Are you sure that people are as trapped in “the codex” as you claim? My guess is that most professionals spend far less working time with bound books than with other formats for written matter. We read e-mail, circulate memos, print drafts, read drafts, print and read loose-leaf PDFs, put together or read 3-ring binders of materials. etc. And that’s not even counting Death by PowerPoint!
Oh, yes, of course. I do not mean to suggest that I am espousing the position above; only attempting to speculate about circumstances under which one might claim a “publishing” status for blogs that would take precedence over that of wikis…
I see. But I also wonder if this might be precisely one way that people see web-native publishing: getting away from a sequential release schedule of texts. Take a journal like electronic book review that specifically eschews discrete sequential “numbers” or “issues” in favor of a group of ongoing threads to which content is added as it is ready. They’re very happy to have gotten away from the print-imposed forms of the volume and number, toward an expanding, interconnecting body that is more wiki-like. And yet I wouldn’t hesitate to call what they do “publishing.”
I have now over a period of nearly 5 days written several comments and very few others have written anything. I guess that this indicates that in order to get the “liveliness of convercation and interaction” requred, some kind of community has to exist. May be in the form of an established scolarly web site, journal portal, or blog on which the CommentPress article is published.
Obviously, it is important to analyze the new digital and networked scholarly discourse using various models and concepts, such as “the coffee house model”, the library model” and “the model of a communication circuit”.
The classic sender-oriented linear communication model is in many ways outdated and when Darnton bends the line of this model into a circuit (and populates it with authors, publishing firms, printers, booksellers and readers) he turns the attention to (the relation between) all participants in textual communication in different historical periods. It is my impression, however, that the circuit model tends to direct most of the attention to the circulation of the completed books and journals, that is, their distribution and dissemination.
The much-used cycle or life cycle models (information cycle, document life cycle etc.) focuses on text forms (books, journals) and examines the different sequences or phases the texts within these forms go through, including their production, distribution and reception. In their model “The life cycle of scientific information” Tenopir and King bring in a dynamic aspect, stating that writing of scholarly papers is not a totally solitary activity, involving both reading and reference to other scholarly text, editing, peer-reviewing and proofreading.
An interesting aspect of networked scholarly discourse is that within the text cycle the distinction between the previously rather separated phases of writing, distribution and reading is starting to get blurred, or to put it differently: the phases are about to be mixed or mingled, epitomised in Wiki-environments where the users are also the writers. I guess it is a similar community-based cooperative writing-commenting-rewriting process that is the ultimate goal of CommentPress’ efforts within scholarly publishing, in many way making the process of writing just as important as the final product,
I have a strong feeling that the discussion about these new forms of peer-writing or peer-production is in need of a whole range of new models and concept in order for us and others to fully grasp the significance of the changes. I also fear on behalf of CommonPress advocates that the linear and circulation concepts are so deeply embedded in long-lasting institutional practises that any significant change in our understanding and behaviour will take a very long time.
(I wonder, by the way, if this comment is too long?)
Recent Comments in this Document
8 November 2007 at 2.08 pm
Agreed!
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8 November 2007 at 1.53 pm
Are you sure that people are as trapped in “the codex” as you claim? My guess is that most professionals spend far less working time with bound books than with other formats for written matter. We read e-mail, circulate memos, print drafts, read drafts, print and read loose-leaf PDFs, put together or read 3-ring binders of materials. etc. And that’s not even counting Death by PowerPoint!
See in context
8 November 2007 at 1.47 pm
Terje,
I’m not sure that it’s a bad thing that we use print-like metaphors to explore new media. Gotta start with something…
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24 October 2007 at 2.11 pm
Hmmm. I wonder if one of the adaptations disables something in the CSS. I’ll have to see if I can replicate the bug here…
See in context
24 October 2007 at 3.29 am
It is an adapted and distributed version of IE 6.0 used by the university on a Windows 2000 operating system
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23 October 2007 at 12.44 pm
Yikes. Which IE, on which operating system? This sounds ugly!
See in context
23 October 2007 at 12.43 pm
Oh, yes, of course. I do not mean to suggest that I am espousing the position above; only attempting to speculate about circumstances under which one might claim a “publishing” status for blogs that would take precedence over that of wikis…
See in context
23 October 2007 at 12.41 pm
I see. But I also wonder if this might be precisely one way that people see web-native publishing: getting away from a sequential release schedule of texts. Take a journal like electronic book review that specifically eschews discrete sequential “numbers” or “issues” in favor of a group of ongoing threads to which content is added as it is ready. They’re very happy to have gotten away from the print-imposed forms of the volume and number, toward an expanding, interconnecting body that is more wiki-like. And yet I wouldn’t hesitate to call what they do “publishing.”
See in context
23 October 2007 at 6.54 am
I have now over a period of nearly 5 days written several comments and very few others have written anything. I guess that this indicates that in order to get the “liveliness of convercation and interaction” requred, some kind of community has to exist. May be in the form of an established scolarly web site, journal portal, or blog on which the CommentPress article is published.
See in context
23 October 2007 at 6.42 am
Obviously, it is important to analyze the new digital and networked scholarly discourse using various models and concepts, such as “the coffee house model”, the library model” and “the model of a communication circuit”.
The classic sender-oriented linear communication model is in many ways outdated and when Darnton bends the line of this model into a circuit (and populates it with authors, publishing firms, printers, booksellers and readers) he turns the attention to (the relation between) all participants in textual communication in different historical periods. It is my impression, however, that the circuit model tends to direct most of the attention to the circulation of the completed books and journals, that is, their distribution and dissemination.
The much-used cycle or life cycle models (information cycle, document life cycle etc.) focuses on text forms (books, journals) and examines the different sequences or phases the texts within these forms go through, including their production, distribution and reception. In their model “The life cycle of scientific information” Tenopir and King bring in a dynamic aspect, stating that writing of scholarly papers is not a totally solitary activity, involving both reading and reference to other scholarly text, editing, peer-reviewing and proofreading.
An interesting aspect of networked scholarly discourse is that within the text cycle the distinction between the previously rather separated phases of writing, distribution and reading is starting to get blurred, or to put it differently: the phases are about to be mixed or mingled, epitomised in Wiki-environments where the users are also the writers. I guess it is a similar community-based cooperative writing-commenting-rewriting process that is the ultimate goal of CommentPress’ efforts within scholarly publishing, in many way making the process of writing just as important as the final product,
I have a strong feeling that the discussion about these new forms of peer-writing or peer-production is in need of a whole range of new models and concept in order for us and others to fully grasp the significance of the changes. I also fear on behalf of CommonPress advocates that the linear and circulation concepts are so deeply embedded in long-lasting institutional practises that any significant change in our understanding and behaviour will take a very long time.
(I wonder, by the way, if this comment is too long?)
See in context