practices by crowdsourcing content. The editors called for submissions to their project with the caveat that participants had one week to submit. Cohen and Scheinfeldt pitched their project with the following questions: “Can an algorithm edit a journal? Can a library exist without books? Can students build and manage their own learning management platforms? Can a conference be held without a program? Can Twitter replace a scholarly society?” (3). Roughly one sixth of the 329 submissions received were included in the consequent publication. The intent of the project was to reveal the desire and possibility for large institutional change via digital means.

Φ Eve, Martin Paul, and Jonathan Gray. 2020. Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Politics, and Global Politics of Open Access. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Φ Open Social Scholarship > Open Access)

† Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. 2012a. “Beyond Metrics: Community Authorization and Open Peer Review.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 452–59. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/7

Fitzpatrick calls for a reform of scholarly communication via open peer review. She argues that the Internet has provoked a conceptual shift wherein (textual) authority is no longer measured by a respected publisher’s stamp; rather, she contends, the community now locates authority. As concepts of authority change and evolve in the digital sphere, so should methods. Peer review should be opened to various scholars in a field as well as to non-experts from other fields and citizen scholars. Fitzpatrick claims that this sort of crowdsourcing of peer review could more accurately represent scholarly and non-scholarly reaction, contribution, and understanding. Digital humanities and new media scholars already have the tools to measure digital engagement with a work; now, a better model of peer review should be implemented to take advantage of the myriad, social, networked ways scholarship is (or could be) produced.

† Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. 2012b. “The Humanities, Done Digitally.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew Gold, 12–15. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/30

Fitzpatrick addresses the long-standing debate of what should be considered the digital humanities, and addresses how the term has evolved over time to shift the focus from resting chiefly on the digital aspect. She tackles the existing tension between those who argue for digital humanities as the creation of knowledge and tools through digitized means, and those who believe it should be expanded to include interpretation. Through a set of examples, Fitzpatrick points to how this has been a long-standing issue in other aspects of the humanities. She concludes that the most productive outcome of such an argument is to bridge the opposing positions by considering the digital humanities as inherently interdisciplinary. Fitzpatrick adds that a distinctive aspect of the field is its investigation of the ways in which the digital changes traditional humanities research and scholarly communication.

Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. 2011. Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy. Manhattan: New York University Press.

Fitzpatrick examines the academic publishing system and outlines its drawbacks and possibilities. In doing so, she participates in larger conversations about the feasibility of current scholarly communication practices, especially in the face of declining library budgets and increasing academic journal subscription costs. Fitzpatrick argues that we need to rethink scholarly communication for the networked world in order to create better research output. She suggests that, in particular, the fixation on the printed monograph in the humanities needs to change. For Fitzpatrick, a revolution in scholarly communication is unavoidable because of the lack of public valuing of humanities work; the untenable nature of the current scholarly communication system, held hostage by commercial academic publishers; and a widespread desire to make scholarship more open and accessible to larger publics through networked technologies. By undertaking such a shift, the academy will become more relevant to the public it serves and could also escape from the restrictive and unsustainable publishing system to which it currently subscribes.

Φ Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. 2019. Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. (Φ Public & Community Engagement > Public Scholarship & Public Humanities)

+ † Fjällbrant, Nancy. 1997. “Scholarly Communication—Historical Development and New Possibilities.” In Proceedings of the IATUL Conference. Indiana: Purdue University Library. http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/iatul/1997/papers/5/

In order to study the widespread transition to electronic scholarly communication, Fjällbrant details the history of the scientific journal. Academic journals emerged in seventeenth-century Europe, and the first journal, Journal des Sçavans, was published in 1665 in Paris. According to Fjällbrant, the scholarly journal initially developed out of a desire for researchers to share their findings with others in a cooperative forum. As such, the journal had significant ties with the concurrent birth of learned societies (i.e., the Royal Society of London and the Académie des Sciences in Paris). As their primary concern was the dissemination of knowledge, learned societies began seriously experimenting with journals. Fjällbrant lists other contemporaneous forms of scholarly communication, including the letter, the scientific book, the newspaper, and the anagram system. The journal, however, emerged as a primary source of scholarly communication because it met the needs of various stakeholders: the general public, booksellers, libraries, authors who wished to make their work public and claim ownership, the scientific community invested in reading and applying other scientist’s findings, publishers who wished to capitalize on production, and academic institutions that required metrics for evaluating faculty.

Government of Canada. 2013. “Capitalizing on Big Data: Toward a Policy Framework for Advancing Digital Scholarship in Canada.” Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/news_room-salle_de_presse/latest_news-nouvelles_recentes/big_data_consultation-donnees_massives_consultation-eng.aspx

The Government of Canada compilers of this report present a birds-eye view of Canadian digital infrastructure (as of 2013), including its key governmental or government-aligned players and stakeholders. They consider Canada’s digital infrastructure to be nascent and promising, but in need of further resources and coordination. Although they laud Canada for its initiatives and investments to date, the compilers also note that “the potential of data-driven data has outstripped our ability to manage and grow the broader digital infrastructure ecosystem required to meet 21^st century needs” (6). To remedy this issue, the compilers suggest three major recommendations: 1) establish a culture of stewardship; 2) coordinate stakeholder engagement; 3) develop capacity and future funding parameters. The primary goal of this document is to make the case for aligned, harmonized funding policies for digital scholarship and infrastructure. In particular, the document focuses on the importance of data management.

Government of Canada, and Industry Canada. 2015. “Consultation: Developing a Digital Research Infrastructure Strategy.” Ottawa. https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/plans-reports/en/canadas-st-strategy/consultation-developing-digital-research-infrastructure-strategy

Rapidly developing technology has posed challenges for governments, which must adapt quickly in order to maintain a robust and current digital infrastructure. The Government of Canada acknowledges these challenges and suggests that Canada needs to develop an appropriate strategy to tackle them. The report authors argue, implicitly, that new policies are required; they write: “Canada’s current [digital research infrastructure (DRI)] ecosystem needs to be examined against these rapid changes” (n.p.). The goal (and method) of the document is to reiterate that a new strategy is needed, to briefly outline next steps, and to put consultation questions out to the wider community.

Guédon, Jean-Claude. 2001. In Oldenburg’s Long Shadow: Librarians, Research Scientists, Publishers, and the Control of Scientific Publishing. Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries.

Guédon assesses the state of academic publishing, including library activities and commercial publisher strategies. He argues that libraries need to take a more prominent role in the dissemination elements of scholarly communication by actively supporting and participating in open archive initiatives. Guédon also suggests that although the emergence of library consortia have proven benefits (e.g., shared resources, heightened impact), they need to work with other stakeholders as well—including researchers—in order to affect real change in current academic publishing practices.

Johns, Adrian. 2009. Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Johns performs a substantial historical analysis of information piracy and intellectual property from the seventeenth century onward. He traces contemporary notions of copyright and intellectual property back to the formalization of the book trade and argues that piracy has been rampant in the dissemination of creative material since at least that time. Johns suggests that we are about to move away from this notion of intellectual property, as for the first time since the seventeenth century the concept of authorship has transformed from its affiliation with a single individual to a more distributed, collective model, as emphasized in the Open Source movement. Notably, Johns reveals that the common assumption that a move toward open scholarship is a return to a more utopic, original form of science as unadulterated knowledge sharing is, in fact, false: knowledge sharing has been marked by ownership and piracy for centuries now.

Jones, Steven E. 2014. “Publications.” The Emergence of the Digital Humanities, 147–77. New York: Routledge.

Jones zooms in on the relationship between the digital humanities and publishing and considers the possibilities thereof. He argues that digital humanities practitioners are well positioned to explore the opportunities of digital publishing, as they can serve as subjects in their own publishing experiments. Jones details digital humanities activities directly related to scholarly communication: digitization, editing, metadata generation, and content management system design and use. But he is quick to point out that there is more to the relationship between digital humanities and publishing than applicable practitioner skills and activities; current digital publishing practices—both within and outside of academia—are also inherently networked, and therefore provide the opportunity for sociality at a scale hitherto untenable. Jones advocates for an increase in the uptake, use, creation, or repurposing of digital publishing platforms for humanities knowledge mobilization, in no small part because this can constitute and reinforce the value of the social in academic work. In doing so, he makes an argument for the importance of experimenting with digital publishing practices in order to create and share scholarly output within and beyond academia.

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. 2020. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions.

Robin Wall Kimmerer considers the relationship between scientific knowledge and Indigenous knowledge, in particular in the context of the natural world. She argues that both bodies of knowledge (and knowledge holders) are important for the study and sustenance of the environment. Kimmerer weaves together her research as a professor of ecology with Indigenous teachings; the latter derive from her own experience as a member of the Potawatomi Nation and in discussion with other Indigenous teachers. Kimmerer advocates for the importance of enacting Indigenous values of care, reciprocity, and environmental stewardship in the context of humans’ relation to the land, broadly, as well as in scientific study in particular. Overall, Kimmerer suggests that the current climate crisis is human-manufactured but can be dealt with through a substantial re-evaluation of core values and practices and the requisite actions that follow such a re-evaluation.

