Openness in Academia
The spirit of openness is gaining traction in academia, both with faculty who are coming to embrace openness in their teaching, research, and publications and with administrators who work to introduce openness in institutional policies. More than a dozen major universities now offer some of their course content to the general public through the use of OpenCourseWare or similar tools; hundreds of universities have committed to making research available through open access policies; and more than 5000 open-access journals are publishing scholarly work.
Yet this progress -- and for the HASTAC community, there can be no doubt that this must be considered progress --can obscure or restrict important conversations about the significant challenges to embracing openness in academia. For one thing, the stakes vary depending on an academics career stage and trajectory. A tenured faculty member with an established reputation has little to lose by making research, publications, developing theories, and pedagogy open and accessible. The risks are higher for newer or pre tenure academics, whose careers depend on accumulating peer-reviewed publications, protecting and nurturing unique contributions to a field or discipline, and limiting failures in research, teaching, and collaboration.
Further, many academics are faced with difficult decisions about managing multiple professional and personal identities at a time when digital footprints are deep, wide, and difficult to rub out. Non-professional activities and affiliations now co-mingle with an academics record of scholarly pursuits, and academics who embrace openness and transparency are nonetheless finding themselves struggling with how to keep aspects of their private lives separate from their professional identities. Some academics choose to develop anonymous or pseudonymous identities online in order to manage their digital footprint; others make conscious decisions not to participate in certain communities or in certain ways.
Finally, the ivory tower -- an social institution whose very survival depends on scarcity of knowledge and expertise -- continues to struggle with conflicting impulses: universities strive to make knowledge available to the public, for the public good; at the same time, universities can only remain profitable insofar as they offer something unique that people are willing to pay to access. What would it look like all universities embraced the OpenCourseWare model? How would that affect enrollments? How would this change the value of the college degree?
Please join us in a conversation about openness in academia, focusing on the following interlocking categories:
Openness in research and publishing: How can new academics gain prominence in their field while still embracing openness? How can academics and scholars who are committed to openness negotiate this in their interactions with institutions that rely on scarcity and closed access?
Openness in professional and personal identities: To what extent is privacy at odds with openness? How can academics make decisions about how public to make their engagement with non-academic communities and networks? What is the value of or drawback to developing anonymous or pseudonymous identities, and do these conflict with the spirit of openness?
Openness in teaching and learning: How can we engage openly and transparently with our colleagues about what happens in the classroom? How would this affect our students?
Openness in policy: Is openness a threat to the university model? How can institutions embrace openness and still remain necessary?
If you're interested in these questions, HASTAC is hosting a collaborative tent called Storming the Academy at the Mozilla Drumbeat Festival in Barcelona from November 3-5. Our group attending the conference will be blogging and joining in this conversation!
Invited Guests:
- Edward Maloney (Georgetown)
- Joshua Danish (Indiana University)
- Clay Whipkey (OpenCourseWare)
- Mark Sample (George Mason University)
This Forum is hosted by:
- Susannah McGowan (UCSB)
- Jenna McWilliams (Indiana
- Jana Remy (UC Irvine)
About program
HASTAC Scholars Tweets
Upcoming Group Events
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May 31, 2012 - 4:30pm - June 2, 2012 - 5:45pm
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June 13, 2012 - 9:00am - June 15, 2012 - 6:00pm
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June 25, 2012 (All day) - June 26, 2012 (All day)
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July 12, 2012 (All day) - July 14, 2012 (All day)
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September 5, 2012 - 7:00pm - September 7, 2012 - 7:00pm
online identity
My take on the topic of openness in academia is a fairly personal one. For many years I had a strong (but pseudonymous) online identity---a fact that I didn't reveal to my colleagues in academia. About five years ago I decided to ‘own’ my online self and shifted to blogging under my own name, and slowly began to incorporate my academic work into my online identity. In many ways it’s been a challenge to do this--primarily because of he ways I'd partitioned my life to be a different person in different contexts. However, I am now integrating all of my various ‘selves’ into one online space through a portfolio that features most of my 10 years of blog material as well as my academic career trajectory. It's not yet an easy fit--it's difficulty for me to even design a space that incorporates such wide-ranging content.
Sometimes I wonder what future hiring committees might think about my wide-ranging online presence. However, I've decided not to let that be the driving force behind my online presence.
me too
As I've written about before for HASTAC, I've had a very large online footprint since long before I ever considered coming to grad school; if you look hard enough you can still find Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan fiction I wrote when I was in 8th grade with, unbelievably, my real name attached. (I was so young.) At the time I applied to Duke I was actively publishing at a blog for a (now defunct) literary journal and decided that there was already much too much under my name to even try to cover up -- five years and several thousand blog posts later, well, here we are.
I'm very glad I kept the blog, but all the same I still worry about what hiring committees will make of it. My hope is that the many positive aspects of my online life drive out whatever they perceive to be the drawbacks. In particular I firmly believe that student blogging is a wonderful alternative to traditional papers that fosters an open atmosphere of discussion and debate -- and my own online history necessarily informs the way I use blogs in the classroom. (It's how I got Cory Doctorow to talk to my class, for starters.)
I'll let you know next year whether that argument sells on the market...
student blogs = online history
Gerry, You bring up an excellent point about student blogging in the classroom -- not only is it a viable, creative alternative to traditional papers it could also spark a writing habit to be continued beyond the classroom. If students see that their professors have such an online presence, I wonder how that would affect their writing while in school and beyond. Or even that this writing opens doors and opens your viewpoint to other people, particularly Cory Doctorow in your case.
Good luck in your future search!
online identities and openness
Gerry, in your post you bring up the topic of hiring committees and "openness" online, worried about what hiring committees will make of your blog posts. This is an issue i've been thinking about recently as I watch my peers and friends go on the job market. One friend's experience in particular has made me rethink my own fear of being open online and doing what Jana mentioned, merging my online and my academic identity.
My friend has a very strong online presence. She has a personal website and an academic blog, both of which are very professional and academic. She also has a personal twitter account which, although she does write under a "non de plume" still her personal information is easy to figure out. On the twitter account she freely posts both academic and sometimes very personal tweets. Interestingly enough, it is her twitter account and not her professional website that has led to two potential job offers.
Whereas I still have a fear of "saying the wrong thing" online that might be found by a hiring committee when I go on the market next year, through my peer's experience I am seriously rethinking my own reticene of being"open" and of merging my academic and personal online identites
open source professor
My perspective on openness in academia comes from the professional development sphere where I have witnessed many conversations about teaching and learning among academics.
Within these interdisciplinary conversations in a national grant project, faculty stated that talking about what happens in the classroom or even researching what happens in their own classroom does not occur within their own contexts. Talking, sharing, researching, experimenting, taking risks ... all of these actions represented the collaborative, positive aspects of scholarship and those of us working in this group wondered what this would look like on a larger scale.
