[Crossposted from MediaCommons.]

The open review experiment conducted by MediaCommons on behalf of Shakespeare Quarterly continues to make a splash. Previously covered by Jennifer Howard in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the experiment has now led to a front page story in the New York Times looking broadly at the ways that peer review is being opened up through projects such as ours and the Center for History and New Media’s Hacking the Academy.

We’re ecstatic to have gotten this attention. Now we hope to follow through. If you have an account here, you can already create a scholarly profile, publish your own blog, and build a research network. We’re taking proposals for projects that our network members want to develop under our auspices, and we’re also looking for submissions for MediaCommons Press. Get involved with us here, and help us build the future of scholarly publishing.

[Crossposted from MediaCommons.]

Today’s Chronicle of Higher Education brings us a wonderful article from Jennifer Howard, exploring our recent experiment in open peer review, conducted on behalf of the eminent journal, Shakespeare Quarterly. This review process, which is at the heart of MediaCommons Press’s experiments in new modes of publishing for scholarship, has been so successful for SQ that, as the article notes, the journal’s editors plan to use it again for future special issues.

One interesting point in the article is the comparison between the Nature experiment with open review conducted in 2006 — an experiment declared by its editors to have been a “failure,” and used by many in scholarly publishing since then as evidence that open review can’t work — and the SQ review. Howard notes one participant’s sense the “the humanities’ subjective, conversational tendencies may make them well suited to open review — better suited, perhaps, than the sciences,” and yet, of course, the humanities have in general been very slow to such experimentation.

We at MediaCommons are extremely proud to be taking the lead in developing new models for transforming scholarly communication in the humanities, and we’re thrilled to have had the opportunity to work with a journal as important as Shakespeare Quarterly, modifying the open review process that we used (and advocated for) with my own Planned Obsolescence for the journal’s needs. Thanks to SQ‘s editors, and especially special issue editor Katherine Rowe, for making such a successful experiment possible.

We very much look forward to collaborating with scholars, journals, and presses on future such projects!

The Library of Congress has just this morning issued its statement of exemptions to the portions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that forbid the circumvention of DRM and other technological measures intended to prevent access to or copying of digital materials. These exemptions are issued every three years; last time out, the exemptions allowed film and media studies professors to crack the content scrambling system (a.k.a. CSS) on DVDs in order to rip short clips to make compilations for classroom use. This seemed at the time like an awfully restricted exemption — literally only film and media studies profs (no profs in other fields, and no students), literally only in order to create compilations of clips for use in the classroom (not for use in critical writing) — but it struck me then that the statement might be the thin end of the wedge.

And so it appears to have been. The exemption on the cracking of CSS now extends to all instructors and students [Correction: see Timothy Yenter's comment below; the extension includes all instructors but only students in film and media studies courses], and the “educational uses” now include critical commentary and documentary production, as well as the exceptionally broad category of “non-commercial videos.” Whether this gets taken to mean that fan vids will be recognized as falling under the exemption remains to be seen, but the chances seem to me to be high.

This is already pretty amazing, and yet, as they say on late-night infomercials, “but wait! There’s more!” The LOC has also declared that programs that allow the jailbreaking of a cell phone in order to install “lawfully obtained” applications is legal, as is the following:

Computer programs, in the form of firmware or software, that enable used wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telecommunications network, when circumvention is initiated by the owner of the copy of the computer program solely in order to connect to a wireless telecommunications network and access to the network is authorized by the operator of the network.

If I’m reading that correctly, I think that unlocking a “used” phone has now just been made legal as well. The question of what constitutes “used” here is open, I think — is the iPhone I purchased new but have now had for a year “used”? — but I think the way has been paved for users to connect their handsets to their network of choice. Ars Technica correctly, I think, understands these two provisions as a direct kick in the teeth to Apple; it will be interesting to see how the company responds.

And, as if that weren’t enough, the LOC has also declared that circumventing DRM in order to activate the text-to-speech function of e-books for which the function has been disabled is now permitted, as is circumventing DRM in order to make e-books usable by “screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.” I’m not exactly sure what that last means — is it now legal for me to crack DRM on my Kindle app books in order to port them into iBooks? — but there seems to be at least a recognition that lawfully obtained digital texts should be readable in the purchaser’s choice of formats.

All of these provisions come with the caveat that where there are other means of accomplishing the same thing (getting video clips; getting e-books with the audio component enabled), consumers must take the route that does not require circumventing DRM, but where there is no other way, the position seems to be that those who have legally purchased texts and objects protected by DRM have the right to break those systems for purposes that would otherwise fall under the category of fair use.