Laakso, Mikael, Juho Lindman, Cenyu Shen, Linus Nyman, and Bo-Christer Björk. 2017. “Research Output Availability on Academic Social Networks: Implications for Stakeholders in Academic Publishing.” Electronic Markets 27 (2): 125–33. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-016-0242-1

Laakso, Lindman, Shen, Nyman, and Björk study the role of Academic Social Networks (ASNs) in the scholarly communication landscape. In particular, the authors look at the popular, commercial platforms ResearchGate and academia.edu, and the amount of full-text access they provide, compared to the total research output of an institution. Laakso et al. argue that the impact and prominence of Academic Social Networks are often ignored in open scholarship conversations, even though the authors' study proves that they are the most prevalent source for full-text publications (from researchers at the Hanken School of Economics, Finland). Laakso et al. use the prominence of Academic Social Networks to suggest that institutional repositories could benefit from becoming better service providers for their users as well as from linking to other institutional repositories more readily. As it stands, each institutional repository is relatively siloed, providing a gap for commercial ventures like academia.edu and ResearchGate to fill by providing access to research from many different authors and their many different institutions.

Lane, Richard. 2014. “Faith-Based Electronic Publishing and Learning Environments as a Model for New Scholarly Publishing Applications.” Scholarly and Research Communication 5 (4): n.p. https://doi.org/10.22230/src.2014v5n4a188

Lane explores the popular eTheology platforms Olive Tree and Logos, and the possibilities for the uptake of their information management and design models. Lane details the advantages of popular, or non-academic, digital knowledge spaces and argues for their potential application to secular electronic publishing. The most advantageous element of this proposal may be the suggestion to tailor applications to communities of users—which Olive Tree and Logos do, as described in the article—in order to develop a more integrated and dynamically engaged scholarly publishing system that includes user analysis.

Larivière, Vincent, Stephanie Haustein, and Phillipe Mongeon. 2015. “Big Publishers, Bigger Profits: How the Scholarly Community Lost the Control of Its Journals.” Media Tropes V (2): 102–10.

Larivière, Haustein, and Mongeon discuss the overwhelming control of commercial publishers over academic journals. The authors demonstrate that across the sciences, humanities, and social sciences five big publishers are responsible for the production of over 50% of journals. For Larivière, Haustein, and Mongeon, this represents an oligopoly that is a hindrance to the flourishing of not-for-profit open access publishing.

Lawson, Stuart. 2017a. “Access, Ethics and Piracy.” Insights 30 (1): 25–30.

Lawson briefly explores the phenomenon of academic piracy, or the sharing of copyrighted, toll access research on sites like SciHub or aaaaarg. They rely on the historical framework that Adrian Johns lays in his book Piracy to reinforce the idea that intellectual property is not a natural or necessary state, and only came about in response to the rampant copying of books in eighteenth-century England. Although Lawson isn’t anti-piracy, per se (suggesting that sometimes what is ethical is not the same as what is legal), they do argue that open access is a way to share scholarship widely and legally. Lawson credits academic pirating sites for proving that the current, restrictive scholarly communication system is no longer fit for purpose: open access offers a legal alternative.

Lawson, Stuart. 2017b. “Against Capital.” Proceedings of ReCon: Publishing for Early Career Researchers—Immortalisation, Recognition & Metrics. Edinburgh, Scotland. http://stuartlawson.org/2017/07/against-capital/

Lawson takes aim at the rhetoric of disruption and newness in scholarly communication. They argue that as long as we continue to subscribe to a capitalist and neoliberal higher education system, we will not achieve true progress in democratizing knowledge or reasserting control over the means of academic production. Lawson goes on to demonstrate how neoliberalism manifests in various elements of higher education, and pinpoints technological developments like alt-metrics as tools for further neoliberalist development, rather than opportunities for working in more efficient, creative, or fair ways. They also focus on open access policy developments in the UK that have maintained corporate publisher profit margins or else affiliated open access with burdensome bureaucracy. The answer, for Lawson, to an improved publishing system is straightforward: a socialist approach to scholarly communication.

Leadership Council for Digital Research Infrastructure. 2014. “‘Think Piece’ on a DI Roadmap.”

Members of the Leadership Council for Digital Research Infrastructure (LCDRI) draw attention to the need for robust and sustainable digital research infrastructure in Canada in this report. The compilers argue that a widely coordinated approach is needed—an approach that includes increased collaboration across stakeholders, a cohesive national policy, and a significant data management strategy. To facilitate such an approach, the authors suggest a coalition grown from the extant Leadership Council for Digital Research Infrastructure. They outline a proposed two-phased action agenda, and propose roles for other relevant agencies, groups, and institutions. This method is effective as it demonstrates the Council’s expertise with digital infrastructure in Canada, and calls attention to major players and key deficiencies in the current system.

Φ Levkoe, Charles Z., Amanda Wilson, and Victoria Schembri. 2018. “Community-Academic Peer Review: Prospects for Strengthening Community-Campus Engagement and Enriching Scholarship” Engaged Scholars Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning 4 (2): 1–20. (Φ Public & Community Engagement > Collaboration, Partnership, & Engagement)

Lewis, Vivian, Lisa Spiro, Xuemao Wang, and Jon E. Cawthorne. 2015. Building Expertise to Support Digital Scholarship: A Global Perspective. Council on Library and Information Resources. https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub168

Lewis, Spiro, Wang, and Cawthorne aim to remedy the lack of global-scope research on best practices for developing, sustaining, and participating in digital scholarship centres. They argue that digital scholarship is of the utmost importance on an international scale, and it behooves the academy at large to understand and reflect on how to foster digital scholarship at the institutional level. To support this claim, Lewis et al. focus on gathering information about digital scholarship expertise, institutional structures, and requisite competencies. They conduct site visits and interviews around the world in order to pursue their digital scholarship centre research. The authors profile 16 sites from Canada, China, Germany, India, Mexico, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Overall, Lewis et al. comment on the many differences between sites, and the impossibility of drawing conclusions about how an entire country deals with digital scholarship, or the single best way to run a digital scholarship centre. They also outline the complexities of running such centres, not least of all the difficulty in securing stable, long-term funding. Regardless, Lewis et al. formulate a handful of broader recommendations for best practices, based on their interviews; the authors stress the centrality of collaboration, the importance of supportive institutional structures for staff and centres alike, and the value of prioritizing curiosity-driven research at all levels of an organization.

Lovett, Julia A., Andrée J. Rathemacher, Diana Boukari, and Corey Lang. 2017. “Institutional Repositories and Academic Social Networks: Competition or Complement? A Study of Open Access Policy Compliance vs. ResearchGate Participation.” Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication 5 (1). https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2183

Lovett, Rathemacher, Boukari, and Lang examine whether faculty members at the University of Rhode Island deposit their work more with ResearchGate or with the institution’s own repository. To do so, the authors carry out a population study and survey of over 500 faculty members. They find that scholars who are prone to depositing with one system will likely deposit with another. As such, Lovett et al. argue, librarians should not consider social networking sites as competition for institutional open access repositories. The authors do, however, suggest that further education still needs to be done about what open access policies entail, the difference between commercial and academic repositories, and the benefits of publishing open access.

Lynch, Clifford A. 2010. “Imagining a University Press System to Support Scholarship in the Digital Age.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 13 (2): n.p. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0013.207?view=text;rgn=main

Lynch proposes a vision for the future of scholarly communication: a world where all universities have a university press of their own, not least at all for reasons of publishing their faculty’s more esoteric work. Lynch is adamant that a coordinated system across university presses would be beneficial, as it would streamline processes and be more economically viable than a collection of boutique institutions with idiosyncratic needs. He also makes some proposals for the future of the monograph, which he sees as stuck in a fetishistic print mode, even if online. Rather, Lynch suggests, monographs should take advantage of the possibilities of electronic forms and networked technologies, and institutions should support rather than punish such experimentation. Lynch acknowledges that he does not provide guidance on how to move from the current state of scholarly communication to this ideal future; rather, he urges a reconsideration of the current business and organizational problems endemic to academic publishing and suggests that collective action could lead to a more efficient and sustainable scholarly communication future.

Mandell, Laura. 2015. Breaking the Book: Print Humanities in the Digital Age. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.

Within the context of the transition from print-based to electronic-based knowledge production, Mandell focuses on the book of literary or cultural criticism and charts it from the eighteenth century through to the present day. Mandell argues that the book of criticism—and its author, and larger academic context—are in need of a significant transformation, and that the emergence of digital forms and formats has the potential to redirect the humanities for the better, if stewarded appropriately. More broadly, Mandell condemns the conventional one-way street of scholarly communication, which does not encourage engagement or discussion beyond the standard, sparse back-and-forth between academic authors via peer review, articles, book reviews, or conferences. She argues that digital forms of scholarship open up the academy and will force literary and cultural critics out of their echo chambers and into the rest of the world.

