Humanities scholars, including medievalists, are generally free from scientists’ imperative to “publish or perish.” We tend to value quality over quantity, are used to the slow pace of publication and low citation rates, and appreciate our works’ literary and artisanal quality. So why accelerate the process unnecessarily by uploading early (or un-formatted) work in the form of preprints to public, non-profit repositories like BodoArxiv? Here we discuss six reasons why we should consider doing so and why in part it’s already happening, sometimes in response to larger cultural shifts in and beyond academia.
Read MoreEditors, often relying on reviewers’ labor and input, tend to spend more time and energy waging a defensive war on their journal’s identity and quality than actively discovering exciting new work. Field-specific preprint repositories are one way to streamline editorial boards’ activities, allowing them to identify and curate collections from a far greater pool of papers—and potentially at earlier stages of gestation—than is their current habit.
Read MoreA creative use of preprints can benefit authors and publishers of monographs, as well as the scholarly community at large, no less than preprints are currently benefiting those working with journal articles. This is a good in and of itself, but one that may also help pave the way to a constructive dialogue with publishers about the production, work flow and marketing of monographic literature and edited volumes.
Read MoreEarly last week I uploaded to my Academia.edu homepage a brief note signaling and explaining my decision to close my account on that site. As a medieval historian, I had been an active and enthusiastic member since 2010, with moderately high exposure, and while “On leaving Academia.edu” was meant as a provocative goodbye, I hadn’t expected it to draw much attention. In the four days that elapsed between uploading my note and closing my account, however, the text was accessed more than 22,000 times and the critical discussion board accompanying it (known as a Session) was still going strong, attracting some 2,000 active followers making numerous contributions, including from the site’s founder and CEO, its Product VP, and of course hundreds of engaged scholars and academics from around the world.
Read MoreNet als veel academici, word ik regelmatig gevraagd een wetenschappelijk artikel te 'peer reviewen'. In tegenstelling tot veel collega's baseer ik mijn reactie op een dergelijk verzoek sinds kort op de vraag of de uitgever zijn kopij beschikbaar stelt aan een breder publiek.
Waar we voorheen bezorgd waren dat het grote publiek ons werk niet begreep, is het probleem vandaag dat de geïnteresseerde leek het zich niet kan veroorloven. Het merendeel van de tijdschriftartikelen verdwijnt achter betaalmuren.
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