As Mark Sample (a fellow member of this grant project) writes, “... the ideal result is the open source professor, a teacher and scholar who applies the tenets of the open source software community to his or her own professional life. This means sharing, conversation, collaboration, and reflection at every step in the teaching and research process, not just with the final product.” What impact could this type of open source, transparent scholarship have on universities? How could this type of scholarship affect future students?
i really like the term...
without a doubt, i really like the term of the "open source professor." i think this is the model that i would personally like to pursue even though i am aware that this won't be a perfect model. as for your question about the impact of this type of scholarship on universities, the simple answer that came up to my mind is that it will provide more choices of scholarship just like the open source software provides more choices for computer users. it is not so much as trying to overthrow the old model of scholarship as to "show" (i put an emphasis on this word) that the other model can work just as well.
relating this answer to the notion of risk for tenured or non-tenured faculty members, i think this phenomenon mimics what happens in the computer software development itself. at first only big companies like IBM who was willing to adopt the open source model, because they have less risk. but, as soon as people understand the strength of the open source software, it becomes less of a matter whether it is a start-up or a big company that uses open source software, the risk is still the same. i think we are in a similar stage right now, where academic institutions are still trying to find the right model to adopt open source principles while still maintaining their status as a threshold of knowledge. as i browse through the posts in this forum, i see some models of adoption being proposed. as long as they are put into practices, then i have an optimistic view that we won't have to worry about the legitimacy of the "open source professor" model anymore. i remember what Manuel Delanda, Christopher Kelty, and Gabriella Coleman say about the open source movement, in that no matter how different the backgrounds of their communities are, no matter how divided they are in the open source and free software ethics/philosophies, there remains one same activity that they agree upon and that seems to work, sharing their code.
just my two cents,
izul
giving it away
In my field, there's a listserv you can subscribe to called XMCA: extended Mind, Culture, and Activity. It’'s a listserv where, right now, some of the most prominent academics in my field are having a conversation about openness. It started because the people running a project called Change Lab have decided to copyrighted the name; the heads of another project of approximately the same level of prominence, 5th Dimension, have chosen not to copyright their name (or their work). Here's what Michael Cole, a founder of 5th Dimension (based at UC-San Diego's Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, or LCHC) and a prominent educational researcher, has to say:
The words, 5th Dimension, were not first employed by LCHC, although we used them in a somewhat unusual way. Remember the band? Probably their name is trademarked and we are infringing... except that we are too insignificant to bother with.
My own position, having been raised in California, completed a public university when it was a public university (now about 80 % privatized), is that I am bound by my contract as a faculty member to give away my ideas. The University makes me sign some document these days that says if I invent something, they get a cut. (Back when i attended UCLA professors had to sign a loyalty oath... those times may be coming back in addition to privatization, unfortunately).
I think a really productive discussion could focus on the differences between what is possible in terms of research in different socio-political-economic circumstances. The US has gone hyper neoliberal capitalist, as if everyone was reading Das Kapital. Finland has moved in the same direction, but perhaps retains some of its past. Brazil has its restrictions, etc. How does this affect the potentials for developing CHAT research as a public good? What public?
Meantime, we'll keep trying to give it away. It's all I know how to do, or care to do.
Nice, huh?
This email points to something we don't talk much about: that a person's attitude toward openness can be defined in part by geography, in part by comparison to general public attitudes toward openness, and in part by institutional affiliation. There's something else implied beneath this email, too: That a person's attitude toward openness is also determined, in large part, by career stage.
Because here’s the thing: In general, ‘giving it away’ means something different for early-career academics than it does for well advanced scholars who have already made their reputations. Prominent scholars give away an idea and it comes back to them, like a boomerang. I'm an early-career academic. I don't yet have an established reputation to bank on; I haven't yet carved off a piece of the pie for myself. I toss out a good idea, and there's every chance in the world that someone else will find my boomerang on the ground, figure nobody's using it, and run off with it to play their own game.
We've all heard of young scholars getting their work co-opted by their more advanced colleagues and peers. We've heard about academics in a tight job market losing out because of red flags in their online identities. And we know that the ideas we have when we're 20 may not be the ideas we have at 30, or 40, or 50.
So for me, if the question is: “Openness?” my preferred response is: “Yes, openness. But at what cost?” I've been posting my coursework online because I think it may be useful for others to see what doctoral students in the Learning Sciences are up to. I write about my struggles with gender and gender performance in academia, because I think it's important to challenge people to think more, and better, about those issues. I also write about social and political issues that are only tangentially related to my research focus, in the hopes that others may find it useful to see how an academic approaches living, working, and feeling in the world. I'll be posting sections of my dissertation, when it comes to that, online. And I'll do what I can to make my intellectual grapplings available to anyone who cares to engage with them. Because trying to give it away is all I know how to do.
Relationship to tenure system?
These are excellent points. I wonder how much these relate to the tenure system, which, though it obviously promotes openness for tenured academics, may have the perverse side effect of encouraging highly risk-averse behavior in younger academics, who, given the job market, are not likely to want to do anything that may reduce their chances of finding a tenure track position. That includes sharing really good ideas when it means someone else might, as you put it, find that boomerang on the ground. What's even more perverse, of course, is that young academics are exactly the ones who are most likely to publish extremely challenging, controversial, innovative work--i.e., the kind that's most in need of the protection of tenure. I wonder if there is any way to fix these problems while still maintaining the benefits of the tenure system for older academics?
on the tenure system
What are the benefits of the tenure system for older academics, other than a job guarantee? Put another way, what are the benefits of the tenure system for academia? I ask not to be a jerk but because I know there are benefits that I can't see from my position on the outside of the tenure system.
The classic argument is that
The classic argument is that they can make controversial claims without fear of losing their jobs, and also that it supports research which may take many years to bear fruit.
Tenure and Innovation
It's difficult to talk about tenure without making generalizations. It's also difficult to talk about tenure without raising the stress level of every pre-tenure faculty within earshot. But let me do both, briefly, here.
I don't think there's enough evidence yet to say that tenure promotes openness for tenured faculty. Tenure can make it less risky, but open-access journals still have enough stigma attached to them that many faculty would rather go with an "established" brand than an upstart open-access journal (even if it is clearly peer-reviewed). It'd be worth looking into whether any studies have been done on this.
As for pre-tenure faculty, it's hard for me to say whether it's tenure that discourages risk or something much broader than tenure. Academia itself is risk-averse. It's not as if a professor gets tenure and then he or she suddenly starts taking more risks. In most cases, the professor's post-tenure research proceeds at the same plodding pace, in roughly the same direction as the pre-tenure research. Tenure is not a system that encourages innovation. It is a system that rewards familiar work with the opportunity to produce similar familiar work.
Tenure and Innovation (IN THE HUMANITIES)
I forgot to say in my above comment that my perspective is a strictly humanities perspective. I'm not qualified to generalize about the sciences or social sciences (and frankly, I'm not qualified to generalize about the humanities either).
Tenure and innovation
I've repeatedly heard tenured faculty talk about their innovative projects and then say something along the lines of "I'd never advise a junior scholar to do this, it has to wait until after tenure." I'm really tired of hearing that, because I'm cynical enough to think that I will probably never get tenure, or I might be so old by the time I get it that it won't be worth much to me at that point. But I'm a non-traditional student and I've never done things the way I'm "supposed to," so perhaps my approach is unusual.
Openness as innovation
Jana, I know that you and I are both historians, and I wonder how disciplinary context affects various people's opinions on the utility of openness for pre-–tenure scholars. I tell people in other disciplines that history is well–reputed to have conservative methods; we rely much more on documents than on theory. When we're lucky, that reliance on conservative methods makes our claims stick, at least as well as any argument based on empiricism can.
At least to hear senior scholars tell it, working with non–US archives sometimes involves a good deal of, shall we say, personal relationship–building to get the materials one is interested in. I think some historians have, perhaps reasonably, jealously guarded their own materials and research interests in the interest of competitive advantage on the job or tenure market. Certainly in the past, adopting a closed attitude with people who are not well–known seems to have made sense, at least in some fields of history. But I think that those attitudes trickle down to junior scholars in the process of our training, especially as regards tenure.