Martin III, John D. 2017. “Piracy, Public Access, and Preservation: An Exploration of Sustainable Accessibility in a Public Torrent Index.” SocArXiv: n.p. https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/hzp6r/

Martin considers the argument that torrent sites like The Pirate Bay should be considered as public libraries, as some torrent advocates have argued. He concludes that there is a massive amount of cultural material on The Pirate Bay and other similar sites, and that there may be a tragic loss of cultural data should these sites be shut down. However, Martin also suggests that torrent sites should not be considered as public libraries, as their content is far too fragile and prone to removal. Moreover, it is arguable that the lack of a central authority for acquiring, maintaining, coordinating, and preserving cultural material collections would be a significant hindrance to torrent sites’ status as credible and comprehensive public libraries.

Maryl, Maciej, Marta Błaszczyńska, Agnieszka Szulińska, and Paweł Rams. 2020. “The Case for an Inclusive Scholarly Communication Infrastructure for Social Sciences and Humanities.” F1000Research 9 (1265): n.p. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.26545.1

Maryl, Błaszczyńska, Szulińska, and Rams ruminate on the current state of scholarly communication, especially in Europe, and make suggestions for future priorities and transitions. Maryl et al. argue that although openness in scholarly communication is on the rise, there are still a number of challenges—not least of all for the humanities and social sciences. Within the framework of building and sustaining research infrastructure for the humanities and social sciences, the authors point to several areas that they feel should be supported over the coming years: open access, discipline-specific formats, sensible evaluation and quality assurance, multilingualism and bibliodiversity, researcher-led governance, and engagement of extra-academic stakeholders. Overall, Maryl et al. provide a comprehensive overview of the European scholarly communication landscape and highlight key issues for consideration.

+ † Maxwell, John W. 2014. “Publishing Education in the 21st Century and the Role of the University.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 17 (2): n.p. https://doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0017.205

From his perspective within the Canadian Institute for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University, Maxwell ruminates on the current state of university-level training in publishing studies, as well as its future role. He considers the shifting economy and the rise of digital media and practices to be major factors influencing the current Canadian academic and non-academic publishing scene. Maxwell suggests that the university has a pivotal role to play in reinvigorating publishing by encouraging a supportive community of practice as well as openness to creativity, innovation, and flexibility. Overall, Maxwell underlines the importance of academic publishing studies in the evolving publishing scene.

Maxwell, John, Alessandra Bordini, and Katie Shamash. 2017. “Reassembling Scholarly Communications: An Evaluation of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Monograph Initiative.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 20 (1): n.p.

Maxwell, Bordini, and Shamash report on a 2014–15 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation scholarly communication initiative that supported 13 monograph-focused grants. The authors’ stated goal is to “identify the points of interconnection, congruence, and tension among these proposals, with the hope of providing perspective on both the individual projects, and the Foundation’s initiative itself” (n.p.). Maxwell, Bordini, and Shamash’s primary method is to organize and present the projects in four unique categories: 1) studies of monograph publishing processes and economics; 2) projects that enhance monograph publishing at university presses; 3) projects that develop digital publication capacity for faculty; and 4) projects that develop digital capacity at university presses. Throughout the report they also argue that monograph publication is a multipurpose endeavour: it simultaneously incorporates institutional knowledge production, the endowment of accreditation or status on authors, and small-scale industrial activity. As such, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for monographs in the digital age.

Δ McKenna, Colleen, and Jane Hughes. 2013. “Values, Digital Texts, and Open Practices—a Changing Scholarly Landscape in Higher Education.” In Literacy in the Digital University: Critical Perspectives on Learning, Scholarship, and Technology, edited by Robin Goodfellow and Mary R. Lea, 15–26. London, UK: Routledge.

McKenna and Hughes discuss which values—in relation to power, control, and trust—are embedded in practices around digital texts by scholars and students. In the case of using plagiarism detector software to evaluate students’ work, the authors argue that this practice obscures issues of trust and surveillance, reduces plagiarism to the mere copying of words, and undermines trust between the professor and the student. Regarding digital texts by scholars, the authors find that the use of blogging and microblogging platforms accords with the Open Education movement because they both establish community, share ideas, and co-author or reauthor texts. Their ideas rely on an academic literacy paradigm, which views writing as a social practice and considers issues of power, context, and identities in relation to digital literacy. They conclude that it is important to articulate and critique the values that underpin these new digital practices around the use of plagiarism detector software, blogs, and Twitter.

Minister of Industry. 2015. Digital Canada 150: 2.0. Ottawa.

The Government of Canada Minister of Industry outlines how the Canadian government has responded to rapid technological development in recent years. Throughout the report, the compilers argue that it is necessary to provide individuals and businesses in Canada with the skills, opportunities, and protections to succeed in an increasingly networked world. Digital Canada 150: 2.0 reports on the previous Digital Canada 150 plan, and largely outlines the government’s actions and successes to date. The document includes five “pillars” or areas of concern: 1) “Connecting Canadians,” which includes considerations for wifi, telecommunications companies, and network access in rural areas; 2) “Protecting Canadians,” which encompasses online identity protection and anti-spam laws; 3) “Economic Opportunities,” which outlines dedicated resources for jobs and research in technology sectors; 4) “Digital Government,” which focuses on open government and open data initiatives; and 5) “Canadian Content,” which reports on developments in television companies, as well as the increase of digital media in cultural heritage institutions. Overall, the report outlines the government’s investment in digital technology, as well as relevant sectors in industry and research.

Neylon, Cameron. 2017b. “Sustaining Scholarly Infrastructures through Collective Action: The Lessons that Olson can Teach us.” KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies 1 (1): n.p. https://kula.uvic.ca/index.php/kula/article/view/120

Neylon meditates on how best to enable sustainability for largescale scholarly communication infrastructure. Neylon’s goal is to explore “how we can sustain shared platform systems that support scholarly communities through the collection, storage, and transmission of shared resources” (n.p.), and he provides a number of examples of scholarly infrastructures and their funding models. Comparing these initiatives within the context of political economy literature, Neylon comes to the conclusion that a smaller governance body coordinating the development of scholarly infrastructure would be valuable, as it would put into place a reasonable number of decision makers to guide collective action. Since scholarly communication encompasses so many thousands of institutions and actors, it would be nearly impossible to coordinate largescale infrastructure otherwise. In this way, a sustainable and sustaining infrastructure could be developed—one that is relative and responsive to fluctuations in the size and scope of the community.

Niles, Meredith T., Lesley A. Schimanski, Erin C. McKiernan, and Juan Pablo Alperin. 2020. “Why We Publish Where We Do: Faculty Publishing Values and Their Relationship to Review, Promotion and Tenure Expectations.” PLoS ONE 15 (3): e0228914. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228914

Niles, Schimanski, McKiernan, and Alperin focus on the gap between what faculty express as their own publishing values and what they assume their colleagues’ values are. Niles et al. demonstrate that although faculty suggest their own publishing values are community-oriented (e.g., they are concerned with relevant journals, audience reach, and open access), they also believe their colleagues to value journal prestige and impact more. Such an outcome pushes against the widely held notion that tenure and promotion depends on so-called “status” publishing. Niles et al. recommend that the disconnect between values and behaviour should be addressed through providing platforms and mechanisms for faculty to publish according to their stated values.

O’Sullivan, James, Christopher P. Long, and Mark A. Mattson. 2016. “Dissemination as Cultivation: Scholarly Communications in a Digital Age.” Doing Digital Humanities, edited by Constance Crompton, Richard Lane, and Raymond G. Siemens, 384–97. London and New York: Routledge.

O’Sullivan, Long, and Mattson focus on the optimistic possibilities of digital scholarly communication. The authors argue that the digital age brings opportunities for new ways to communicate the same work (in this case, humanities scholarship), but that such novel pursuits must be tempered by careful attention to appropriate medium and tone. O’Sullivan, Long, and Mattson share various examples of scholars participating in online spaces: publishing on digital platforms like Scalar, blogging, experimenting with peer-review methods (e.g., with the Public Philosophy Journal), and engaging with social media.

Φ Pooley, Jefferson. 2017a. “Scholarly Communications Shouldn’t Just Be Open, but Non-Profit Too.” LSE Impact Blog. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2017/08/15/scholarly-communications-shouldnt-just-be-open-but-non-profit-too/ (Φ Open Social Scholarship > Open Scholarship)

Pooley, Jefferson. 2017b. “The Impact Platform.” Parameters: Knowledge Under Digital Conditions. http://parameters.ssrc.org/2017/01/the-impact-platform/

Pooley weighs the pros and cons of the recent development of websites like The Conversation, which showcase scholarly pieces written for a non-specialist audience. Pooley argues that this sort of publication venue is flawed and problematic because it encourages the data-driven reliance on quantitative metrics to judge the value of academic work. Many feel as though this turn toward metrics is unfair, as access and usage metrics do not accurately portray the depth of engagement or intellectual impact on a reader. Pooley measures this drawback against the value of so-called impact platforms as successful arbiters of open scholarship. He also lauds the open licensing and emphasis on reuse/republication of The Conversation as an example of positive open access mechanisms that encourage wide dissemination of and engagement with academic work.

