Sharing academic work online

I'd like to focus on the stakes of sharing academic blog posts and papers online.* In academic writing, blog posts aren't considered CV-worthy publications because they aren't peer reviewed and because they are perceived as informal. Rather, writing blog posts garners the author attention, connections, and possibly fame. What happens when an author wants to submit a blog post to an academic journal? As coeditor of the academic journal Transformative Works and Cultures, I helped create policies for submission of previously posted material. Full text readily available online usually means that the scholarship can't be submitted to a journal—any journal, not just TWC.

The reasons for this are mostly practical. The major reason has to do with clear copyright. Most academic journals, including TWC, have the author transfer the copyright to the journal. However, if the article has appeared online previously in substantially the same form, then who holds the copyright? Does the author hold it, because it appeared first in her blog? Sure, she can remove the content when she submits, but the Wayback Machine never forgets. Then there's reprint rights. Most journals charge $30 a pop for reprints. If someone can get the paper for free online, then the journal can't make money. Journals in particular want original content that can't be obtained elsewhere for free; exclusivity of targeted, vetted content is what drives readers to them. Then there's revision. Published papers go through a rigorous quality control process. The existence of an unedited version just means there's another version floating around that isn't identical to the final corrected version. Obviously the fully revised version ought to be the master copy.

Authors can take a few steps to make sure they can submit their papers to a peer-reviewed journal. If an academic conference wants to put the full text of the paper online (like Media in Transition does), then the online version of the paper ought to be completely rewritten for submission to a journal, and the cover letter to the editor of the academic journal ought to disclose the existence of the online version. The submitted paper needs to be substantially different than what appeared online. What does "substantially" mean? Usually the author has to make the case. In this sort of situation, I advocate focus: the focus of the conference paper ought to be the conference topic. When rewritten as a full-on paper for submission elsewhere, the topic may be broadened, and of course the paper will be longer. The main thesis may remain the same. The construction of the argument and the level of support will be different. If authors want to blog versions of the paper to get feedback, they ought to password-protect the post so the text won't show up on Internet searches. Authors could also post much shorter, probably hotlinked but otherwise academic-work-unsourced, versions of their ideas.

Some scholars feel strongly about open access and want to be able to hold onto copyright so they can disseminate their work as they like. That works fine for authors who are well published, famous, and/or have a relationship with a reputable press that will publish work when someone else holds the copyright, but alas, not everybody is Lawrence Lessig. Scholars who attempt to hold onto copyright when submitting to traditional outlets are more likely to be rejected simply because of the bureaucratic hassle. Such scholars are better off researching open access publication options. Most people, especially junior scholars, are hustling to get published and don't have the prestige or connections to get special exemptions.

Much of what I've written provides the rationale for why those in the publishing industry don't like to work with readily available online material: it creates confusing copyright issues, it affects their income stream, and it suborns the editorial and editing processes. But really a larger issue is at stake—an issue I don't have any answers for: what is the role of informal writings and musings within scholarly discourse? Is it part of the process of groping toward an idea, or perhaps toward a consensus with respondents? Is it a way to air questions? This was less of an issue when conference papers were delivered orally at academic meetings—there was no long-term physical record. How can we have a dynamic conversation in an era of persistence?

Notes

* Some disciplines, notably those in the scientific, technical, and medical market, make preprints available, or make available unedited versions of papers that are currently going through editing and production. Aside from certain instances of open peer review, as at MediaCommons, this is not (yet?) the case in the digital humanities.

Comments

Underlying this post seems to be the notion of how do we value the publications that occur online? Certainly, a blog post on a personal website is different than a full length article that is published with tine space of an online journal. And where do posts such as those on Media Commons fall?

For now, it seems to me that scholars must looks at the own values and what they want from participation in an academic community. The exchange of ideas and construction and disseminating of knowledge is at the core of our profession, but there are also very real, pragmatic boundaries that scholars must negotiate in order to be permitted within the "inner walls" of that community (e.g. obtain a Ph.D., publish in established journals, etc.). As publishing online becomes more and more common, those pragmatic boundaries may shift, but for now it seems like the onus is on the individual scholars to determine what drafts of what work they want to put "out there" for feedback. 

Karen's advocating for focus is a practical way of determining how substantially different one version of a work is from other versions in the recursive and iterative process of working and reworking a piece within the simultaneously personal and public space of the blog versus the (likely) ultimate publication realm of recognized journal. Interestingly, isn't this essentially what we are required to do in grad school (outing myself)? Just last week one of my esteemed professors reminded a student that he would need to render major modifications, additions, etc. to a previously submitted project that the student would like to resubmit this semester. To be fair, the student anticipated making changes; however, the professor felt compelled to issue this "warning" in front of all of the students and also added that "the institution" equates neglect to render said changes to plagiarism of one's own work. I share this not to undermine but to corroborate Karen's wisdom on the matter. 

Just a quick addendum/correction to your comments on Wayback Machine. I was surprised (positively for myself, horrified for my research :) that you can indeed retroactively remove material from Wayback: http://archive.org/about/exclude.php describes that including a robot.txt will do the following: 

  1. It will remove documents from your domain from the Wayback Machine.
  2. It will tell us not to crawl your site in the future.

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