These days, given that early–career scholars have such vanishing hopes of landing a tenure–track job anyway, I'm not sure many of us have much to lose. If we're going to try to continue researching while working outside the tenure track, we might as well have fun doing it.
I recently had a conversation with someone important in my field about whether it's professionally risky to post my conference papers on my website, as I do. This person was concerned that someone else would "steal" my work and publish it before I do. Here's the core of the issue, for me: I want to be part of a profession that values talking publicly about our work, even (or especially) to non-historians. I want to be able to read about what other people are working on before they publish it in a journal or in a book, and so it's incumbent on me to act the same way.
The only way I think the discipline will change its norms is by individuals changing how we practice; I don't think it's something that the disciplinary associations are going to encourage, at least not any more than they have encouraged other methodological innovations (at first). (Think of the suspicion with which women's historians were greeted when they started to use diaries and personal letters to write the history of mothers and children. Those methods have become fairly standard over the years. This may be a poor comparison, but then again it may not. We won't know unless we try.)
disciplinary change
Hi Shane - I really like your comparison in the last paragraph, about the different ways that a discipline can change, indeed the only way it changes: not just by replacing one object with another, but through substantial shifts in content, methodology, and most importantly, mindset. I remember reading Landscape for a Good Woman and I think that's often used as an example of that change in the way that disciplinary History can be done.
At a recent conference, part of my paper referenced that I'd dug up an old document and had it translated, and would be posting it online or would send anyone a PDF of the English translation. Almost everyone reacted in the same way that you've experienced: don't put it out there before you've published, why would you make public your private work before you get credit, etc. But I also got amazing reactions: some folks invited me to present the work at another set of conferences (way outside of my own expertise, but we share interest in the same document and historical period), someone else suggested it might be a great component in an upcoming collection, and someone else volunteered to double-check the translation since they had some experience in that genre of French writing.
All of which is to say: being open about the document and understanding its place as inherently public and shared was far more beneficial to my own work and ideas! Sharing of work and ideas to me doesn't seem only about some vague notion of 'charity', or an understanding of collective interest and abilities, or a refusal of private property (though it can be all of those things too) but it's also about making my own work even stronger.
Fantastic topic--great way to
Fantastic topic--great way to kick off the year!
From this morning's Chronicle, "Finding an Editor - or Lots of Them - in the Crowd" is right up this forum's alley. By shifting and expanding our editing resources to the crowd, cloud, or whatever, we not only receive feedback from a variety of voices, but the "ivory tower" can benefit from these inclusive impulses. (And on the cheap, too!) Even though that article pertains to a novel, it seems very likely and attractive to run similar operations among the academic presses. Should we upload our research for comments? Don't many of us do that already when we blog, or ask questions on Facebook or Twitter? Academia should embrace the noosphere head-on by opening up our audience and inviting more access to maturing ideas.
Certaintly the post is
Certaintly the post is correct in that tenured, established faculty have little to lose being open about their work.
From this summer, for example, Jason Mittlell posted his essay for an upcoming anthology on why he doesn't like Mad Men. This generated a ton of comments for him to factor into revising the essay, clarifying points, etc. But it also spurred a response from Ian Bogost on the merits of aca-fandom, a topic Mittell addressed in his essay. This response generated even more comments and expanded the scope of the original article significantly. All of which led to Henry Jenkins chiming in with a post of his own on the subject.
In these discussions, particularly Mittell's piece, people from a variety of perspectives, academic and non-academic weigh in and provide feedback. They supply a model for openness, but one that (as Jason acknowledges in another post), comes from their position within the academy. The upside to this that they, along with other well-known, tenured academics, also get to start setting the tone for how openness is accepted as an academic practice. I hate saying the words "trickle down openness" but that seems to be a possible model.
But to the managing identities issue. I'm (too) active on Twitter, run 2 blogs (not including my HASTAC one), and maintain an Academia profile. All of this, for me, is a way of not only branding, but networking. Through Twitter, I've developed a considerable network of people (many of whom I recently had the pleasure of meeting at conference earlier this month) who I can go to with questions, get feedback from, and the like. But they also know me, so we're able to help one another, both grad students and tenured and non-tenured faculty alike.
I am careful not to share too much about my personal life there, however, since it is recognizably me, and I don't use Twitter for on-line venting of serious matters (i.e., death in the family, combative issues within a department).
I'm not important enought to really influence openness in the academic directly, which is part of the reason I applied for HASTAC and why I work for MediaCommons: In Media Res. I can at least exert some influence in how openness is practiced through these institutions while I try and establish myself at the same time.
agreed, noel.
Another nice aspect about the conversation you reference, Noel, is that people who weren't directly involved in the conversation could still follow along. What's awesome about this is that we get insights into not only how ideas are developed and refined, but also how theories are the project of collaborative knowledge-building.
There's something weird about our impulse to use public channels for professional expression and not personal issues. This is true even though everybody knows that academics are people too and that they need to find ways to balance professional ambitions with personal needs and concerns. Why do we try to keep these areas of our lives separate? I struggle with the same issue you point to in your next to last paragraph, though I can't help but share tons of personal details on twitter and other networks. I don't know how this colors people's assumptions about me, and I'm not sure how I could go about finding out.
De-personalize as opposed to de-humanize in academic openness?
Jenna,
Thanks for the reply! :)
Yes, I agree that the Mittell-Bogost-Jenkins conversation totally engages in that collaborative knowledging building scape, and how it ended up travelling across the blogs of scholars in three different fields, exposing different folks to the overall scope of the argument. Imagine if someone worked backwards from Jenkins' post only to discover all of this started by Mittell not enjoying Mad Men (especially with Bogost's very theory heavy post and comments in the middle?). It helps put people into conversations with one
But I want to latch onto your last paragraph. I feel like I share enough of my overall personality through my on-line presence that I don't feel I need to share my life with the folks who follow me. I do to certain degrees, but I'm aware of a self-imposed line that I'm very cautious not to cross.
Part of this, for me, is that I've spent years blogging about my personal life and am kind of burnt out on the personal disclosure aspect of the Interwebs. We are people, too, I agree (goodness knows we are -- negative comments on a journal submission can send us into week-long tailspins!), but I feel that if I wanted to share my personal life, I'd set up a locked account of some sort, be it blog or Twitter, and invite those interested, or those I consider close, to follow along.
In the long run, it gets to a degree that I want to personalize my presence, but not so much that it seems confessional, if that makes sense. And, like you, I don't know how people feel about my tweets, which I think is why I've developed certain behaviors so it's clear who I am based on what I do share without sharing too much...
Any sense at all (I did just get out of a long meeting, so this may all be nonsense)?
how people perceive online personalities
I think Jenna raises a really interesting and complex point in her second paragraph. Obviously, I know Jenna quite well from several classes that she has taken with me, so I can't really speak to my impressions of her via other online forums since my opinions are already well established.
However, a few thoughts.
First, one piece of advice I received when I went on the job market was that one key thing was to make sure that everyone I met saw me as a professor and not as a graduate student who wanted to be a professor. There were many ways that this might manifest, and I think it was great advice. So, I have tried to apply this advice to checking my own lens on students' (over) sharing via social networking tools, and I think it fits. There are some who come off as serious academics who also have a personal life. Others come off as childish to be perfectly honest. There are even a few that I stopped "following" simply because I couldn't bear to see one more whiny or profanity-filled tweet or facebook status update. And don't get me wrong - I'm not easily bothered by complaints or profanities on social media platforms, but there is a point when there just doesn't appear to be anything else in the feed. If those students were to apply for a job at my institution, I would do my best to look at their package with fresh eyes, but I'd be dishonest if I claimed I wouldn't be going into it with a negative impression.