+† Powell, Daniel James, Raymond G. Siemens, and the INKE Research Group. 2014. “Building Alternative Scholarly Publishing Capacity: The Renaissance Knowledge Network (ReKN) as Digital Production Hub.” Scholarly and Research Communication 5 (4): n.p. https://doi.org/10.22230/src.2014v5n4a183

Powell, Siemens, and the INKE Research Group report on the status of the Renaissance Knowledge Network (ReKN), an Advanced Research Consortium node. The Renaissance Knowledge Network is a largescale collaborative project that spans the University of Victoria, the University of Toronto, and Texas A&M University. The authors detail the planning phase of the Renaissance Knowledge Network, a project that aims to centralize and integrate research and production in a single online platform that will serve the specific needs of early modern scholars. The authors aim to develop and implement the Renaissance Knowledge Network as a dynamic, holistic scholarly environment. For a further update, please see Powell, Siemens, and Bowen, with Hiebert and Seatter (2015), an article that reflects on the first six months of the Renaissance Knowledge Network development that is also included in this bibliography.

+† Powell, Daniel, Raymond G. Siemens, William R. Bowen, Matthew Hiebert, and Lindsey Seatter. 2015. “Transformation through Integration: The Renaissance Knowledge Network (ReKN) and a Next Wave of Scholarly Publication.” Scholarly and Research Communication 6 (2): n.p. https://doi.org/10.22230/src.2015v6n2a199

Powell, Siemens, Bowen, Hiebert, and Seatter explore the first six months of the Andrew W. Mellon-funded Renaissance Knowledge Network. The authors focus on the potential for interoperability and metadata aggregation of various Renaissance and early modern digital projects. They examine how interconnected resources and scholarly environments might integrate publication and markup tools. Powell et al. consider how projects like the Renaissance Knowledge Network contribute to the shifting practices of contemporary scholarly publishing. For a detailed exploration of the Renaissance Knowledge Network’s planning phase of, please see Powell, Siemens, and the INKE Research Group (2014), also included in this bibliography.

Research Data Canada. 2013. “Research Data Canada Response to Capitalizing on Big Data: Towards a Policy Framework for Advancing Digital Scholarship in Canada.” Ottawa. http://www.rdc-drc.ca/wp-content/uploads/Research-Data-Canada-Response-to-the-Tri-Council-Consultation-on-Digital-Scholarship.pdf

Research Data Canada responds to a Government of Canada report (“Capitalizing on Big Data”) that grapples with the issue of growing digital scholarship. The Research Data Canada authors suggest that the government needs to pay more heed to long-term, rather than short-term, researcher-focused data curation. They also argue that although provisions for graduate student and early career researcher training are positive developments, it is necessary to designate, train, and support distinct data professionals. Further, Research Data Canada claims that an increase in cross-sector collaboration with industry would be beneficial, as would more engagement with the international data community. The authors applaud the government for taking part in the digital scholarship discussion, and then succinctly outline which areas require more attention.

Roh, Charlotte, Harrison W. Inefuku, and Emily Drabinski. 2020. “Scholarly Communications and Social Justice.” In Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Politics, and Global Politics of Open Access, edited by Martin Paul Eve and Jonathan Gray, 41–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Roh, Inefuku, and Drabinski consider open access within the larger context of scholarly communication from an ethical perspective. The authors argue that although open access is a social justice movement in theory, the practice of open access could be much more progressive, inclusive, and equitable. Roh, Inefuku, and Drabinski point to disparities in publication output, topics, and practitioners, all of which are slanted toward the Global North. They suggest that scholarly communication would do well to reorient toward equity and justice rather than upholding colonial or overly-dominant practices.

Salo, Dorothea. 2013. “How to Scuttle a Scholarly Communication Initiative.” Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication 1 (4): n.p. https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.1075

Salo offers a tongue-in-cheek accounting of the various ways one could systematically destroy a scholarly communication initiative—especially an open access scholarly communication initiative. She writes from the library perspective, but her comments resonate with those involved in scholarly communication in any role. Beyond Salo's satire, which is certainly poignant for many, she provides useful guidelines for what not to do in pursuing scholarly communication initiatives.

+ † Siemens, Raymond G. 2002. “Scholarly Publishing at its Source, and at Present.” Introduction to The Credibility of Electronic Publishing: A Report to the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, compiled by Raymond G. Siemens, Michael Best, Elizabeth Grove-White, Alan Burk, James Kerr, Andy Pope, Jean-Claude Guédon, Geoffrey Rockwell, and Lynne Siemens. Text Technology 11 (1): n.p. https://web.archive.org/web/20151012065051/https://web.viu.ca/hssfc/Final/Overview.html

Siemens’ introduction to this report focuses on the rethinking of scholarly communication practices in light of new digital forms. He meditates on this topic through the framework of ad fontes—the act, or conception, of going to the source. Siemens argues that scholars should look at the source, or genesis, of scholarly communication. The source, for Siemens, includes more than the seventeenth-century inception of the academic print journal; it also includes less formal ways of communicating and disseminating knowledge (i.e., verbal exchanges, epistolary correspondence, and manuscript circulation). In this way, scholars can look past the popular, standard academic journal and into a future of scholarly communication that productively involves varied scholarly traditions and social knowledge practices.

Tennant, Jonathan P., Harry Crane, Tom Crick, Jacinto Davila, Asura Enkhbayar, Johanna Havemann, Bianca Kramer, Ryan Martin, Paola Masuzzo, Andy Nobes, Curt Rice, Bárbara Rivera-López, Tony Ross-Hellauer, Susanne Sattler, Paul D. Thacker, and Marc Vanholsbeeck. 2019. “Ten Hot Topics Around Scholarly Publishing.” Publications 7 (34). https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/7/2/34/html

Tennant, Crane, Crick, Davila, Enkhbayar, Havemann, Kramer, Martin, Masuzzo, Nobes, Rice, Rivera-López, Ross-Hellauer, Sattler, Thacker, and Vanholsbeeck present and explore oft-debated issues in scholarly communication, in particular around open access publishing. They suggest that there are various misconceptions and differing opinions floating around in this realm, and hope to tackle some of these issues in order to bring more clarity to the discussion. Overall, Tennant et al. clear up misinformation and misunderstandings about open access publishing.

Wilkinson, Mark D., Michel Dumontier, IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg, Gabrielle Appleton, Myles Axton, Arie Baak, Niklas Blomberg, Jan-Willem Boiten, Luiz Bonino da Silva Santos, Philip E. Bourne, Jildau Bouwman, Anthony J. Brookes, Tim Clark, Mercè Crosas, Ingrid Dillo, Olivier Dumon, Scott Edmunds, Chris T. Evelo, Richard Finkers, Alejandra Gonzalez-Beltran, Alasdair J.G. Gray, Paul Groth, Carole Goble, Jeffrey S. Grethe, Jaap Heringa, Peter A. C. ’t Hoen, Rob Hooft, Tobias Kuhn, Ruben Kok, Joost Kok, Scott J. Lusher, Maryann E. Martone, Albert Mons, Abel L. Packer, Bengt Persson, Philippe Rocca-Serra, Marco Roos, Rene van Schaik, Susanna-Assunta Sansone, Erik Schultes, Thierry Sengstag, Ted Slater, George Strawn, Morris A. Swertz, Mark Thompson, Johan van der Lei, Erik van Mulligen, Jan Velterop, Andra Waagmeester, Peter Wittenburg, Katherine Wolstencroft, Jun Zhao, and Barend Mons. 2016. “The FAIR Guiding Principles for Scientific Data Management and Stewardship.” Scientific Data 3 (160018). https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18

Wilkinson et al. provide context and history for the development of the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable Reusable (FAIR) principles for data management. According to Wilkinson et al., the now well-known principles were originally developed at a 2014 workshop in the Netherlands called “Jointly Designing a Data Fairport.” Building on this workshop, members of the Future of Research Communications and e-Scholarship (FORCE 11) community established a dedicated FAIR working group that nuanced and improved the principles. The authors argue that these principles will improve the quality and usability of research, especially research that includes large data sets.

† Williams, George H. 2012. “Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 202–12. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/44

Williams acknowledges a major limitation of digital humanities: the field has not addressed the needs of people who are differently abled, especially within the context of preservation and accessibility of digital information. For Williams, this is crucial to resolve, as many digital humanities projects are federally funded and their materials must be made openly accessible to the public by law. Williams points out that contemporary web standards and practices can accommodate the needs (and devices) of many. He proposes implementing universal design in the creation of digital resources, and provides examples of different projects that work to make the digital humanities a more inclusive field. Williams concludes by acknowledging that this beneficial direction would ensure that digital resources are useful and usable by a wide array of people now and in the future.

