Survey Results: Community Publications

This is the third post in a seven-part series in which we will share some of the results of our survey for scholars with you.

In our recent Faculty Survey, the third aspect of the LCRM project that we asked for the scholars’ input on was the idea of “community publications.” Community publications would contain all of the enhancements of multilayered publications (additional asides from the authors, additional sidebars, and links to multimedia primary sources used by the authors that are available on the internet), but they would go a step further by providing a space for conversations and communities to develop around the work to keep the conversation started by the author going after the work has been published. Once again we asked scholars if they were interested in writing or using community publications. Only 56% of the 284 respondents were interested in authoring a community publication, but 82% of the 284 respondents were interested in using community publications.

Of all the topics we asked scholars to comment on, they seemed to be the most divided on the idea of community publications. Here are some of the positive things they had to say about them:

-         “The idea of linking primary sources to a scholar’s analysis, offering students a chance to immediately see whether their interpretation coincides with or differs from the historian’s is a fantastic idea — I love that!”

-         “It would be interesting to have scholars from various fields contribute to your community publications initiatives”

-         “Viewing a professional discussion should be very helpful to students and colleagues alike.  Dated entries seem to be a must to keep track of the flow of conversation.”

-         “I believe community publications are the wave of the future.  More collaboration among scholars appears to be taking place.”

-         “This is essentially book reviews in real time and enhanced access to them. Cool.”

And here are some of the negative things they had to say about community publications:

-         “My own book is finished, and I don’t work on that topic any more, so I don’t see how discussions of it would be “useful” in any real way.”

-         “I answered no to both of these questions, but the truth is that I don’t know how I feel about it.  I worry that, in practice, such things will take up too much of my time and also, perhaps, undercut the peer review system.”

-         “There are so many books and articles I can’t even get to that it’s hard to imagine wanting to spend additional time on individual works. I trust authors and editors to include what’s important and am not interested in more unless it pertains directly to a thorny problem in my own research, which I imagine would rarely be the case.”

-         “It seems like a possibility of the wikification of scholarship. It also seems potentially noisy, and frankly divisive.”

-         “I would have concerns about unity of purpose/vision and quality control”

Both sides might be summed up by one scholar who wrote

-         “An online forum attached to my work where interested parties could comment and add to my work would be a great resource but at the same time I would be very concerned that someone could alter the meaning of my writings without my knowledge.  I’m sure you would take steps to prevent this but it is a concern nonetheless.”

What do you think about having ongoing discussion around a work?

The LCRM staff would again like to express our gratitude to everyone who took the time to participate in the survey. You’ve clearly given us some food for thought. If you still want to participate in the LCRM project we invite you to add to the discussion on a specific topic by adding a comment to this and our other posts about the survey.

Survey Methodology and Disclaimer:  We used the Odum Institute software to host our survey and help us analyze results.  We are not statisticians and do not claim that our survey or the reports on results are scientific, although they may be indicative of trends.  We welcome comments or questions about the results.

Check back soon for Part 4 of our survey results!