Academe Archives
May 28, 2010
Posted at 11:20 PM in Academe
There's an intriguing project under way right now called Hacking the Academy. The basic idea is to crowd-source a book in a week. The topic? How to overhaul/undo/redo/reshape the mechanisms that govern scholarship and how it is created, taught, and shared. Read the details here. It's not my place to suggest answers but I can ask questions. Here are a few.
To: The forces of change
From: JHoward
So you want to hack the academy? I can’t tell you how to do it. I can ask you a few well-intentioned questions, though, because journalists ask questions. These are a few that have occurred to me as I do what I do: write about academic publishing, go to conferences, talk to scholars and editors and publishers and librarians, and generally get my feet wet in the fast-flowing, ever-shifting river of scholarly communication. These are questions lobbed at you from the sidelines, not from the trenches. I’m an observer, not a specialist, which may make these useful or may not. Either way, I'm curious to see the results of your experiment. [N.B. All this represents my own views, not those of the Chronicle of Higher Education, which I’m grateful to for hiring me to think and write about all this in the first place.]
1) What do you mean by that? Or: Beware the language of the oppressor. I keep a running list in my head of phrases I hear so often they no longer mean anything. For instance, can you break down “adding value” for me? If you’re not an employee of NORAD or a grain farmer, do you really need to talk about “silos”? And on and on. Every field has its vocabulary and a rhetoric by which it recognizes itself; every discipline and every trade, including mine, has a shorthand. That’s useful. And limiting. It’s good to keep an eye on when useful has given way to limiting, especially if you’re trying to remake the world. A fresh message requires a fresh vocabulary—or a freshening up of the old one. If you come up with a handy alternative to the phrase “the dissemination of research” please let me know, because I sure could use one.
2) How do you keep crowd-sourcing from becoming another in crowd? This is tricky. A revolution does not succeed without like-minded souls, compadres, comrades in arms working together. How do you create alternative forms of authority without creating an alternative regime? Are you opening the gates or shutting them? Storming the barricades or erecting new ones? Will the next generation (or those who feel excluded from the conversation) be tempted to bring out the tumbrels for you?
3) Have you looked for friends in the enemy camp lately? Or: Maybe you will find allies where you don’t expect any. As a journalist, I’m no stranger to generalizations. Still, it’s disconcerting to go to different conferences and hear Entire Category X-- administrators/university presses/librarians/journal editors/fill in the blank--written off as part of the problem when at least a few daring souls might not mind being part of a solution. It may not be *your* solution. You might have to venture a closer look to find out. I can’t say what you will discover. It may not be at all what you expect. It might be exactly what you expect. Let me know.
December 4, 2009
Posted at 10:24 AM in Academe
I was down in New Orleans late last month to give a talk at the Society of Biblical Literature conference. The topic: How to Talk to the Media. It was useful for me to think about the transactions between experts and journalists. I heard some eye-opening war stories from scholars who feel that they have gotten burned by media folk, especially by film-and-TV people in search of a quick sound bite about the Lost Tomb of Jesus or whatever the sensational find of the moment is.
My message was simple, obvious, and worth repeating: Journalists are not necessarily the problem. We can be a channel by which ideas make their way to a larger audience.
To make the expert-journalist interaction as smooth as possible, though, it helps to understand the constraints we work under, what we're looking for when we ask you to share your expertise, what you should know before you talk to someone like me, and how you can help me and my colleagues find you. (We can't interview you if we don't know you're out there.) I'm jotting a few pointers down here in hopes they might come in handy for some of you. This is not a complete list by any means, just some basics to think about.
First, the constraints:
--time. Deadlines, deadlines, dealines. In the trade, we call this feeding the beast, and it's a hungry one.
--space and story length. I might love to write a 5,000 word story about your work. The paper may only have room for 500 words. I don't like it any better than you do, but that's life.
--editors. I like to tell my editors that it's my job to get as much material into the story as possible and their job to take it out again. They love that. They're higher up the food chain than I am, though.
--a general audience. You write for your peers; I write for the senior scholar in the history department and the guy in the chem lab and the grad student in comp lit and the secretary in the provost's office and some random neighbor of mine who might pick up the newspaper or find an article online.
--ourselves. It's not quite fair to say that journalists are generalists; we have our own forms of expertise. But I have a better grounding in some subjects than in others, and that may be reflected in the questions I ask you.