Digital Artifacts: Articles, Journals, Monographs, Scholarly Editions, & Other Books

Adema, Janneke. 2015. “The Monograph Crisis Revisited.” Open Reflections 29 (January). openreflections.wordpress.com/2015/01/29/the-monograph-crisis-revisited/

Adema critiques a report written by Geoffrey Crossick for the Higher Education Funding Council for England titled Monographs and Open Access. Crossick argues that there is no crisis in monograph publishing, and that rhetoric to that end has been overblown. Primarily, he bases this argument on the fact that four major commercial British publishers have increased their monograph production in recent years. Adema contests this argument by pointing out that increased production does not actually acknowledge the heart of the monograph crisis issue: that specialized, niche, or first books are not able to be published because they will not generate enough interest, and thus profit. Adema also argues that one of the main causes of the crisis in monograph publishing is that commercial publishers have edged out university presses and smaller presses around the world—so the continued success of a handful of British commercial presses does not speak to the issues at hand. Further, Adema exposes that Crossick is biased toward the status quo—that is, to maintaining the large profit margins of commercial publishers. For instance, even though he acknowledges the importance of open access, he warns that it should only be employed in such a way that benefits profit-generating stakeholders.

Φ Adema, Janneke. 2021. Living Books: Experiments in the Posthumanities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Φ Scholarly Communication > Contemporary Issues)

Φ Asmah, Josephine. 2014. International Policy and Practice on Open Access for Monographs. Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. https://www.ideas-idees.ca/sites/default/files/aspp-oa-appendix.pdf (Φ Open Social Scholarship > Open Access)

+ Andersen, Christian Ulrik, and Søren Bro Pold. 2014. “Post-digital Books and Disruptive Literary Machines.” Formules/Revue des creations formelles et littératures à contraintes 18: 169–88.

Andersen and Pold explain that the book is now “post-digital” and provide various examples of innovative and common textual artifacts to support this claim. They argue that the infrastructure around electronic publications has been normalized and integrated fully into international reading, writing, and consumption practices. Andersen and Pold emphasize the capitalism inherent to current mainstream digital text platforms, like Amazon, and detail and vouch for attempts to counter the controlled, corporate, and user-objectifying electronic text ecosystem.

Ball, Cheryl E., and Douglas Eyman. 2015. “Editorial Workflows for Multimedia-Rich Scholarship.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 18 (4). https://doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0018.406

Ball and Eyman discuss the ramifications of the transition to digitally mediated publishing processes in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the resultant increase in multimedia scholarly production. They deem multimedia scholarly artifacts “webtexts” (n.p.) and explore their development and production, drawing from their experience as editors of the online journal Kairos. Ball and Eyman argue that print-based editorial workflows are insufficient for webtexts; rather, they suggest, these distinctly digital scholarly products require a degree of rigour, sensitivity to format, and collaborative review process fine-tuned to the valences of multimedia artifacts. Ultimately, the authors’ goal is to share knowledge of webtexts and their publication, and in doing so, work toward a system that better supports multimedia in web publishing.

+ Bath, Jon, Scott Schofield, and the INKE Research Group. 2014. “The Digital Book.” In The Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book, edited by Leslie Howsam, 181–95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bath and Schofield reflect on the rise of the e-book by contemplating the various moving parts involved in its history and production. They focus on, and contribute to, the scholarly engagement with e-books, and they provide a comprehensive survey of theorists, including Johanna Drucker, Elizabeth Eisenstein, N. Katherine Hayles, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Jerome McGann, D. F. McKenzie, and Marshall McLuhan. Bath and Schofield integrate these theorists into a larger argument that suggests that both a nuanced understanding of book history and a comprehensive familiarity with digital scholarship are necessary to fully grasp the material and historical significance of the e-book. The authors conclude with a call to book history and digital humanities specialists (“scholar-coders”) to collaborate and develop new digital research environments together.

† Biagioli, Mario. 2002. “From Book Censorship to Academic Peer Review.” Emergences 12 (1): 11–45.

Biagioli details the historical and epistemological shifts that have led to the academic peer-review system as it is now known. Contrary to its contemporary role, peer review began as an early modern disciplinary technique closely related to book censorship and required for social and scholarly certification of institutions and individuals alike. The rise of academic journals shifted this constrained and royally-mandated position; no longer a self-sustaining system of judgment and reputation dictated by a small group of identified and accredited professionals, (often blind) peer review now focuses on disseminating knowledge and scholarship to the wider community. Biagioli also states that journals have moved from officially representing specific academic institutions to being community owned and operated, as responsibilities, duties, and readership are now dispersed among a group of like-minded scholars.

Brienza, Casey. 2015. “Activism, Legitimation, or Record: Towards a New Tripartite Typology of Academic Journals.” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 46: 141–157.

Brienza aims to typologize academic journals based on their social or professional purpose. To do so, she reviews and critiques previous typologies of journals, and develops her own typology in response. Brienza argues that there are three types of journals: journals of professional legitimation, journals of record, and journals of transformational activism. She suggests that publishers “would do best to focus on playing a mutualistic role in the development and legitimation of new disciplinary formations and geographic concentrations of intellectual excellence” (155), rather than on supporting or promoting journals of record or transformational activism. These latter journal types, Brienza states, do not have a comparable capacity for growth and development, and do not need further support, as they are generally well-established already.

† Christie, Alex, and the INKE and MVP Research Groups. 2014. “Interdisciplinary, Interactive, and Online: Building Open Communication Through Multimodal Scholarly Articles and Monographs.” Scholarly and Research Communication 5 (4): n.p. http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/190

Christie considers the possibilities for uniting text-based scholarship with multimodal content. He focuses on features and platforms that are suitable for both text-based and multimedia scholarship, and suggests that digital scholarly publishing may better facilitate interaction between humanities scholars and the public. For Christie, rethinking scholarly communication in these ways must be supported by advanced cyberinfrastructure. The knowledge products and environments that result must also privilege multimedia, interactivity, user engagement, and implementation. This sort of platform thinking inheres a strategic reconsideration of interactivity, interdisciplinarity, design, and infrastructure investment.

† Clement, Tanya. 2011. “‘Knowledge Representation and Digital Scholarly Editions in Theory and Practice.’” Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative 1: n.p. https://doi.org/10.4000/jtei.203

Clement reflects on scholarly digital editions as sites of textual performance, wherein the editor lays down and privileges various narrative threads for the reader to pick up and interpret. She underscores this theoretical discussion with examples from her own work with the digital edition In Transition: Selected Poems by the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, as well as TEI and XML encoding and the Versioning Machine. Clement details how editorial decisions shape the social experience of an edition. By applying John Bryant’s theory of the fluid text to her own editorial practice, she focuses on concepts of various textual performances and meaning-making events. Notably, Clement also explores the idea of the social text network. She concludes that the concept of the network is not new to digital editions; nevertheless, conceiving of a digital edition as a network of various players, temporal spaces, and instantiations promotes fruitful scholarly exploration.

Φ + † Crompton, Constance, Raymond G. Siemens, and Alyssa Arbuckle, with the Devonshire Manuscript Editorial Group. 2015. “Enlisting ‘Vertues Noble & Excelent’: Behavior, Credit, and Knowledge Organization in the Social Edition.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 9 (2): n.p. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/2/000202/000202.html (Φ Public & Community Engagement > Social Knowledge Creation, including Wikipedia & Crowdsourcing)

Elliott, Michael A. 2015. “The Future of the Monograph in the Digital Era: A Report to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 18 (4). https://doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0018.407

Elliott’s goal is to explore the viability of an alternative publishing model for monographs within the context of the shifting scholarly communication environment. He argues that the best path forward is a model where universities fund the open access, digital publication of monographs, with print-on-demand possibilities. This report is based on the deliberations of a working group at Emory University, who met over 2014–2015 to parse through possibilities for the monograph and its publication, moving forward. Among other ruminations, Elliott argues that the digital monograph must incorporate several features that both advance scholarship and dovetail with existing humanities practices: robust peer review, ample marketing, conscientious design, flexible licensing, provisions for sustainability and preservation, printability, annotation, searchability, and hyperlinking.

Erickson, John, Carl Lagoze, Sandy Payette, Herbert Van de Sompel, and Simeon Warner. 2004. “Rethinking Scholarly Communication: Building the System That Scholars Deserve.” D-Lib Magazine 10 (9): n.p. https://doi.org/10.1045/september2004-vandesompel

Erickson, Lagoze, Payette, Van de Sompel, and Warner ruminate on transforming scholarly communication to better serve and facilitate knowledge creation. They primarily target the current academic journal system; for the authors, this system constrains scholarly work, as it is expensive, difficult to access, and print biased. Erickson et al. propose a digital system for scholarly communication that more effectively incorporates ideals of interoperability, adaptability, innovation, documentation, and democratization. Furthermore, the proposed system would be implemented as a concurrent knowledge production environment instead of a mere stage, annex, or afterthought for scholarly work.

Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. 2007. “CommentPress: New (Social) Structures for New (Networked) Texts.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 10 (3). https://doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0010.305

Fitzpatrick suggests that electronic publishing should reproduce the organization and structure of the print book, but that it should not take a skuemorphic approach (that mimics the look of the book), nor employ more radical, disorienting approaches (in an attempt to disperse the authority of the author). Fitzpatrick argues that by using a tool like CommentPress—a Wordpress plug-in that facilitates side-by-side commenting on texts—one can return to a more social mode of reading. For Fitzpatrick, this electronic publishing option is superior to others, as it incorporates well-structured information and social elements. She considers hypertext projects confusing and agency-diminishing for readers who have to guess at the author’s intention, and who cannot develop a sense of the whole piece at any one point. By contrast, tools like CommentPress can offer a more linear reading experience with the added benefit of public commenting. In this way, readers also engage in a form of writing (via commenting), and all participants undertake collaborative, social knowledge creation.

Φ Grimme, Sara, Mike Taylor, Michael A. Elliott, Cathy Holland, Peter Potter, and Charles Watkinson. 2019. “The State of Open Monographs.” Digital Science. https://doi.org/10.6084/M9.FIGSHARE.8197625 (Φ Open Social Scholarship > Open Access)

Ψ Hartley, John, Jason Potts, Lucy Montgomery, Ellie Rennie, and Cameron Neylon. 2019. “Do We Need to Move From Communication Technology to User Community? A New Economic Model of the Journal as a Club.” Learned Publishing 32: 27–35.

Hartley et al. note that scholarly journals and open access are typically understood in the context of economics, but present a different way of understanding them: not as communication technologies but as “club goods” created by knowledge communities. Understanding articles as communication technologies can justify paying publishers to overcome technical challenges such as production of print journals, distribution in the “desktop era,” and scale in the Internet age. The authors argue that we should instead understand journals through club theory economics, which recognizes a category of club goods created by clubs for the benefit of their members, distinct from public and private goods. Journals are goods through which a scholarly community defines itself and its field by including or excluding ideas and members: publishing in certain journals and reading and citing publications in those journals identifies researchers as members, which has social and professional value. The club economics model helps explain the decline of journals that grow too large too quickly, since their lack of exclusivity diminishes the value of belonging to the club. Understanding journals as club goods refocuses attention on their value for knowledge communities and enables a critical examination of current publishing practices. The authors conclude by noting that it is researchers—club members—who benefit most from understanding journals as clubs since their knowledge communities are at stake.

Maron, Nancy, Kimberly Schmelzinger, Christine Mulhern, and Daniel Rossman. 2016. “The Costs of Publishing Monographs: Toward a Transparent Methodology.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 19 (1). https://doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0019.103

Maron, Schmelzinger, Mulhern, and Rossman tackle the issue of how best to fund open access monograph publication. They argue that if monographs do need to transition, en masse, to an open access model, then monograph production costs must be accounted for even as they oscillate between university presses. Maron et al. present extensive data on the monograph production costs of 382 titles from 20 university presses in the 2014 fiscal year. After studying this data, the authors conclude that the average cost per monograph is $28,747 USD. In seeking and compiling this information, the authors pursue a tripartite goal of providing a comprehensive list of the activities needed in order to produce high-quality digital monographs; generating actual data on the current cost of monograph production for university presses; and offering recommendations for general principles to guide said presses in potentially establishing price points for author-side payments for open access digital monographs, one of the proposed funding solutions.

Maxwell, John. 2013. “E-Book Logic: We Can Do Better.” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 51 (1): n.p.

The e-book is often considered a product of the twenty-first century; but Maxwell contests that there has in fact been roughly four decades of electronic, or electronically facilitated, book writing and publishing. He subverts the myth of newness that surrounds e-books, and suggests instead that what is new are the publishing industry’s strategies to control user interaction and consumption of book-based media. He outlines how corporations (namely Amazon) have created a system of isolated, proprietary e-books. By contrast, Maxwell argues, e-books should be open, networked, web-based artifacts.

Φ Maxwell, John, Alessandra Bordini, and Katie Shamash. 2017. “Reassembling Scholarly Communications: An Evaluation of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Monograph Initiative.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 20 (1): n.p. (Φ Scholarly Communication > Contemporary Issues)

Maxwell, John, and Kathleen Fraser. 2010. “Traversing the Book of MPub: An Agile, Web-First Publishing Model.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 13 (3): n.p.

Maxwell and Fraser propose that publishing should start on the web. They suggest that contemporary publishing is mainly born digital anyways—rarely does an author write on paper, then undergo a publication process dedicated to preserving the printedness of the written piece. Rather, most authors create digital artifacts, and publishers subject these artifacts to automated, desktop, and online production processes. However, this computer-based work often seeks to replicate the print production practices of another time, while moving steadily away from print forms. As proof of the validity and effectiveness of a web-first publishing model, Maxwell and Fraser discuss The Book of MPub, a graduate-level project undertaken in 2010 at the Canadian Institute for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University. They explain the value of employing distinct technologies or methods like agile development, content management systems, XHTML, and web-first workflows, and walk through how each was applied in the creation of The Book of MPub. For Maxwell and Fraser, re-visioning the book as web-born rather than translated to the web would open up many more opportunities for publishers, as this approach could introduce a degree of fluidity and dynamism hitherto missing from more traditional conceptions of publishing.

Φ † McGann, Jerome. 2001. Radiant Textuality: Literary Studies After the World Wide Web. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (Φ Public & Community Engagement > Research Creation & Community Engagement)

Neylon, Cameron, Lucy Montgomery, Alkim Ozaygen, Neil Saunders, and Frances Pinter. 2018. “The Visibility of Open Access Monographs in a European Context: Full Report.” Open Access Publications in Europe in Areas for Social Sciences and Humanities. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1230342

Neylon et al. study the visibility of open access monographs, particularly in Europe. They argue that it is currently difficult to track the usage of open access monographs, due to poor metadata standards and a lack of robust digital asset tracking. Neylon et al. come to this conclusion by studying the publishers involved in the OPERAS network. They map the visibility of the network’s open access monograph output, consider technical challenges in regard to metrics and impact, and suggest how OPERAS might play a leading role in standardizing metadata and information collection practices for open access monographs.

† Saklofske, Jon. 2012. “Fluid Layering: Reimagining Digital Literary Archives Through Dynamic, User-Generated Content.” Scholarly and Research Communication 3 (4): n.p. http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/viewFile/70/181

Saklofske argues that while the majority of print and digital editions exist as isolated collections of information, changing practices in textual scholarship are moving toward a new model of production. He uses the example of NewRadial, a prototype information visualization application, to showcase the potential of a more active public archive. Specifically, Saklofske focuses on making room for user-generated data that transforms the edition from a static repository into a dynamic and co-developed space. He champions the argument that the digital archive should place user-generated content in a more prominent position through reimagining the archive as a site of critical engagement, dialogue, argument, commentary, and response. In closing, Saklofske poses five open-ended questions to the community at large as a way of kickstarting a conversation regarding the challenges of redesigning the digital archive.

+ Saklofske, Jon. 2014. “Exploding, Centralizing and Reimagining: Critical Scholarship Refracted Through the NewRadial Prototype.” Scholarly and Research Communication 5 (2): n.p. https://doi.org/10.22230/ src.2014v5n2a151

In light of the focus of the INKE research team on the ways in which digital environments affect the production, dissemination, and use of established venues for academic research, the NewRadial prototype has been extended for further investigation of this research direction. NewRadial is a data visualization environment that was originally designed as an alternative way to encounter and annotate image-based databases. It allows users to engage with humanities data outside of scholarly paradigms and the linear nature of the printed book, and encourages user contributions through collective commentary rather than isolated annotation. This prototype investigates a number of questions, such as whether the aforementioned venues can coexist in their present form, the ways in which scholarship can be visualized through time and space, how critical ideas are born and how they evolve, and whether the collaborative elements of Alternate Reality Games and Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games can be adopted into the peer-review process and secondary scholarship. This prototype is a response to the established view of a finished work existing in a print-based format and is, rather, a way of experimenting in an interactive and dynamic digital environment that invites dialogue and collaborative curation—as well as numerous alternative narrative opportunities.

+ Saklofske, Jon, and Jake Bruce, with the INKE Research Group. 2013. “Beyond Browsing and Reading: The Open Work of Digital Scholarly Editions.” Scholarly and Research Communication 4 (3): n.p. https://doi.org/ 10.22230/src.2013v4n3a119

Saklofske and Bruce detail NewRadial, an INKE prototype scholarly edition environment. The prototype draws together primary texts, secondary scholarship, and related knowledge communities into a social digital scholarly edition. NewRadial provides an open, shared workspace where users may explore, sort, group, annotate, and contribute to secondary scholarship creation collaboratively.

