Gideon Burton has started a blog which he hopes will become a book on new media in academic publishing. From a recent post (apparently yesterday):
This blog is intended to become Academic Evolution, the book....I am beta testing my ideas, developing them in keeping with the principle of transparency and with the goal of inviting public review and collaboration....[H]ere's the working table of contents for the book. Obviously I will be making each of these proposed chapters the subject of my various blog posts. Let's figure this out together! I welcome your suggestions....
Table of Contents for Academic Evolution (version 12-27-08)
Preface: Urbino's Pride
During the early days of printed books, Frederick, Duke of Urbino, bragged that his magnificent library did not contain a single printed book. In fact, he had printed books recopied onto manuscript pages so his peers would see them as legitimate. Meanwhile, the cheap editions of classical works printed by Aldus Manutius were reaching a generation who cared less about illuminations and more about being illuminated. Each media revolution embarrasses the status quo, and properly so. Academia, it's time to own your shame.
Academia is Not the Creative Commons In fighting to preserve traditional publishing, teaching, and credentialing, academic institutions are betraying their core educational missions, working against the goals of scholarship, retarding the creative growth of students and faculty, and effectively squandering their best assets.
Stuck in Print A print-based paradigm has structured academic knowledge, publishing, and teaching; it is based on restriction, elitism, and control. The digital paradigm now supplanting it is based on principles of openness, the democratization of knowledge, and collaboration. The question is not which paradigm will win, but how costly academic institutions will make the transition.
Academic Publishing is Old School Traditional academic publishing is a $7 billion business that quarantines knowledge, exploits faculty and students, biases research, and intentionally restricts the influence of scholarship. Traditional publishing once made scholarly communication possible; now, it impedes it.
Digital Scholars and Scholarship The value of knowledge in the digital age correlates to its dynamic design and use, not as much to a publication venue and certainly not to a one-time, limited peer evaluation of content. Digital knowledge also tends to be collaborative and perpetually in "beta." This makes some of the most important digital work invisible to those trained only to recognize knowledge within the controls and genres of academia's print paradigm. By holding to the old paradigm within hiring, promotion, and tenure, academia will sacrifice the very people it needs to retool for the future.
The Library Saves the World As toll access knowledge becomes even less viable and open access becomes the norm, the library will sustain the long tail of academia through institutional repositories, creative metadata, and collaborative digital publishing with scholars and students. The librarian can be reborn as a concierge, broker, or midwife to research, teaching, and learning. The library will be the university's press and publishing platform, dedicated as much to archiving/publishing student work, teaching media, and in-process scholarly assets as it is to preserving traditionally vetted scholarly works.
Serious Play: New Tools in the Old School ...
Waking the Sleeping Giant: Academic Activism ...
The Digital Scholar's Manifesto "WHEREAS, the print paradigm is restricting the productive creation and distribution of knowledge, negatively impacting teaching, learning, and research today, I claim my privilege as a citizen of the digital age to produce, share, collaborate, and publish unfettered by the artificial and outdated systems of publishing and review that academia continues to insist upon to its own detriment..."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/28/2008 11:14:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
