This would have been way too intricate (my weakness) for a conference talk, but it did occur to me that the N-Visible model takes the false binary of “Best v Most” and turns it into “messed and boast,” both of which made sense to me at one point. Sometimes I’m my own worst rabbit hole.
K.J. Rawson
February 26, 2013 6:59 am
A really nice talk, Collin. Wish I could have heard it in person!
DH Now provides an excellent working model for alternate modes of scholarly production, circulation, and publishing. I’m glad you pointed it out in your presentation. Putting my blog into that feed has given me a psychological push to write and also put me in contact with interesting people both inside and outside our general field. And as you mentioned, its sheer publicness and real-timey-ness gives us a very robust reading on the pulse of this corner of the field. Rhet/Comp Now, anyone?
The sciences are way ahead of the humanities in this regard. PLOS, pre-print group blogs, and research blogging in general have brought a lot of research into the ‘public square,’ where anyone can comment not just on a final product but on the processes leading to a final product. It’s like the internet has become a giant chalkboard and lecture hall where people bounce ideas off one another. The problem of communication was, obviously, more exigent in the sciences–the months and years between publications were simply unacceptable given the rate of new tech and findings. But it’s no more acceptable in the humanities that we’re still discoursing ‘officially’ as though the printing press were still all the rage.
I don’t think I’d go as far to say that Facebook posts or re-tweets should count toward anything, but certainly SOME of the work produced for and published in these online venues should count for tenure, given that (as your own experience shows) the audience for it is larger and the response to it is more engaged. My post on text-network analysis which got chosen as a DH Now editor’s choice: it was read by hundreds more people than will ever read the chapter Krista and I just finished, and it was re-posted in places that I would never have had access to had it appeared in a more polished form in CCC or something. What administrator would ever say that that kind of impact doesn’t count ? Poppy-cock!
Last point in my ramble: You write that, for DH Now, “publication is the final step of a fairly simple, but widely distributed process.” Do you think it’s fair to say that the entire process is a transparent form of what is essentially peer review? At the least, it’s a competition, but an open and productive competition. Not every post will be picked for an editor’s choice; not every editor’s choice will be published. But what changes is that everyone gets to see what didn’t get picked up . I have no idea what kind of work has been rejected by CCC or RSQ or whatever, and I have no way of knowing. On DH Now, however, I can get at least a partial view of what DIDN’T rise to the top, read it, and engage with it anyway if it suits my own needs.
“Do you think it’s fair to say that the entire process is a transparent form of what is essentially peer review?”
I do, Seth. And while I think there are some advantages to the anonymity of peer review, especially in cases where someone might be in a position to “retaliate,” I really prefer the formative (vs. normative) potential of a “publish, then filter” model like DHNow’s.
It’s interesting to me how other conferences (C&W, RSA, et al) are taking up the research network forum model that was pioneered (in our field, at least) at CCCC, which I think is great. This model places a lot lower threshold on feedback, distributes it among more voices, and honors the writing process in a way that blind peer review cannot.
cgb
Collin
February 25, 2013 8:32 pmThis would have been way too intricate (my weakness) for a conference talk, but it did occur to me that the N-Visible model takes the false binary of “Best v Most” and turns it into “messed and boast,” both of which made sense to me at one point. Sometimes I’m my own worst rabbit hole.
K.J. Rawson
February 26, 2013 6:59 amA really nice talk, Collin. Wish I could have heard it in person!
Collin
February 26, 2013 7:41 pmThanks!
Collin Brooke (@cgbrooke)
February 26, 2013 10:27 amFor the AM crowd, I’ve posted a version of my #nhuk talk from last week: http://t.co/DeRkB1dTwC
SDL
February 26, 2013 3:10 pmDH Now provides an excellent working model for alternate modes of scholarly production, circulation, and publishing. I’m glad you pointed it out in your presentation. Putting my blog into that feed has given me a psychological push to write and also put me in contact with interesting people both inside and outside our general field. And as you mentioned, its sheer publicness and real-timey-ness gives us a very robust reading on the pulse of this corner of the field. Rhet/Comp Now, anyone?
The sciences are way ahead of the humanities in this regard. PLOS, pre-print group blogs, and research blogging in general have brought a lot of research into the ‘public square,’ where anyone can comment not just on a final product but on the processes leading to a final product. It’s like the internet has become a giant chalkboard and lecture hall where people bounce ideas off one another. The problem of communication was, obviously, more exigent in the sciences–the months and years between publications were simply unacceptable given the rate of new tech and findings. But it’s no more acceptable in the humanities that we’re still discoursing ‘officially’ as though the printing press were still all the rage.
I don’t think I’d go as far to say that Facebook posts or re-tweets should count toward anything, but certainly SOME of the work produced for and published in these online venues should count for tenure, given that (as your own experience shows) the audience for it is larger and the response to it is more engaged. My post on text-network analysis which got chosen as a DH Now editor’s choice: it was read by hundreds more people than will ever read the chapter Krista and I just finished, and it was re-posted in places that I would never have had access to had it appeared in a more polished form in CCC or something. What administrator would ever say that that kind of impact doesn’t count ? Poppy-cock!
Last point in my ramble: You write that, for DH Now, “publication is the final step of a fairly simple, but widely distributed process.” Do you think it’s fair to say that the entire process is a transparent form of what is essentially peer review? At the least, it’s a competition, but an open and productive competition. Not every post will be picked for an editor’s choice; not every editor’s choice will be published. But what changes is that everyone gets to see what didn’t get picked up . I have no idea what kind of work has been rejected by CCC or RSQ or whatever, and I have no way of knowing. On DH Now, however, I can get at least a partial view of what DIDN’T rise to the top, read it, and engage with it anyway if it suits my own needs.
Collin
February 26, 2013 7:40 pm“Do you think it’s fair to say that the entire process is a transparent form of what is essentially peer review?”
I do, Seth. And while I think there are some advantages to the anonymity of peer review, especially in cases where someone might be in a position to “retaliate,” I really prefer the formative (vs. normative) potential of a “publish, then filter” model like DHNow’s.
It’s interesting to me how other conferences (C&W, RSA, et al) are taking up the research network forum model that was pioneered (in our field, at least) at CCCC, which I think is great. This model places a lot lower threshold on feedback, distributes it among more voices, and honors the writing process in a way that blind peer review cannot.
cgb