Φ † Siemens, Raymond G., Meagan Timney, Cara Leitch, Corina Koolen, and Alex Garnett, with the ETCL, INKE, and PKP Research Groups. 2012. “Toward Modeling the Social Edition: An Approach to Understanding the Electronic Scholarly Edition in the Context of New and Emerging Social Media.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (formerly Literary and Linguistic Computing) 27 (4): 445–61. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqs013 (Φ Public & Community Engagement > Social Knowledge Creation, including Wikipedia & Crowdsourcing)

+ Siemens, Raymond G., Teresa Dobson, Stan Ruecker, Richard Cunningham, Alan Galey, Claire Warwick, and Lynne Siemens. 2011. “HCI-Book? Perspectives on E-Book Research, 2006–2008 (Foundational to Implementing New Knowledge Environments).” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada/Cahiers de la Société bibliographique du Canada 49 (1): 35–90. http://web.uvic.ca/~siemens/pub/2011-HCI-Book.pdf

Siemens, Dobson, Ruecker, Cunningham, Galey, Warwick, and Siemens examine the book in various domains as the electronic book emerged, with a specific focus on the role and importance of digital and analog books in humanities scholarship. They contextualize electronic book research, aiming to understand and describe principles of humanistic interaction with knowledge objects. The authors lay out core strategies for designing those objects, and study principles of evaluation and implementation of new technologies. They also investigate human-computer interaction possibilities and those of the electronic book. The authors take various elements into consideration, including audience, interface and design, and form and content. When studying readers and users, the authors consider user studies and usability assessment, the importance of user studies in the humanities, and previous studies of humanities users. They also examine features of books and e-books—such as tangibility, browsability, searchability, referenceability, hybridity, sustainability, and access—and investigate uses of books and e-books, as well as digital archives. In addition, the authors explore aspects of books and e-books (material, symbolic, and formal) and develop prototypes in various directions. They conclude by noting that team members, having worked together for six years, have been able to create the relationships and processes necessary to work through the challenges of multidisciplinary research collaborations.

+ Siemens, Raymond G., Claire Warwick, Richard Cunningham, Teresa Dobson, Alan Galey, Stan Ruecker, Susan Schreibman, and the INKE Research Group. 2009. “Codex Ultor: Toward a Conceptual and Theoretical Foundation for New Research on Books and Knowledge Environments.” Digital Studies / Le champ numérique 1 (2): n.p. https://doi.org/10.16995/dscn.270

Siemens, Warwick, Cunningham, Dobson, Galey, Ruecker, Schreibman, and the INKE Research Group investigate the “conceptual and theoretical foundations for work undertaken by the Implementing New Knowledge Environments [INKE] research group” (n.p). They address the need for designing new knowledge environments, taking into consideration the evolution of reading and writing technologies, the mechanics and pragmatics of written forms of knowledge, and the corresponding strategies of reading, as well as the computational possibilities of written forms due to emerging technology. The authors highlight the importance of prototyping as a research activity and outline corresponding research questions, which target the experiences of reading, using, and accessing information, as well as issues of design. They discuss their research methods, which include digital textual scholarship, user experience evaluation, interface design prototyping, and information management. Siemens et al. conclude that the various reading interface prototypes produced by INKE allow the transformation of methods of engagement with reading materials.

+ † Stein, Bob. 2015. “Back to the Future.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 18 (2): n.p. https://doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0018.204

Stein considers the digital book as a place rather than an object or tool—a place where readers gather, socially. He details the experiments with social platforms conducted at his Institute for the Future of the Book, including the creation of an online social edition of McKenzie Wark’s Gamer Theory and current work with SocialBook. SocialBook is an online, collaborative reading platform that encourages readers to comment on the text and interact with each other. Stein gestures to historic social reading practices, and infers that platforms like SocialBook are closely aligned to these traditions.

Critical Approaches to Digital Scholarship

Φ Ahmed, Allam. 2007. “Open Access Towards Bridging the Digital Divide—Policies and Strategies for Developing Countries.” Information Technology for Development 13 (4): 337–61. https://doi.org/10.1002/itdj.20067 (Φ Open Social Scholarship > Open Access)

† Bailey, Moya Z. 2011. “All the Digital Humanists Are White, All the Nerds Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave.” Journal of Digital Humanities 1 (1): n.p. http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-1/all-the-digital-humanists-are-white-all-the-nerds-are-men-but-some-of-us-are-brave-by-moya-z-bailey/

Bailey situates herself in a critical conversation on the racialized and gendered terminology of nerddom, and by extension, as she argues, of the digital humanities. Bailey asserts that individuals who identify as being on the margins of traditional academia will often find themselves at the borders of digital humanities as well. She argues that if we can open the field and engage those often left on margins (women, disabled individuals, people of colour), an entirely new set of theoretical questions and directions will become viable. As case studies, Bailey offers projects and activism initiatives that carry out this objective.

Φ Chan, Leslie, Bud Hall, Florence Piron, Rajesh Tandon, and Lorna Williams. 2020. “Open Science Beyond Open Access: For and With Communities. A Step Towards the Decolonization of Knowledge.” The Canadian Commission for UNESCO’s IdeaLab. (Φ Open Social Scholarship > Open Scholarship)

† Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. 2004. “On Software, or the Persistence of Visual Knowledge.” Grey Room 18: 26–51. https://doi.org/10.1162/1526381043320741

Chun re-evaluates the supposed transparency of software, and instead focuses on the blackboxing, abstraction, and causal pleasure that define contemporary computing and programming. She reinscribes software as akin to ideology: intangible but present, persuasive, subject-/user-producing, and capable of rendering the visible invisible and vice versa. Concurrently, Chun studies the gendered history of computation and programming, observing how contemporary accounts of this history mask some major female players and early entrepreneurs. Furthermore, she argues, the mechanization of computers shifted power relations and ostensibly wrote women out of the computing and programming narrative. Chun concludes that we must acknowledge, interrogate, and criticize the obscuring tendencies of software in order to avoid submitting to its ideological nuances.

D’Ignazio, Catherine, and Lauren F. Klein. 2020. Data Feminism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

D’Ignazio and Klein cast a feminist perspective on data science. They organize the book around a set of principles intended to show and do feminist data work: 1) examine power; 2) challenge power; 3) elevate emotion and embodiment; 4) rethink binaries and hierarchies; 5) embrace pluralism; 6) consider context; 7) make labour visible. D’Ignazio and Klein draw on feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS), critical theory, and information science scholars to contest that data are “never neutral; they were always the biased output of unequal social, historical, and economic conditions: this is the matrix of domination once again” (39). Data must be contextualized and recognized as necessarily partial and necessarily constructed. Throughout, D’Ignazio and Klein grapple with themes of situated knowledges and epistemic violence or epistemic injustice. Whose bodies and knowledge get counted? they ask. Why or why not?

Emerson, Lori. 2014. Reading Writing Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Emerson provides a thought-provoking account of the history of transparent interfaces for contemporary computers and takes contemporary interface designers and their drive toward transparency to task. She questions the validity of seamless connection as an occasional side effect of ubiquitous computing: why would we want to be unaware of the many ways that computers, networks, and algorithms are shaping our lives, decisions, and interactions? Emerson frames her study through the concept of readingwriting, which emphasizes how digital networks track users as they engage online. Although Emerson acknowledges the efficiency and approachability of seamless technology, she also warns against complicit use without an acknowledgement of how one’s various interfaces might be directing their behaviour, interaction, and output.

Φ Francabandera, Laura. 2020. “The Emperor’s New Clothes: Open Access and Intersectionality.” In Open Praxis, Open Access: Digital Scholarship in Action, edited by Darren Chase and Dana Haugh, 57–68. Chicago: American Library Association. (Φ Open Social Scholarship > Open Access)

* Gajjala, Radhika, ACS 7700 Team 1, and ACS Team 2. 2019. “New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy.” South Asian Review (February): 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2019.1575080

Co-writing the essay with 11 graduate students, Gajjala reviews Roopika Risam’s book New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy, in which digital humanities practices are analyzed under the postcolonial theory perspective. The authors present Risam’s concept of postcolonial digital humanities as an intervention that challenges the myths of democratization of knowledge through digital technologies and the dominance of knowledge from the Global North. Gajjala et al. point out that even the postcolonial digital humanities discipline can reinforce colonial hegemonies, mentioning Risam’s considerations on the dominance of English language in scholarship, and the lack of examples of digital humanities practices outside of the academy. Furthermore, the authors remark that postcolonial digital humanities aims to put back into the centre those who have been historically marginalized when building digital archives. Finally, they highlight Risam’s humanistic engagement with knowledge when analyzing global shifts and crisis through local and cultural views.

Losh, Elizabeth. 2012. “Hacktivism and the Humanities: Programming Protest in the Era of the Digital University.” Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 161–86. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Losh considers the role of activism by computational means, i.e. hacktivism, in the digital humanities. She examines how some digital humanities scholars and advocates support hacktivism, and also questions how effective digital humanities hacking interventions are. Losh concludes by calling for a hybrid practice, whereby more digital humanities scholars consider how they could engage in hacking to become more publicly engaged intellectuals.

