Re: Modern Language Association CFP

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

What on earth is the subtitle of this session supposed to mean? 
The premise of the session seems flawed to begin with: despite 
all the technological innovation we have witnessed, the actual 
forms of the journal and the monograph have changed very little. 
Most journals still package articles into issues and number 
groups of issues by an annual volume; the vast majority of 
monographs produced, whether in electronic format or print, still 
resemble the books we all grew up with. The experiments to try 
out different forms of publication, like Gutenberg-e, have 
largely failed, in part because promotion and tenure practices 
have not changed at all.  E-textbooks have yet to catch on in the 
college market, despite the efforts of CourseSmart and other 
publishing enterprises. Where is this "revolution" in scholarly 
communication?  Many of us are still waiting for it to happen....

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


>The Paradigm Shift in Scholarly Communication: Will Publications
>Perish?
>
>A Collaborative Session Proposed by the CELJ (Council of Editors
>of Learned Journals)  and the American Library Association Los
>Angeles - MLA Convention- Jan. 6-9, 2011.
>
>The scholarly essay, once the coin of the realm in academia, is
>being transformed by digital technologies, which have enabled
>instant and open access through electronic publishing.  This
>revolution has changed the landscape of every aspect of scholarly
>publishing.  The transformation has been so rapid and so
>dramatic, that there has been very little opportunity to assess,
>adjust, and respond to the impact on scholarly communication.
>The very question about the future viability of learned journals,
>to say nothing of practices such as peer review, confronts us all
>as professionals who rely on the integrity of discourse.  This
>session is an effort to deal with those questions directly and
>initiate a dialogue about how various branches of the scholarly
>community (editors, authors, publishers, and librarians) can
>respond to ongoing and inevitable challenges.
>
>Submit - 1 page proposal for a roundtable exchange to Alan Rauch
>(arauch@uncc.edu) by March 15, 2010.
>
>(Participants MUST be members of the MLA.)
>
>ALAN RAUCH
>President - Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts
>Department of English
>The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
>9201 University City Boulevard
>Charlotte, NC 28223
>
>arauch@uncc.edu
>http://alanrauch.com