Re: Modern Language Association CFP

[richards1000@comcast.net]

Sandy:

Like many on this list, I have great respect for your leadership 
at PSU and among university presses, and for your accomplishments 
in innovation.

To address your comment about the subtitle of the session, I 
think it's entirely possible that in the near future some faculty 
will be granted tenure on the basis of work other than formal 
scholarly publications: e.g., data sets, blog posts, multimedia 
presentations, virtual conference presentations, original 
software programs, databases, or algorithms, that are subject to 
informal peer review after their release on the free Web.

I think the first to obtain tenure on the basis of such a record 
will be younger scholars who are extremely smart, are extremely 
skilled at applying technology to research questions in their 
fields, and are excellent and popular teachers, and who will 
refuse to write traditional, formal articles and monographs.  I 
think that the intense competition among colleges and 
universities will result in strong demand for these scholars 
(note that they are likely to be great teachers as well as 
innovative thinkers), and that the tenure system will have to 
yield to them.

I bet there will be a quite small number of these scholars at 
first, but the changes they compel in the tenure standards will 
eventually affect most junior faculty.  I think this vision is 
consistent with the current trend in scholarly communication 
toward shorter, more informal documents and review processes.

Robert C. Richards, Jr., J.D., M.S.L.I.S., M.A.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Sandy Thatcher" <sgt3@psu.edu>
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Sunday, January 31, 2010 10:36:07 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: Modern Language Association CFP

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