Meadows, Alice. 2017. “Changing the Culture in Scholarly Communications.” The Scholarly Kitchen (blog). https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/08/07/changing-culture-scholarly-communications/

Meadows suggests that we need to change the culture in the field of scholarly communication, especially around gender diversity. She points out that many in the field are drawing attention to the lack of women working in established positions. Meadows also suggests that there are other cultural elements of scholarly communication that should change as well, including around open scholarship, impact factors, tenure and promotion, and funding. Finally, as a disclosed Future of Research Communications and e-Scholarship (FORCE 11) outreach committee member, she suggests that the group’s annual conference would be an ideal opportunity to discuss how to acknowledge and attend to these cultural elements of scholarly communication.

Φ Nkoudou, Thomas Herve Mboa. 2020. “Epistemic Alienation in African Scholarly Communications: Open Access as a Pharmakon.” In Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Politics, and Global Politics of Open Access, edited by Martin Paul Eve and Jonathan Gray, 25–40. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Φ Open Social Scholarship > Open Access)

Ω Okune, Angela, Rebecca Hillyer, Leslie Chan, Denisse Albornoz, and Alejandro Posada. 2019. “Whose Infrastructure? Towards Inclusive and Collaborative Knowledge Infrastructures in Open Science.” In Connecting the Knowledge Commons—From Projects to Sustainable Infrastructure : The 22nd International Conference on Electronic Publishing—Revised Selected Papers, edited by Leslie Chan and Pierre Mounier. Marseille: OpenEdition Press. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.oep.9050

Okune, Hillyer, Chan, Albornoz, and Posada push back against the idea that open science, open access, and open data necessarily make digital tools and platforms equally available to researchers or other interested parties. These digital technologies—and the networked communities they can help create—provide many opportunities for collaboration and connection; however, as the authors point out, the benefits of digital knowledge infrastructures in and for scholarly communities has also distracted members of these communities from adequately addressing existing social and systemic issues. Extending the intersectional work of Black feminist scholars such as Kimberlé Crenshaw and Safiya Umoja Noble, the authors present three case studies from the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network (OCSDNet) as part of their larger argument about how technology is neither ideologically neutral nor an unequivocally positive instrument of social change. In closing, they reflect further on the importance of inclusivity, design, collaboration, and sustainability, as well as the possible limitations of their own intersectional framework.

Φ Piron, Florence. 2018. “Postcolonial Open Access.” In Open Divide. Critical Studies in Open Access, edited by Ulrich Herb and Joachim Schopfel, 117–28. Sacramento, CA: Litwin Books. (Φ Open Social Scholarship > Open Access)

Φ Roh, Charlotte, Harrison W. Inefuku, and Emily Drabinski. 2020. “Scholarly Communications and Social Justice.” In Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Politics, and Global Politics of Open Access, edited by Martin Paul Eve and Jonathan Gray, 41–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Φ Scholarly Communication > Contemporary Issues)

Knowledge Translation & Mobilization

Arbuckle, Alyssa. 2020. “How Can We Broaden and Diversify Humanities Knowledge Translation?” Pop! Public. Open. Participatory. 1. https://doi.org/10.48404/POP.2020.12

Humanities research is extremely relevant for the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century. Despite the growing corpus of humanities research, Arbuckle argues, there are few explicit translation mechanisms from academic work to broader communities. Building off such a premise, Arbuckle looks at where knowledge translation is occurring in other fields and what lessons might be learned for the wider and more efficient circulation of humanities work.

+ Cooper, Amanda, and Ben Levin. 2010. “Some Canadian Contributions to Understanding Knowledge Mobilisation.” Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice 6 (3): 351–69. https://doi.org/10.1332/174426410X524839

Cooper and Levin describe the challenges associated with knowledge mobilization and suggest various methods to overcome them. They define knowledge mobilization as an emerging field that is dedicated to strengthening the links between research, policy, and practice across various disciplines and sectors. The authors assert that gaps between research, policy, and practice are the result of two major factors: the absence of research impact evidence, and the fact that knowledge mobilization is often interdisciplinary, and therefore lacks a formalized system. Cooper and Levin point out that the Canada Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation (CHSRF) have supported the majority of contributions to knowledge mobilization. They assert that collaborative practices are vital to knowledge mobilization since overall improvement depends on different groups working together. The authors also present the Research Supporting Practice in Education (RSPE) program, which is dedicated to empirical studies in various educational settings. They conclude by providing a list of quick, attainable practices that can improve knowledge mobilization in various environments.

+ Gainforth, Heather L., Amy E. Latimer-Cheung, Spencer Moore, Peter Athanasopoulos, and Kathleen A. Martin Ginis. 2014. “Using Network Analysis to Understand Knowledge Mobilization in a Community Based Organization.” International Journal of Behavioral Medicine 22 (3): 292–300. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s12529-014-9430-6

Gainforth et al. present a method for measuring the feasibility of utilizing network analysis to trace the flow of knowledge mobilization within a community-based organization. They address the challenges that arise in conducting network analysis in community-based organizations and research environments and provide practical and ethical solutions. Based on a case study conducted on a specific group operating within the organization, the authors demonstrate that network analysis is able to generate a rich description of the processes of a community-based organization that practices knowledge mobilization. The major limitations of the study include the lack of a comparison group in relation to which they can test the efficiency of their method, the fact that network analysis is only able to provide information about a specific moment within a study rather than an ongoing process, and that the researchers were unable to retest their findings with the network analysis instrument and had to take the results at face value. Despite these limitations, the authors assert that network analysis is a rich knowledge mobilization method and is useful for helping community-based organizations attain their goal of being a reliable voice for the various communities with whom they work.

Ψ Graham, Ian D., Jo Logan, Margaret B. Harrison, Sharon E. Straus, Jacqueline Tetroe, Wenda Caswell, and Nicole Robinson. 2006. “Lost in Knowledge Translation: Time for a Map?” The Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions 26: 13–24.

In the context of health sciences research and practice, Graham et al. analyze various definitions of knowledge translation and similar concepts in order to address the “knowledge-to-action” (KTA) gap between when research is published and when those findings are applied in practice, in policy, or in other ways. They note that a lack of clear definitions of relevant terminology leads to confusion, since various terms are often used interchangeably. They observe that knowledge transfer, knowledge exchange, research utilization, and research implementation are all used in different contexts to refer to the application of research (in this case, health research) to practice, although each term has its own particular meaning. Research dissemination and research diffusion, however, refer less specifically to the creation and application of knowledge to practice. They provide a conceptual framework for the knowledge-to-action process and identify several phases within a “knowledge funnel” in which knowledge is created and an action cycle in which it is applied, noting that these processes are iterative and often inform each other. The authors conclude that greater consensus is needed about knowledge-to-action terminology, which requires a shared understanding of knowledge-to-action itself and its community of stakeholders.

+ Graham, Ian D., Jacqueline Tetroe, and KT Theories Research Group. 2007. “Some Theoretical Underpinnings of Knowledge Translation.” Academic Emergency Medicine 14 (11): 936–41. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1553-2712.2007.tb02369.x

Graham and Tetroe determine the primary planned action theories within the science implementation field. The motivation for this study stems from a desire to remediate the gap found in implementing research into practice, and from recognizing that implementation practices themselves are more successful when situated within a conceptual framework. The study was carried out in the fields of education, health sciences, management, and social sciences, involving 31 planned action theories that were identified and analyzed for their origin, meaning, logical consistency, generalizability and parsimony, testability, and usefulness. The authors assert that the selection of a model should be based on a review of how its elements relate to the action categories that were derived from their theory analyses, and that the specific needs of end-users should be an integral part of the planning and evaluation process. Graham and Tetroe point out that many models have not yet been tested and urge those who use them to record and share their experiences in order to enrich research in the field.

Ψ Mitton, Craig, Carol E. Adair, Emily McKenzie, Scott B. Patten, and Brenda Waye Perry. 2007. “Knowledge Transfer and Exchange: Review and Synthesis of the Literature.” The Milbank Quarterly 85 (4): 729–68.

Mitton, Adair, McKenzie, Patten, and Perry conducted a survey on the increasing volume of literature in the field of healthcare and Knowledge Transmission and Exchange (KTE), exploring research related to “conducting/implementing KTE and evaluating KTE between researchers and policy and decision makers” (732). They remark that the field’s recent growth has likely been caused by an increased demand for accountability through evidence-based decision making. The authors worked with a medical research librarian to query eight databases for articles related to knowledge generation, translation, transfer, uptake, exchange, brokering, and mobilization. This resulted in 4,250 abstracts that they ranked based on relevance to the survey. This rendered 169 full articles, which they sorted by subject. They found that, although those in the field hold a strong belief in the merits of Knowledge Transmission and Exchange, only 10 papers reported the findings of a formal rigorous study. Most of the evidence offered in the literature was anecdotal. The authors conclude that if Knowledge Transmission and Exchange cannot be shown to have clear and consistent positive outcomes through evidenced-based study, its use in evidence-based policy decision making should be discontinued.