I think another part of the issue isn't just that students share personal details, but the ones who know I am following them and then over-share ideas that maybe a professor shouldn't know. For example, if one of my students follows me on twitter and then I respond by following them in kind, I assume we are both aware that we are seeing each other's tweets. If that student then tweets a complaint about a professor, or tweets about how they are shirking their duties, I'm surprised that it didn't occur to them to at least momentarily reflect upon the fact that I'm seeing that tweet (along with several other professors - this isn't all about me after all). Then, I am more effected by the bad judgement it shows to not be thoughtful about who knows these things then the actual claims themselves. Again, though, this is typically only one little piece of information for me. Students who have already repeatedly earned my respect only get a moment of surprise out of me in these cases. Those who haven't yet or do this a lot are slowly losing my respect. I can only imagine it is the same for other professionals.
ok, but how do we tell our friends to act like professors too?
Joshua,
I've had the good luck to know you in real life, so I've also had the good luck to hear you offer this really helpful advice before. I've used this to think about how I use social media platforms and about what information I include about myself there.
However, my concern is that "acting like a professor" seems to contain a very narrow set of behaviors. For example, knowing that Joshua follows me on twitter, I sometimes vent about my struggles with professors (omitting their names and keeping details vague), fully intending for Joshua to see those tweets--he's our faculty-student relations chair. Though I generally behave in a 'professorly' manner on Facebook, I have Facebook friends who aren't academics and only use Facebook for personal, and not professional networking. This means that I'm regularly attached to 'non-professorial' conversations, photo albums, and so on. And if I want to continue connecting with these friends via Facebook, then I can't avoid this part of my digital footprint.
Moreover, I don't necessarily want to avoid this part of my digital footprint. My decision to use social media platforms to develop an open, academic online persona shouldn't have to mean that I have to separate out my professional relationships and my personal ones. One of the biggest selling points of many of these networks, after all, is that we get to throw all of our friends and acquaintances together and see what happens.
I swear this is related to openness in academia.
Because full participation in networks like Facebook, twitter, and whatever comes next means giving up total control over how others see us. In online spaces where I have full control over my self-presentation (as in my personal blog), I can--and do--present myself as a professional, serius academic who engages in serius threds. In the other networks, and on the internet in general, I don't have or want control (until someone tells the world that I vandalize hybrid cars and throw kittens off of bridges, of course).
great points
You raise some really good points.
I'd like to clarify my translation of "act like a professor" to first be "act professional" which is, I think, a broader category. Beyond that, though, I would hope as you've noted above that being a professor / professional does not stop one from being a human, a friend, and in many cases a goof ball. So I don't see it as implying that some forms of behavior should never happen.
Also, while I know there are people who do google students, or check their facebook status, I have never done so unless they put something in their application that piqued my interest (e.g., they mention a project they worked on, so I google the project). For those people who are looking at everything, I'm not sure what the solution is since there are major challenges to all of them. The ones I am curious about are the sub-set of folks who go out of their way to make sure I have access to their feeds (e.g., they have a public twitter feed and follow mine, or they add me as a facebook friend). Then, having done that, having invited me in as it were, they do things that I shouldn't see.
A different way of thinking about this, though, which I think is valuable is to suggest that increasingly, to be an academic or open academic, we need to be marketing savvy. Increasingly, we are producing, sharing, and vetting our own materials (websites, blogs, course descriptions, research project descriptions, etc.) in ways that do have an impact upon those who see them. Period. People see our professional websites, personal websites, etc. And it makes a difference. Although I also I think this is really just an extension of the kinds of issues that used to arise (and continue to) when going to a conference. Future colleagues, collaborators, and hiring committees see you there and form opinions. Sometimes with very little information, though hopefully those are easier to change. Now there are a lot more venues where that happens.
openness = accountable?
The larger issue seems to be whether or not we want to live in an open society and initiatives like OpenCourseWare are one instance of a larger debate. Since I've been in computer-land for years, I'll start there.
I'm reminded of Eric S Raymond and Richard Stallman's Open-Source and Free Software Federation movements. In a lot of ways, when I first encountered their arguments the debate seemed largely an academic exercise, that is, Apache, Mozilla Firefox and GNU Linux are great, but haven't really changed the way end users view software. Now, I am much less certain. Just in the past year, one could compare the effects of the Citizen's United decision with Wikileaks' release of Afghanistan war docs.
By now, it's clear this US midterm election is being bought part and parcel by anonymous contributors with deep pockets. I don't understand how we've allowed this to happen... What intrigues me is that, at least for now, we seem to have given up on preventing campaign contributions from companies. Instead, we just want to know who these companies and individuals are that are dumping mass amounts of money into political advertising!
I don't even know what to think about Wikileaks. In principle I'm very much in favor of the idea that we need a protected refuge for whistleblowers and others who put their lives at risk to reveal information but the debate in the media seems very much like a circus to me at the moment.
I think I'll end by asking (and hopefully this doesn't seem like a non sequitur): if you don't have openness how can you have accountability?
Better yet, does openness = free?
Peter, I'm going to respond only to your second paragraph; your move to the "larger issue" of whether we want to live in an "open society" (and thence to campaign finance reform and wikileaks) is understandable, and is one with which I feel some sympathy. But I think it can be helpful, if we are to be at all serious about the topic of "openness in academia" to resist the temptation (perhaps even, provisionally, resist the obligation) to moving the larger abstractions.
That said, I want to press on a division you gloss over, because of the implications it may have for our understanding of what "openness" in academia might mean. I think that you're right to identify open source software as being one of main reasons that the term "open" now has so much, and so appealing, a rhetorical force. The term "open" seems to have acquired the force of virtue; to be open is a virtue in and of itself (without predicating exactly what that openness means, or to what ends it operates). Yet in bringing together Eric S. Raymond and Richard Stallman you yoke together two very different positions. "Open source" itself was a tactical move on the part of certain people to make certain ideas about software development more friendly to industry and commerical software developers. Raymond's argument in The Cathedral and the Bazaar is largely an argument about free and open markets; this sort of "freedom" (free, we might say, not "as in beer" or "as in speech" but "as in laissez faire") leads to better products. Doing so requires that the source code be openly available for collaboration. The counter-intuitive point which Raymond makes in 1997, years before "the wisdom of the crowd" was a similarly bandied slogan, is that decentralization and lack of structure can self-organize and produce better outcomes in certain fields (like software development).
Stallman, also, of course, wants source code to be available to end users to tinker with, alter, recompile, and so on. But while Raymond's argument is fundamentally a pro-market argument, grounded in ensuring a certain outcome (i.e. better software) Stallman's is based (to a degree some find fanatical) on a principle: that software should be "free" (and here I think it is safe to say, "free as in speech, not as in beer"). Stallman makes the point succinctly in Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software: "Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, because only free software respects the users' freedom."
Rather than accountability, therefore, I would want to ask a question in the spirit of Richard Stallman; when we talk about "openness" are we talking about freedom? Is this distinction, which Stallman stresses, relevant when we talk about "openness" in the academy. Is openness a way of improving scholarship? Is it a way of making the work of scholars more available to a wider public? Is it simply a matter of principle?
The idealist will immediately decry my alternatives as false: "It is all those things! And many more!" And maybe that is right. But I think the tensions between figures within the "open source" movement (between Stallman and Raymond; or the emerging tension between OpenOffice and LibreOffice— note once again, one product declaring itself "open," another "free") illustrate, the choice is not always between "open" and "closed," but between different meanings of open or different types of "free."
openness, freedom, & accountability
Now we have two options to choose from: When we talk about 'openness' are we talking about freedom? And: if you don't have openness how can you have accountability?
