I’ve been taken a bit aback by the defense for the AHA position on the WPA-L mailing list. Maybe the argument for an optional three or so year embargo on Electronic Dissertations and Theses (EDT) is reasonable, and there probably does need to be more clarity regarding who owns what and for what purposes when it comes to dissertations and theses. It’s funny how the technologies that make things like requiring students to electronically publish their theses and dissertations possible is what is bringing about all of this concern about/wrestling with copyright. I mean, when I finished my diss back in 1996, I don’t remember anyone even vaguely contemplating these issues of ownership and rights and what-not. That’s because who on earth was going to bother to go and get the paper dissertation out of the university library when they could just order the book version?
And I think that’s part of what’s going on here with the scale argument– at least I think that’s what you’re getting at, Collin. Good ol’ fashioned paper dissertations are part of a network (maybe nodes on that network independently, probably nodes within library collections), but that analog network wasn’t the easiest to negotiate. Now with the intertubes, access is digital and instant. The knowledge is now too free, at least too free for knowledge creators hoping to “profit” (in many meanings of that word) from the scholarship.
So it’s an issue for sure. That said, I still think that a lot of the concern amongst newly minted PhD students with their shiny dissertations is not based in reality, sort of like the illogic of spending a lot of time and effort to come up with elaborate rules as to how we will split the winnings from the lottery ticket we bought together. Most dissertations simply are not ready for publication without significant revision, and unless book publishers are saying they aren’t going to publish anything— not a first draft, not a sentence– that existed previously as an ETD, then it seems to me that 95% of diss writers have nothing to worry about in practice. And like I said on the WPA-L mailing list, for the 5% (or much less) of diss projects that are ready for prime-time publishing, then go ahead: publish the book first (or at least get the contract lined up) and then turn that into your committee for a dissertation.
The two larger issues to me here are about OA and what it is we mean by “scholarship” in the first place. Maybe I have a bad attitude, but it sure seems like some of the people fighting hard for the right of diss writers to embargo their work are the same people who are also interested in OA. Maybe I’m being simplistic about it, but that seems a bit hypocritical to me (I think your comic is suggesting something similar).
And none of this would be a problem if more universities would adopt something more creative and thoughtful than “book” or “book plus” for tenure. If the standard for tenure at R1s was either more like at EMU (where we count lots and lots of different things), this would be a non-issue. Or if the standards at R1s were even more rigorous: that is, if the standard was a book that was not based on your diss but on whatever comes next, then this would be a non-issue.
Thanks for the comment, Steve. Interestingly enough, I was thinking last night about a lottery analogy too 🙂
I think you’re right to suggest that we need a bigger frame for what “counts,” and that’s the place where I ultimately come down in the debate itself. It will surprise no one to learn that one of the lines that I object to the most in the AHA statement is their claim about history being a “book-based discipline,” which seems to me to miss the forest for a single tree. It’s more complicated to assess a range of practices as opposed to a single object, I suppose, but it’s not as though places like EMU haven’t already been doing that…
Steve Krause
August 1, 2013 5:53 pmI’ve been taken a bit aback by the defense for the AHA position on the WPA-L mailing list. Maybe the argument for an optional three or so year embargo on Electronic Dissertations and Theses (EDT) is reasonable, and there probably does need to be more clarity regarding who owns what and for what purposes when it comes to dissertations and theses. It’s funny how the technologies that make things like requiring students to electronically publish their theses and dissertations possible is what is bringing about all of this concern about/wrestling with copyright. I mean, when I finished my diss back in 1996, I don’t remember anyone even vaguely contemplating these issues of ownership and rights and what-not. That’s because who on earth was going to bother to go and get the paper dissertation out of the university library when they could just order the book version?
And I think that’s part of what’s going on here with the scale argument– at least I think that’s what you’re getting at, Collin. Good ol’ fashioned paper dissertations are part of a network (maybe nodes on that network independently, probably nodes within library collections), but that analog network wasn’t the easiest to negotiate. Now with the intertubes, access is digital and instant. The knowledge is now too free, at least too free for knowledge creators hoping to “profit” (in many meanings of that word) from the scholarship.
So it’s an issue for sure. That said, I still think that a lot of the concern amongst newly minted PhD students with their shiny dissertations is not based in reality, sort of like the illogic of spending a lot of time and effort to come up with elaborate rules as to how we will split the winnings from the lottery ticket we bought together. Most dissertations simply are not ready for publication without significant revision, and unless book publishers are saying they aren’t going to publish anything— not a first draft, not a sentence– that existed previously as an ETD, then it seems to me that 95% of diss writers have nothing to worry about in practice. And like I said on the WPA-L mailing list, for the 5% (or much less) of diss projects that are ready for prime-time publishing, then go ahead: publish the book first (or at least get the contract lined up) and then turn that into your committee for a dissertation.
The two larger issues to me here are about OA and what it is we mean by “scholarship” in the first place. Maybe I have a bad attitude, but it sure seems like some of the people fighting hard for the right of diss writers to embargo their work are the same people who are also interested in OA. Maybe I’m being simplistic about it, but that seems a bit hypocritical to me (I think your comic is suggesting something similar).
And none of this would be a problem if more universities would adopt something more creative and thoughtful than “book” or “book plus” for tenure. If the standard for tenure at R1s was either more like at EMU (where we count lots and lots of different things), this would be a non-issue. Or if the standards at R1s were even more rigorous: that is, if the standard was a book that was not based on your diss but on whatever comes next, then this would be a non-issue.
Okay, more grading….
Collin
August 1, 2013 8:58 pmThanks for the comment, Steve. Interestingly enough, I was thinking last night about a lottery analogy too 🙂
I think you’re right to suggest that we need a bigger frame for what “counts,” and that’s the place where I ultimately come down in the debate itself. It will surprise no one to learn that one of the lines that I object to the most in the AHA statement is their claim about history being a “book-based discipline,” which seems to me to miss the forest for a single tree. It’s more complicated to assess a range of practices as opposed to a single object, I suppose, but it’s not as though places like EMU haven’t already been doing that…
cgb