These exemptions promise to have an extraordinary impact on the kinds of media scholarship that can be published over the next few years; projects like In Media Res, which has long led with its jaw on the fair-use front, now have a certain measure of legal protection working in their favor. But these exemptions will be up for review in three years, so media scholars, students, and practitioners who care about their ability to access and use the legally-obtained media texts with which they work need to make wise use of the time, demonstrating to the LOC what can be done with such free access. And we need to continue to lobby for further expansions in our rights to access the primary sources with which we work.

I’ve just posted the following announcement at MediaCommons:

We are thrilled today to unveil The New Everyday, an experiment in “middle-state publishing” being undertaken here at MediaCommons as part of a two-year project undertaken by the New York Visual Culture Working Group, housed at NYU and funded by its Humanities Initiative. The project is launching with a cluster edited by Nicholas Mirzoeff considering the murder of Jorge Steven López Mercado; the pieces that form this cluster are open for discussion, and are intended to be seen, both collectively and individually, as remaining somewhat “in process.” We hope that you’ll join the discussion within this cluster, and that you’ll consider curating a future cluster as well.

I’m extremely happy to see projects like The New Everyday moving forward, allowing MediaCommons to take on a more actively experimental role in thinking about the future of publishing in media studies. We’re of course on the lookout for more such projects, so join in!

Yet another month-long absence. At least this time I have a major project to show for it!

It’s perhaps a tiny bit ironic to be launching this particular new MediaCommons Press project on the Ides of March, but nonetheless: we at MediaCommons are thrilled to unveil the open review experiment being conducted here on behalf of Shakespeare Quarterly, in conjunction with the journal’s forthcoming special issue, “Shakespeare and New Media.” Special issue guest editor Katherine Rowe has brought together four fantastic articles plus three review essays, each considering the impact of media change on Shakespeare studies.

Please visit the site, read the articles, and leave your feedback for the authors. We very much look forward to your participation.

Today’s the day: the project that I’ve been working on for the last year and a half is at last live and open for your reading and commenting pleasure. Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy will, if all goes according to plan, come out in print sometime next year from NYU Press, but it’s available right now, in commentable form, via MediaCommons Press.

Today’s also the day I get to unveil MediaCommons Press itself, a project we’ve been working toward for several months now. MediaCommons Press is the second major project hosted by MediaCommons, and it is dedicated, as the header has it, to open scholarship in open formats. MediaCommons Press hopes to promote the digital publication of texts ranging from article- to monograph-length, in forms ranging from the traditional to the experimental, serving all areas of scholarship in media studies.

So, with these two announcements together, today’s the day I put my money where my mouth is, both by demonstrating the effectiveness of the MediaCommons publishing model and demonstrating, as I argue most strongly for in the book, the importance of open online peer review.

I hope you’ll come by and join the discussion. And I also hope you’ll consider joining in by publishing with us. MediaCommons has developed into a thriving community network in media studies; we’re excited to take the first steps today in transforming that network into a viable, community-based scholarly publishing system.

I do not know whether to be amused by the irony or horrified by the passage of time.

Noah Wardrip-Fruin has posted a thoughtful reconsideration of the experience of putting the manuscript of his forthcoming book, Expressive Processing, through an open peer review process at Grand Text Auto, meditating on a few surprises that he encountered along the way.

Among these surprises, he notes one that I’m particularly glad to hear about, as it seems to me to refute the thing that several people have said to me about this experiment: “yeah, but even Noah said it didn’t really work.” Or at least not as well as traditional review. As Noah puts it,

One concern expressed repeatedly about the blog-based review form — by blog commenters, outside observers, and myself — is that its organization around individual sections might contribute to a “forest for the trees” phenomenon. While individual sections and their topics are important to a book, it is really by the wider argument and project that most books are judged. I worried the blog-based review form might be worse than useless if its impact was to turn authors (myself included) away from major, systemic issues with manuscripts and toward the section-specific comments of blog visitors with little sense of the book’s project.

This concern was heightened by comments made by some commenters, including Ian Bogost, who noted that he was having difficulty following the argument through from section to section. As it turns out, Noah notes, that difficulty was itself a key bit of review:

When the press-solicited anonymous reviews came in, however, they turned this concern on its head. This is because the blog-based and anonymous reviews both pointed to the same primary revision for the manuscript: distributing the main argument more broadly through the different chapters and sections, rather than concentrating it largely in a dense opening chapter. What had seemed like a confirmation of one of our early fears about this form of review — the possibility of losing the argument’s thread — was actually a successful identification, by the blog-based reviewers, of a problem with the manuscript also seen by the anonymous reviewers.

Noah notes that the success of his review process was contingent on the prior existence and functioning of the Grand Text Auto community, and of the commitment of time and expertise on the part of many dedicated readers. This reflection makes me increasingly hopeful that MediaCommons might develop a similarly successful set of review processes, precisely by focusing its development on the social network.

crossposted from MediaCommons:

The Chronicle of Higher Education announced today that the University of Michigan Press is being restructured as an academic unit housed under the University of Michigan Library. A number of other institutions, including New York University and Penn State University, have similar reporting relationships between the press and the library, but something has been made explicit in the Michigan shift that stands to be pretty dramatic:

Michigan’s new press-library hierarchy is not a revolution in itself. Many university presses now report to their campus libraries. But Philip Pochoda, the press’s director, said in an interview that he believes this arrangement is notable because it relieves the press of pressure to be financially self-sustaining.