It seems to me that both of these questions consider the significance of a general cultural embrace of openness; the scenario gets much more tricky when, as in academia, the embrace of openness--whatever its meaning--is varied at best.
Additionally, openness doesn't automatically equate to accountability, especially in situations where there is no 'person' or 'group' to hold accountable. Wikipedia is an example, though perhaps a bad one: If someone creates a wikipedia page that lists me as the founder of a group that vandalizes hybrid automobiles and throws kittens off of bridges, who should I sue to set the record straight? I could remove the information (because, FYI, I don't vandalize hybrid automobiles or throw kittens off of bridges), but if someone was really determined they could keep reposting the information indefinitely. And of course, the wikileaks example challenges the notion that openness equates to freedom: whose notion of freedom? freedom from what? or to do what? at the expense of whom?
More to the point of the issues we're discussing here, academics who embrace openness may do so in the interest of freedom, accountability, or a host of other admirable values. But in many respects, academia itself remains fairly closed and therefore weighted, to greater or lesser extent, against open scholarship.
That seems to me to be where the tension comes in. Otherwise, academics wouldn't worry so about being open and transparent--openness would be the default mode and therefore nothing worth talking much about.
The Quintessential Openness: An Open Community
While I've participated on other HASTAC blogs and discussions, this is my first time as an "invited guest." I'm of course honored to be such a guest, but I also want to explicitly question what we mean by "invited" and what we mean by "guest"---and then what this might tell us about openness in the academy.
Let me begin with the noun: guest. It can be rhetorical suicide to turn to etymology as the basis for a sound argument, but I'll make an exception in this case, because the root of the word "guest" is, curiously, also the root of the word "host." Both words are derived from the Latin "hostis," meaning "stranger," or more precisely, "enemy." In medieval Latin, "hostis" came to mean "army" or "warlike expedition." This is similar to the original meaning of "host" in English---"an armed company or multitude of men."
What does this tell us?
That every meeting between a host and a guest is a possible enemy encounter. At least historically speaking. But also that there is ultimately little distinction between a host and a guest. Especially here in this forum, what it means is that the distinction between hosts and guests can blur, or fade entirely.
This blurring appears to be at odds with the tricky modifier "invited." This word, invited, elevates me somehow, to a place of honor, a place of responsibility, a privileged perspective. And why was I invited? Presumably because I have something worthwhile to contribute to a discussion about openness in academia. But I'm not sure I do. I'm not sure I have anything to add. Because (and I'm tempted to say "ironically enough" here, though it's the opposite of irony)---because everything I have to say about opennness in the academy is already open. It's already out there. I've already written about open teaching, open research, and open publishing.
But my reaction to my status as both "guest" and "invited" reminds me that there is another kind of openness I'd like to highlight, one that's not strictly accounted for in the four categories the hosts outline in their opening prompt. Like Aristotle's description of a fifth essential element to complement earth, air, water, and fire, this is a quintessential element, something that should be everywhere and undergird every effort toward openness. And this is the idea of an open community. This is the true meaning of openness in the academy: a community in which there is no distinction between invited guests and uninvited guests, let alone a distinction between guests and hosts.
This idea of an open community has been on my mind lately, because of an ongoing concern, shared by many who align themselves with the digital humanities. And the concern is this: that the digital humanities is already closed, that there already in-groups, an in-crowd of people who know each other both personally and professionally, who are collaborating, building, theorizing, publicly, while everyone else looks on.
Twitter can exaggerate this perception of exclusivity. You can now read in real-time conversations about scholarship, teaching, and publishing that once took place privately, or at best only semi-publicly. And it's not unusual, in the days leading up to an important conference, to find a hashtag conversation already in progress. Bethany Nowviskie has written eloquently about the ways Twitter can both reinforce the perception of cliquishness and disrupt invite-only conferences in a powerful way.
For my part, I've likened preconference hashtagging to an orchestra warming up in the pit. It's cacophony---perhaps even off-putting---up until the concert begins, and then it resolves beautifully into a vigorous and mostly coherent exchange of ideas. Likewise, the public conversations that occur on high profile blogs (Noel gives several good examples) should not be understood as attempts to foreclose participation in the digital humanities---or the humanities in general. Do not mistake openness for exclusivity.
Let me say that again: Do not mistake openness for exclusivity.
What looks an exclusive club, complete with invited guests, is neither a club nor is it exclusive. These are your humanities, your conversations. They're wide open for anyone to listen to, and for anyone to participate in. We are neither guests nor hosts, but an open community. You are all welcome here.
The tricky question of control
Recently, I've seen (and heard about) syllabi that politely request students to refrain from tweeting about the content of class lectures and discussions. To ask students not to tweet during a lecture or discussion seems consistent with policies that discourage internet use but I don't think the policy is about distraction. My guess is that teachers are more concerned that student tweets might circulate out of their control like unauthorized micro-publications; little off-hand quips floating around the net without their knowledge or consent.
With this anecdote in mind, I wonder, for how many of our colleagues is openness more about control than access, accountability, or transparency?
In my experience, the benefits of openness frequently outweigh a loss of control but I know that this is not universal. Perhaps there is a connection here to the problem that Mark highlights in which openness is mistaken for exclusivity. It is an unfortunate fact that colleagues who are less comfortable with a loss of control will be excluded from certain conversations happening online.
As we experiment with increasing openness, can we avoid creating a gap between scholars willing to give up some control and those who prefer holding on?
bridging the openness gap
I've been working with Joshua Danish, a faculty member at my institution who is committed to openness in his teaching. Several students in his classes tweet regularly during class, and as far as I can remember he has never set a specific policy to regulate this. He has made it clear, in class discussion and individual conversations, that what matters to him is that students are able to contribute productively to conversation--and as long as they're doing that, he's not going to try to control how they direct their energies.
But he's also written about the challenges of openness in teaching, and I think that this issue is far more nuanced from his perspective than it is from students'. I'd love to hear his thoughts on this issue.
My .5 cents
About a year ago a student asked me sheepishly after class how I felt about some students using their laptops to tweet, email, or surf during class. I presume from his demeanor that he had witnessed exactly that. My response, as Jenna has pointed out, is that I'm fine with it so long as they are still professional, respectful contributors in the class itself. I use the those terms not to imply that I am holding them up to a specific high standard, but to note that this is their entrée to the profession, and that I believe their peers deserve respect as much as I do.
In any case, the second part of response went something like this: hey, students have always been able to zone out. I am a doodler. Sometimes I doodle in meetings because it helps me focus when I am thinking really deeply about what is being said. Sometimes because I am bored to tears and can barely muster the energy necessary to listen to what is being said. The point being that there have always been and may always be ways for people to check out during a class. Whether they do or not is up to them. So, I'd rather focus on making a hospitable, energizing class environment to keep everyone engaged. Also, sometimes those tweets are really powerful. Other students chime in during or after class, and conversations get extended. Sometimes they lead to a smile and a laugh and let us continue the work we are about feeling more like a community. I think those are some pretty great upsides. If it becomes too distracting for people to continue with their work, then I'll rethink my stance. Haven't hit that point yet, though.
Now to the bottom of the thread to introduce myself...
also...
One other thing I think worth mentioning is that while I've never asked a student to avoid posting course content, I have asked two things: 1) If you get ideas from that posting, please be mindful of the appropriate ways to acknowledge or cite the sources. 2) If you are going to share something that reflects one of your peers, then please make sure that they are equally comfortable. Just because I am pretty ok with things being open doesn't mean everyone in my classes is, and I want to respect that.