Second, what a journalist is looking for when she/he approaches you. Sometimes I want an overview of a subject. Sometimes I want an informed reaction to an event, discovery, or idea. Sometimes I'm after context: How important is this event, really? What does it mean, how much does it matter? What do we need to know to understand it? Always appreciated: lively quotes, enthusiasm, passion for the work or the idea.
Third, what you should know before you talk to a journalist.
--What kind of story is she/he working on? Is it a scene-setting overview, a quick-turnaround news story, an in-depth analysis? It's fair to ask if you don't know.
--What kind of media outlet is the journalist working for? Do you know the publication or show? Again, ask or do some research of your own so that you have a sense of what kind of venue you're being asked to appear in. Don't make the mistake of treating "the media" as one animal; there are many species of us, and we function in some very different ways.
--Be prepared to have a long and complex conversation reduced to a handful of quotes (accurate and in context, we hope). See note about space and length constraints, above.
--Stay away from jargon or theory-speak. This is not the same as dumbing it down. Just remember you're not talking to a roomful of fellow experts in your field. A caveat: Terms of art and expert detail are necessary and welcome--anything that gives the story context and flavor.
--The journalist's reputation is on the line too. I don't want to get it wrong any more than you do.
--Most journalists do not pay for interviews, nor will we show you the story before it runs/airs.
Fourth, how can journalists find you?
--Think about what aspects of your work may be newsworthy or of interest to an audience beyond your field. Be honest, now. Not every journal article merits a universal press release.
--Make friends with your campus news service. The good ones know when to pitch, whom to pitch, and how often.
--Look to book and journal editors you work with to help spread the word about nifty ideas/monographs/special issues/reports/exciting debates and controversies/what have you.
--Make use of Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. as a way to share news (selectively) about what you're doing or to flag new twists and developments in your field.
--If you have a good tip or idea, get in touch with a journalist directly, but be judicious about it. None of us is lacking for email to read these days, and I have come to dread the epic voicemail pitches I sometimes get.
May 11, 2009
Posted at 9:36 AM in Academe
In my latest Hot Type column, I ask whether all authors are created equal under Google--under the terms of the proposed settlement in the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers' lawsuit against Google Book Search, that is. If you're a professional author, by which I mean one who counts on book sales and royalties for income, you may feel just peachy about what the deal (if approved) could do for you. But a group of scholarly authors, led by a law prof at Berkeley, believes that their book-writing colleagues in academe don't appreciate how the deal could affect research and scholarship. In a letter to the judge in the case, the group says their class of authors needs to pay more attention:
This is not a moment to stick one's head in the sand, the letter writers argue: "It is clear to us that the settlement, if approved, will shape the future of reading, research, writing, and publication practices for decades to come." Neither the Authors Guild nor the Association of American Publishers, weighted toward the commercial, "shares the professional commitments or values of academic authors."
The letter writers don't reject the deal out of hand. But they see provisions in it that "seem to run contrary to scholarly norms and open-access policies that we think are widely shared in scholarly communities."
For the open-access-minded, there's no mention of Creative Commons licenses "as alternatives to registration for payouts from Google" through the Book Rights Registry. Nor is there a clear definition of orphan works, those for which rights holders can't be found....Privacy is a big concern; scholars' use of books in the Google database could be monitored. The list goes on.
The academic authors' letter appeared not long before the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries, and the Association of Research Libraries filed comments with the judge asking him to exercise "vigorous oversight" of the settlement if it gets the green light. The library groups applaud the idea of expanded access to millions of books, but worry that "many of the features of the settlement, including the absence of competition for the new services, could compromise fundamental library values, including equity of access to information, patron privacy, and intellectual freedom."
More twists and turns ahead, no doubt, as the Justice Department looks into whether the proposed deal violates anti-trust regulations. Meanwhile, the final deadline for interested parties to file comments (and for authors to opt out of the arrangement if they care to) has been pushed back until September, with the fairness hearing in the case now slated for October.
January 5, 2009
Posted at 4:09 PM in Academe
I couldn't get that Magnetic Fields song out of my head for about a week (thanks, Mark). Turns out that San Francisco can be all that pretty, no matter what Stephin Merritt says. That may explain why I enjoyed the 2008 Modern Language Association conference, held in SF Dec. 27-30, more than the 2007 gathering in Chicago (brrr). If you're curious about what 8,400 lit-and-crit professors wanted to talk about this time around, here are links to some of my reports from the convention:
Market Realities in San Francisco
Pedagogy Is Not a Dirty Word
Fear and Interviewing
A Buyer's Market?
