There are a few links to share for this last post for the course. We began our last class by spending a few minutes discussing a recent Library Journal listicle on "Top Skills for Tomorrow's Librarians." Knowledge about research (both using it and creating it) shows up in more than one place, but the placement of technical skills and advocacy/politics might show up in surprising places. Before you click on the link, ask yourself which of those things should rank more highly on the list of desirable skills, and why? Keep in mind, too, that this listicle is based on a survey(?) whose methodology and sample size isn't specified, as far as I could find.
Lecture slides are posted in the usual place and formats, and embedded below. As we moved through the slides, we also considered examples of open peer review as implemented in the MediaCommons Press platform developed by Kathleen Fitzpatrick and her collaborators. One was Fitzpatrick's own book Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy, which also provided one of our readings for this week. We also briefly looked at one of my own articles, which eventually appeared in a special issue of Shakespeare Quarterly on new media. It was the first time a humanities journal had used an open peer review model, and that got us some surprising coverage in a front-page story in the New York Times. To be frank, I can't entirely vouch for accuracy of the article's representation of traditional peer-review -- there's a bit of straw-man argumentation going on -- but it was fascinating to see interest in the topic from mainstream media. Looking back six years later, I still think the experiment was a success, and it's notable that the journal has done other open peer review issues since then. But the main lesson I learned is that an open peer review model can only work if you're lucky enough to have an exceptionally smart, diplomatic, judicious, and hardworking editor -- moreso than traditional peer review requires. In the SQ issue we were lucky to have exactly that kind of editor in Katherine Rowe, but I think the model could only work with an exceptional editor. That's a role that needs more thinking about in discussions about the evolution of peer-review.
We also spent some time considering the submission requirements for Digital Humanities Quarterly, a peer-reviewed journal that takes advantage of its born-digital platform in interesting ways. And appropriately enough we ended with a brief discussion of the iSchool's own student-run iJournal, whose first issue has been published here, and is well-represented in our own class by several authors and members of the editorial team.
Thanks everyone for great discussions all year, both in class and on the blogs, and best of luck in the final stages of your assignments. Hope to see you in my courses next year, and have a great summer in the meantime!
Lecture slides are posted in the usual place and formats, and embedded below. As we moved through the slides, we also considered examples of open peer review as implemented in the MediaCommons Press platform developed by Kathleen Fitzpatrick and her collaborators. One was Fitzpatrick's own book Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy, which also provided one of our readings for this week. We also briefly looked at one of my own articles, which eventually appeared in a special issue of Shakespeare Quarterly on new media. It was the first time a humanities journal had used an open peer review model, and that got us some surprising coverage in a front-page story in the New York Times. To be frank, I can't entirely vouch for accuracy of the article's representation of traditional peer-review -- there's a bit of straw-man argumentation going on -- but it was fascinating to see interest in the topic from mainstream media. Looking back six years later, I still think the experiment was a success, and it's notable that the journal has done other open peer review issues since then. But the main lesson I learned is that an open peer review model can only work if you're lucky enough to have an exceptionally smart, diplomatic, judicious, and hardworking editor -- moreso than traditional peer review requires. In the SQ issue we were lucky to have exactly that kind of editor in Katherine Rowe, but I think the model could only work with an exceptional editor. That's a role that needs more thinking about in discussions about the evolution of peer-review.
We also spent some time considering the submission requirements for Digital Humanities Quarterly, a peer-reviewed journal that takes advantage of its born-digital platform in interesting ways. And appropriately enough we ended with a brief discussion of the iSchool's own student-run iJournal, whose first issue has been published here, and is well-represented in our own class by several authors and members of the editorial team.
Thanks everyone for great discussions all year, both in class and on the blogs, and best of luck in the final stages of your assignments. Hope to see you in my courses next year, and have a great summer in the meantime!