Syllabi
Where have you seen comments on syllabi about not tweeting the content of courses and discussions? I've never seen that & think if I wre a student in such a class it would immediately inspire me to start tweeting course content (I'm rather rogue like that).
I have heard of professors asking their students to leave their laptops and cellphones at home during lecture. But I don't really get that, either (primiarly because I can't imagine such a request to be honored _and_ I think we do a disservice to our students when we try to control the classroom in this way).
Twitter in the classroom
I've also encouraged students to live tweet during class. What I've found is that students often use Twitter to be snarky---and while this may sound like a bad thing to most people, it's something I highly value. As I wrote on my own blog, snark is "a legitimate way to engage culture. It’s involved, it’s witty, and most importantly, it takes an oppositional stance---a welcome reprieve from the majority of student writing, which avoids taking any stance at all."
I'm particularly incensed when faculty who talk about openness in terms of their research refuse to let their own classrooms or teaching be open. I understand that sensitive issues may be discussed in class, and that students may reserve their right to privacy, but to prevent the students who do want to write publicly about their classroom experience from doing such writing is an anathema to the spirit of academia. Teaching should not be something that happens behind closed doors, cut off from the rest of the world. Academics should think in public. We should teach in public too. And more importantly, we should teach our students to think in public as well.
Using twitter to teach writing?
This is purely tangential to the topic at hand, but hey, it's the internet. I've always found that economy of language is a really important skill for writers, and one that's neither easy to teach nor particularly common. The snarky twitter post seems like it could actually help teach this really well. After all, with only 140 characters, it certainly makes one get to the point quickly.
I agree
I hadn't thought yet of actually *encouraging* them to write snarky tweets during class, but it could definitely work for a particular sort of writing instruction. I may steal that! Duke's own Negar Mottahedeh <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/twitter-film-festival-goes-live-at-duke-u/4630">famously uses Twitter during film screenings</a> and it seems to work quite well for fostering discussion during a film without being disruptive.
snarky wit brawls & openness
I agree that snark can work as a way of encouraging students to find their own voice in a discussion; but, since we're talking about openness, nothing closes a public discussion faster than snarky repartee. I've watched many twitter conversations that were open to contributions across the community turn into all-caps wit brawls between two individuals. Sometimes it's fun, and with the right topic, sometimes it's necessary. It's an important part of twitter that I wouldn't want to see go away. But snark is a literacy. Those engaging in it should be aware that how they deploy it often strengthens connections between witty individuals while closing down what perhaps could be an engaging conversation with the broader community. In a classroom, this line is very fine.
Closing Down the Convo with Snark
There's no doubt that snark can close down a conversation on Twitter, or at least foreclose the possibility of other people joining in. I've seen the Twitter conversations you describe, and mostly---mostly!---they end with the sense that the participants were performing the nip that signifies the bite rather than the bite itself. I think social-media savvy graduate students and post-grads grok this. And if they don't (or if we're talking undergraduates), then I think part of our goal in using Twitter in our teaching is figuring out how to teach the performative aspects of social media.
agreed
I wonder, also, if this is any different from snark in small-group or whole-class discussions? If the classroom culture is right and the participants are savvy, it adds some nice flavor. When the snark lands wrong, it causes problems regardless of the medium, and if everyone is flexible / forgiving enough the inevitable mis-steps are short-lived. Does anyone engage in a "how to tweet well" conversation in their classes? I've never bothered since my students seem to roll with it just fine, but maybe some aren't and I'm just not seeing it...
openness of what and for whom?
Like Jenna, I had been posting my coursework to my blog while in grad school. Part of the reasoning behind this is to let newbie grad students get a sense of what kind of work is involved, and, as such, for a couple of my projects, I posted various drafts of papers and posters so people could see how the work is built up over time and that it is normal for ideas to mature, evolve, be discarded, be taken up later, etc. I don't imagine many people have actually taken a look at much of it, but I have received a handful of emails over the years thanking me for attempting to make (just a tiny bit of) academia transparent.
Beyond other grad students as an audience, though, one of the responsibilities of being public intellectuals is to make available our work to the public for the public good. I'm in a lucky position where my work isn't really steal-able since it is so situated and specific to a group that only I have access to, but, even so, I think we have a duty to make as much of our work as openly accessible as possible.
Being open is also my way of competing in an attention economy. Being at a university that doesn't have very many scholars who do similar work (ethnography of gamers as learners), I needed to make myself as visible as possible to the outside world so that I could make social connections and network. My choices were to either go to conferences, which when I started was cost prohibitive, or to make sure I was googleable.
Ultimately, being an academic is like being in a massively huge room with a ton of people all sharing a conversation about a particular topic. The conversation spans decades and generations of researchers, and there are so many people and ideas involved that we used peer reviewed journals as a filter, placing our trust in reviewers. But with the rise of new media and technologies, individuals can start to take control of their own filtering systems and/or massive amounts of people can start to collectively filter and sort, but this only works if they have access to everything out there on a particular topic.
public intellectuals
I began a wiki a few months ago to organize/maintain notes and to scrapbook interesting tidbits for projects I'm working on. Like Mark and Jenna, I've found it useful -- and in surprising ways. I've gotten reading recommendations and even found potential future collaborators, who can get a quick idea of my research interests by browsing my current reading lists. In fact, although I began the wiki in the spirit of OCW-style openness (and out of frustration -- my favorite notetaking programs kept dying, trapping my notes in soon-to-be unreadable files; a wiki is much more sustainable), I'm quite sure I've benefited far more from the world being open to me than the world has from me being open to it.
Conversations about openness in academia often veer towards the public intellectual model that you bring up, Mark. I find this dissatisfying, though, in that it maintains a one-to-many broadcast model of scholarship. In other words -- to put it more polemically -- it assumes that any wisdom we produce in the ivory towers of academia will benefit the masses it trickles down to, and that this is inherently good. Aside from the fact that I'm still not convinced that anything I've done as a scholar is as big-picture "important" as the things I've done in other (non-paid) areas of my life, seeing ourselves as public intellectuals perhaps inadvertently maintains the very barriers it intends to break down.
My wiki isn't dispatching messenger pigeons from the ivory tower but helping to form a very small node in a network of individuals -- both scholars and not -- who geek out about similar things. Which is to say: when we make our ideas open, we're not public intellectuals; we're community organizers. Sticking with the noun role prevents us from seeing the verb action that's really happening.
* Closing the circle: my colleague Ashon Crawley first got me thinking about the the downsides of "public intellectualism" in, of all things, a twitter rant.
Good point, re the public
Good point, re the public intellectual frame. I agree more with your image, and if the label of that isn't a public intellectual then that's okay with me, though being open in both directions is necessary in my def of a pub int (which I didn't fully articulate since it would take way too much space as it includes things like Said's creed of being the voice of those who have none). Part of my view is a belief that everyone can play the role of a public intellectual, though, again maybe the label isn't the best fit and what I mean is more like critical, responsible citizens or something.
The Public Empathectual
I understand your hesitation toward the public intellectual model, and quite honestly, I recoil at the notion of the public intellectual, for all the reasons you explain. I myself never used that phrase---either to describe myself or the kind of openness I aspire to.