The Last Roundup
December 26, 2008
Posted at 4:12 PM in Academe
Beginning tomorrow, 10,000 literature scholars, more or less, descend on San Francisco for three days to hash out the latest (?) in lit-crit and the dismal job market. I get to cover it for the Chronicle. Wish me luck. If you happen to be there, drop me a note (jhowarddc AT gmail DOT com or jennifer DOT howard AT chronicle DOT com), look for me in the publishers' hall, or grab me (not literally, please) after a panel for a cup of coffee or a drink. News tips and hot rumors welcome.
November 10, 2008
Posted at 12:05 PM in Academe
One of the more intriguing things about the scholarly-communication beat--my official bailiwick at the Chronicle--is the ethnographic component. In other words, schol comm covers not just what scholars communicate (i.e., research) but how they communicate, and to whom. Why does one researcher go for an online-only journal while another is bound to print? How do blogs and listservs figure in? What new genres are cropping up, and who's exploring and exploiting them? It can be a fascinating blend of old and new scholarly folkways.
I hesitate to inflict another report on you, but the Association of Research Libraries released a pretty interesting one today-- "Current Models of Digital Scholarship"--which explores some of the "largely unexplored ecosystem" of scholarly behavior in the digital arena. From my Chronicle coverage:
The report details some intriguing disciplinary differences and adaptations. Humanists rely more than their colleagues in the social sciences and sciences on e-mail lists and discussion forums. Social scientists lean on professional and scholarly hubs, and on preprint resources like the Social Sciences Research Network. Sites that speed access to and publication of data matter most to researchers in science, technology, and medicine.
The lines between genres have blurred, too. "We observed 'video articles,' peer-reviewed reader commentary, and medieval illuminated texts coded as data—all evidence of the creative mash-ups that challenge us to rethink the definitions of traditional content categories," the report notes.
November 5, 2008
Posted at 9:00 AM in Academe
My Chronicle colleague Rich Monastersky analyzes the academic ties and professorial style of our new commander-in-chief:
The academic style offers some advantages in developing policy. Many reports of how Mr. Obama has operated his campaign and his Senate office suggest that he runs discussions with advisers much like graduate seminars, by seeking a diverse range of options and opinions. If he kept up that habit in the White House, it could help prevent him from developing myopic policies unconstrained by facts on the ground, which many scholars have accused President Bush of doing.
A lot of people compare Obama to JFK, but one scholar hears echoes of Woodrow Wilson in Obama's speaking style. Is that a good thing?
Henry W, Brands, a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Woodrow Wilson (Times Books, 2003), says Mr. Obama's speaking style echoes that of President Wilson, another former professor and a president of Princeton University before being elected. That similarity should serve as a warning to Mr. Obama, says Mr. Brands, because Wilson was sometimes accused of being pompous, and "he got worse at that the longer he was in the White House."
October 21, 2008
Posted at 10:02 AM in Academe
I've been remiss in not posting my most recent investigation for the Chronicle: "New Ratings of Humanities Journals Do More than Rank--They Rankle." It looks at an ambitious project in Europe called ERIH, or the European Reference Index for the Humaniities. ERIH assigns journals in the humanities and social sciences to three categories: A, B, or C.
The people behind ERIH insist that the categories do not represent grades--in other words, they're not meant to be judgments on the quality of the various journals, just assessments of how widely read each journal is. A lot of scholars don't buy that argument. (Neither, I've now learned, does the British Academy. At least it didn't in 2006. Scroll down to section 6.5 here.)
As I describe in the story, some journal editors have launched a revolt, and American scholars have begun to realize that this isn't just a European phenomenon. Many U.S.-based journals are already listed in ERIH's rankings, and there's no guarantee we won't see a homegrown equivalent of ERIH one of these days.
What's fascinating to me isn't the journal rankings per se but how they're part of a global push to measure humanistic scholarship the way scientific research is judged--by citation indexes and other metrics. Australia, for instance, has undertaken a massive review of research across the disciplines called ERA, or the Excellence for Research in Australia Initiative.
The takeaway: Humanists are alarmed by this trend, and they have reason to be.