“It removes the bottom line on a book-by-book basis,” he said. “Basically we will be judged for staying within a budget,” just as academic departments are. “In a sense, it will allow us to do more things that are consistent with university objectives, as opposed to commercial objectives.”

This transformation of the press from a revenue center to something more like a service organization within the institution is, I believe, a necessary first step toward solving the financial crisis faced by most university presses.

The University of Michigan’s publishing program notably includes a number of experimental partnerships between the press and the library’s Scholarly Publishing Office, including digitalculturebooks, a joint imprint whose titles are available for free online, or for sale in hard copy. The reporting relationship between the press and the library now promises to free the press to undertake more such explorations of the possibilities for new publishing models, including open access publishing.

The new operating model will emphasize digital monographs, with a small print-on-demand component.

“It opens up opportunities that we had to foreclose because we were so tied to the kind of budgeting and business model that we had before,” Mr. Pochoda said. “This seems to be the first university that’s freeing its press from that model.”

The press director sounded relieved and optimistic about the change. “In many ways, we feel like we’ve come in out of the cold, and boy, it’s been pretty cold,” he said. “There’s never been a colder period in publishing.”

This is an extremely exciting development, one that I hope points the way for other universities to reconsider their commitment to scholarly publishing as a core part of the academic mission.

[UPDATE, 9.29 am: Here's the University of Michigan's press release, with more details. This story is getting reported around the web, most notably at Inside Higher Ed, as an end-of-print story, which I think is missing the point: the news here is not that the press is going all-digital (they're really not), but that, freed from the bottom line, they're now free to experiment with new digital modes. That's huge.]

crossposted from MediaCommons:

Today’s Inside Higher Ed features an opinion piece by Sara Kubik, urging academics to “get serious” about online forms of research publication.

While it once made sense to equate print with quality, it’s time to embrace newer forms of communication as valid. If they need academically sound forms of verification and procedures for citation, let’s get to work.

I could not agree more — and yet it’s important to note, in the comments that follow, one of the reasons why such getting-serious is easier said than done: in response to Kubik’s insistence that online publishing would help to alleviate the horrific time-lags between the completion of research and its dissemination, Sandy Thatcher, Director of Penn State University Press, responds by saying that it’s peer review that takes so long, and thus the digital won’t speed things up all that much.

This kind of response is precisely the reason a project like MediaCommons is so necessary, I believe: if we are really going to get serious about online scholarly publishing, we have got to get outside the paper-based model of what publishing is. What Thatcher’s response misses (and what I’ve attempted to follow up with in a comment myself) is that it makes no sense to port paper-based procedures into a digital publishing process. In conventional publishing, peer review has to come before publication, due to the material scarcities involved, whether the limited number of pages that can be published in a journal or the limited number of volumes that can be published by a press. These scarcities do not obtain in networked environments; there are no limitations on the number of texts, or the length of texts, that can be published. What is scarce, instead, is time and attention. What we need is a peer review process that works toward maximizing those scarcities, rather than using paper-based models of gatekeeping.

What I’ve been arguing for some time now is that we need to let everything be published, and transform peer review into a post-publication filtering process. Right now, a monograph that will only reach a dozen interested readers simply can’t be taken on by a traditional press — but why shouldn’t that monograph be able to find its dozen readers online? Isn’t it imaginable that those dozen readers might gradually, through their resulting publications, persuade many more that they’d overlooked something important in that original monograph?

So open the floodgates. Let’s develop a system that helps that dozen readers find the texts they’re looking for, and vice versa. And in the process, let’s crowd-source peer review. Right now, the process is slow in no small part because of how the “peers” involved are determined — they’re a very small number of hand-selected, overworked, and undercompensated readers. Why shouldn’t we allow any reader who genuinely engages with a text to become a “peer”? In so doing, we not only spread the labor of peer review out in a more just fashion, but we also recognize that readers and readings change, and thus that review should be an ongoing, rather than a one-time-only, process.

I’m hopeful that MediaCommons, by creating a new publishing process from the ground up, might be able to help transform our ideas about online publishing, to help us work with rather than against the net-native modes of producing “authority.” But in order to do so, we need your help. Publish things here, whether as blog posts or uploaded documents. Help us imagine the projects we should be taking on. Give us your feedback about the site, its structure, the features you’d like to see, and how we might develop and implement a genuinely peer-to-peer review process.

We’re getting serious. We hope you will, too.