What I *have* said is that we should think in public. In the back of my mind I have Ian Bogost's talk We Think in Public (in which Ian exorciates, in typical fashion, public intellectualism as "a name for authoring articles moderately less obtuse than journal papers for venues moderately less obscure than journals."). But I'm not entirely satisfied with Ian's model of "We Think in Public" either. And the reason is that "we think in public" often translates to "I perform in public"---again positioning us in academia as enlightened sages who occasionally step onto the public stage to perform for the masses, only to retreat back into our private sanctuaries.
The thought makes me nauseous.
What I really mean by "we think in public" is that we should *share* in public. Our conversations---about teaching, about research, about politics and culture, about the academy itself---should be shared, open to all. This takes me back to my original post on this forum, in which I call for an end to invited guests, an end to hosts, an end to exclusivity. In my mind, this call is the exact opposite of what most people mean by "public intellectual."
We need public empathectuals: writers and thinkers sharing their intellectual struggles and passions with each other, and with the world, motivated by sincere efforts to affectively understand all those things about this world we don't understand, or misunderstand.
"responsibility"
Thanks for bringing Ian Bogost's talk "We Think in Public" into the discussion, Mark (Sample), and Edward Said, Mark (Danger Chen). [By the way, in my earlier post, "Mark" was directed at "mcdanger," Mark Danger Chen -- so I wasn't accusing you, Mark Sample, of using the term "public intellectual" specifically -- just in case that wasn't clear. I know conversational direction is hard to trace on forums of this structure, especially with multiple Marks!] I like the idea of the public empathectual because, as both Marks target, it isn't "public" that's the problem so much as the word "intellectual," and all the baggage that comes with it.
I think the idea we're hovering around is "responsibility" -- and the paternalism it implies. I'm reminded of some thoughts Alan Lightman shared on being a public intellectual, particularly as it relates to the sciences. Drawing on Said, he argues for responsible scholars, using the term to mean "morally accountable"; I would prefer the much older, more basic definition of responsible as in "responsive to others" (from the Latin "re", back + "spondere", to pledge -- you return something given to you, toss the ball to another; again, we're back to community building). In this vein, Stanley Cavell's notion of acknowledging others through empathetic projection might be an interesting (and less paternalistic) way of re-framing public intellectualism.
Reading your post and
Reading your post and agreeing with its critiques, I realized that in thinking about the concept of "public intellectual" I have been conflating it with Gramsci's idea of the organic intellectual––thinkers who emerge from and work within contexts other than (though possibly in addition to) academic institutions. Of course that can set up an opposition between organic and inorganic intellectuals that is problematic; but, still, I'm nervous of thinking about intellectual labor as community organizing. I definitely see myself as a node in the network (a node connecting several networks, maybe), but I think it's worth distinguishing the labor of making things happen from the work––and sometimes play––of analysis and criticism. Even when we do, and should do, both.
Community Organizers or Public Intellectuals
This debate between public intellectuals and community organizers as a conceptual model raises in my minds some debates swirling in my field, library and information science, on the roles of librarians, archivists and museum curators in the Digital Age. In the past, these cultural heritage professionals have been seen as gatekeepers, as part of the necessary work to preserve to ability to provide access to that material over time. However, some, for example my colleague here at Illinois Richard Urban, http://www.slideshare.net/musebrarian/the-pasts-present-future-emerging-trends-in-online-cultural-heritage, have argued that these individuals are now, or should be, community organizers. In other words, organizing and facilitating the use, sharing and production of cultural heritage through such projects as trying to get people to take pictures of all graffiti in Brooklyn and post it to Flickr. How does this discussion translate to humanities research? Perhaps we can take a cue from some of the more creative citizen science projects out there and begin to conceptualize how we can take advantage of, incorporate and organize into our work the grassroots energy swirling around the subjects of our interest. For example a few years ago I researched the history of African American coal miners in Illinois and began a lively back and forth with an African American genealogist who took it upon himself to create an African American Coal Miner Information Page, http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~blackcoalminers/. I have been thinking a lot abot these issues after attending in December the International Digital Curation Conference in Chicago where researchers in chemistry, astronomy and a variety of mostly hard scientific fields shared the enormous success they have had in citizen science projects. I think part of being a community organizer has to involve thinking in this direction. As another example, Family Search of the Mormon Church, one can't neglect the genealogists, now has more than 100000 volunteers indexing names around the world daily! http://www.personalarchiving.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/FamilySearch-Wright.pdf This is a scale and a level of productivity we have to take seriously I think, and should be part of the conversation regarding openness and community organizing.
Openness, Mass Collaboration and Education
The question of openness in academia is an important one for many reasons. Not the least of which is the growing potential of mass collaboration to enable new modes of design and construction of shared resources. This commons-based model is a kind of democratic revolution that gains its strength from continued adavancements in network technologies. Along with my adviser, Michael Peters, I've tried to explore this new terrain in an edited volume called 'Education in the Creative Economy'. It is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting topics to research these days.
Our book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1433107449/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d5_i1?pf_...
The key question I'm interested to answer in my dissertation research is: How does networked collaboration change the way we construct education systems? Or put differently: How can we construct education systems differently using mass collaboration?
Open Access & Publishing
I'm struggling with the issue of open access and publishing right now.
I have just completed work on the fieldwork for my dissertation on food systems and disaster. I'm fortunate enough to be a doctroal student at a university that is very engaged with media driven dissertations and open access. It's a requirement for us to publish our dissertations in an open access forum for graduation (there are no "delays" allowed).
My quandry comes because I am publishing a chapter in a new Sage encyclopedia on some of that fieldwork, and actively looking to publish the work. Open access becomes problematic here because some publishers consider open access publication as pre-publication. Sherpa Romeo (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/) is a useful tool for guaging where publishers fall in this realm, but it leaves me paranoied.
I've come to accept there is a dance between issues of ownership. In the field scholars negotiate ownership of data with participants. For me to write about my fieldwork required a lengthy negotiation process with the groups I work with as well as the IRB process as my school. As the relationships in the field advance I've found myself increasingly engaged with a sense of ownership in my "assets"- aka fieldnotes, interviews, photographs, etc. Even the remotest thought that a publisher would retain or constrain my ability to use that material in the future leaves me awake at night.
Jenna McWilliams post above on "giving it away" also resonates with me. I believe in sharing data to enrich the overall scholarly pursuit in any field. In my own field of food studies I've come up against this a lot. There is very much a "don't touch my cheese" mentality about material, and I find that to be restricting to the overall advancement of the field. The data is not the property of the researcher... the real creative act comes in how they apply theory and interpretation to the data to create new and original scholarship. For me it is critical to remember that in ethnography (what i do), the stories and observations belong to the particpants that allow me to share in them... not me. What I "own" is my ability to apply theory and evolve the thought. My fear comes when that is threatened by academic poaching or overly stringent copyright application by publishers.
I believe firmly in open access... but my fear is that it impacts my ability to publish, gain tenure, and use the material gathered in the field. Everything is a negotiation, open access included.
"Everything is in negotiation"
This is such a wise comment: "Everything is in negotiation." Yes. We cannot change the conditions of scholarly open-access publishing without also changing the conditions of (a) how we subsidize publishing (b) how we, as users, support what others in our field and in other fields publish and (c) how we evaluate what we publish for tenure and promotion. MLA allowed me to republish my piece "Research Is Teaching" here as open access. I address some of these issues and the way they are intertwined and the way, now, we have not the best of worlds that might be threatened by open access but quite literally a lose-lose proposition, a culture of the WORST of all possible worlds.
If those of us who are senior want the profession to endure, we have to organize to fix this for the next generation because the current situation is untenable at every level. There is not a presumed good place from which open access will lead to a devolution that will hurt future generations. it is the opposite. All the conditions of contemporary scholarly publishing, especially in the humanities, contribute to our being outmoded, outdated, nonsensical, unresponsive to our OWN needs, and therefore, as part of the massive cutbacks to all higher education, the single most vulnerable units.
In other words, by not addressing how we MUST change, we are being changed by those who have the power to wield the axe. We have to be proactive in our own future or that future will be determined for us, not because humanities is disrespected (it well may be, but that is another issue) but because so much in our PRESENT is untenable and is not being addressed responsibly by those with the power to address it.
Junior scholars should not fear an open access future. They should fear the intransigence of the closed minded present. That is another reason why we created HASTAC, as a forum to show that many, many of us in the academy champion reform and welcome it and believe that, if we are going to make any case that we deserve to be stronger than ever to help guide society through the ruptures and cataclysms of the Information Age (or whatever else you want to call this time of socio-technological change), then we have to begin by transforming ourselves for the requirements of this age.
Here's where you can read this very, very pragmatic "in the moment" assessment of open access and close mindedness in the present humanistic academy, in this case directed specifically towards literary scholars: http://www.hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/research-teaching
transparency cons?
There is a growing trend to publish student papers, projects and discussions online (as a required part of course participation). Does this ever inhibit experimentation among young scholars who are still "positioning" themselves? Might it endanger those who are trying on ideas? Is there any benefit in a lack-of-transparency for young scholars--to shelter student's academic identities-in-development? The web is praised in various ways for a "lack of heirachy" but would teired systems be helpful?
Also, what does web publishing do to sources? Are scholars, students and teachers cautious enough when posting information to the internet about the effects these often immediately accessible postings will have on the communities, situations, activities, objects, etc. they discuss--especially since media can so easily be spread and re-appropriated on the web?
Finally, are "New Media" personas that blur individuals' identities w/institutions or ideologies forms of flexible accumulation of which we should be wary? in late capitalism, according to my weak understandings of Harvey (Postmodernity), there is an increase in 'flexible accumulation' - people working and accumulating more frequently, and having to perpetually identify with their employment. Is there, then, a way in which "transparency on the web" negatively fosters a "work all the time"/panopticon mindset where "professionalization" while becoming less hard edged, expands further into people's private lives and personalities in a dehumanizing way?
Is there a "real" "transparent" you online? Are there many digital registers and personas which begin to take on a tone and etiquette appropriate to your career? Other ideas?
Changing the terms of the conversation
Hi all! I am really excited to be participating in what is already a very exciting discussion as one of the "invited guests". Fortunately, I also stalled long enough (well, OK, I was busy teaching) that I don't need to examine the meaning of that term because Mark has already done so. So, I'll dive right in.
Openness and me
First, my stance on openness. Generally, I am a huge fan. I strive to be quite open about my teaching and research practices and processes, and certainly open up my thinking to my students whenever possible. I also am a huge fan of many open source software tools / solutions (Wordpress and related plugins are powering a dozen sites for me right now). The software that I developed as part of my dissertation is sitting on my website for anyone who wants to to use in their classrooms.
However, I also have a background as a professional software developer who, at times, struggled with all of the hidden costs that free and open source software introduced into the development environment. Finally, it may surprise people / my students to know that I am a relatively private person. I never update my status in Facebook. Not because I'm worried about who will see it (though that would occur to me) but simply because I feel no need to share unless I am actually having a conversation with someone. In my professional identity, though, I've worked hard to do the opposite. I set up two twitter accounts, even when I still thought the whole thing was somewhat silly, and experimented. Now I tweet semi-regularly about my work, teaching, etc. I find it interesting, and I'm pretty sure it is doing some interesting things for my professional relationships. So far, so good.
Shifting perspective
What I'd really like to see us do is shift the conversation away from whether openness is good or bad, or has hidden costs, and recognize the fact that in many cases an "open" approach fundamentally changes the game. Period. That means re-thinking the entire perspective. Thinking about Don Norman's famous descriptions of the user v/ system perspective, this speaks to me of fundamentally changing the system. When I choose to make something open, it's not just that more people can see it, it is often that we are now engaged in very different kinds of work.
Take the issue of open courseware as an example. In principal, this is a really great idea. Sure, the idea of having whatever I say off-the-cuff living on the internet forever frightens me a little. But more importantly is the simple fact that I just don't lecture! The learning theories that I use and develop often suggest that lecture is the worst possible way to present information. Many of my students are actually quite shocked to see me talk for more than 10 minutes straight. Rather, I present a little, ask questions, organize students into groups, throw my opinion in the mix or ask an annoying question, let them run with it, etc. What would it mean to make that open? Let's say all my students agree and we publish it and avoid the image that is coming to my mind of a very (fortunately) unsuccessful reality show. Does anyone watching it get the same out of it as the students living it? I doubt it. I'm about to transition one of my classes online. To do it "right", I believe requires fundamentally re-thinking my approach, not just recording the lectures. So, all questions of cost and tenure aside, I think there are far bigger questions about how it changes the entire dynamic both in and out of the classroom.
Or, let's look at the question of software ownership since I often find myself in the role of software designer. I've got some ideas that I think might make money. So I've considered what that would mean. Here's the most important sticking point for me: if I am making a profit off of these ideas, I don't think I can ethically continue to research them in the same way (or at all). Ouch. Big change there, and much bigger cost to me than the profit. Let's be honest: if it was all about the $$, I'd still be a software engineer.
Or, let's take an example that I think is particularly interesting. What about editing a public wiki such as wikipedia? Well, here's the thing: once a class has edited it, it should become that much harder to re-edit it in a future year. Tweaking last year's edits anew and trying to expand them may be an incredibly valuable exercise. But it is a very different exercise than writing a fresh new wiki post. Engaging really thoughtfully in how openness impacts one's teaching, I think, necessitates exploring these implications. We have seen some really great examples of all the feedback that folks can get from the cloud. I agree. But that's also a lot of information to filter, and some of it may be crap or spam or both. This doesn't mean we should avoid asking the cloud, and I certainly do on occasion. But it's not just a cost-benefit analysis. It is, I would argue, a shift in what the activity is. (Incidentally, I hope all of the students in my theorizing class are now nodding their heads at how these ideas link to our course concepts).
On that note
I feel like this is running long, and I want to save some of my ideas for responding to everyone else. But I want to make one last point. I am pre-tenure, and I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't often thinking about tenure. But here is the other bit: I love what I do. I enjoy teaching. I enjoy sharing my ideas. I want to empower teachers and other professionals to do new and exciting things. Otherwise I wouldn't be here. Also, I think there are all sorts of indirect benefits just as there are indirect costs. For example, spending the time to share all of these ideas does take time away from other things I might do. However, it also helps me connect with more scholars, scholars who might take up my work or might influence my work. That has all sorts of benefits for me both professionally and personally. I guess the point being that I think there are some really important and fantastic other issues balancing the scales that I'd hate for us to lose sight of in a cost-benefit analysis.
Blogging Your Way into an Online Seminar (or Justice League)
I cannot encourage you enough to consider becoming a public researcher, in other words a researcher who develops their ideas in public. However, you may want to wait till you're confident enough to make mistakes (and typos) in public, too. There are many examples of grad students who've developed fascinating blogs that have helped establish their reputation. Dave Parry and Julie Meloni come to mind to name just two.
Mark Chen writes,
Part of the reasoning behind this is to let newbie grad students get a sense of what kind of work is involved, and, as such, for a couple of my projects, I posted various drafts of papers and posters so people could see how the work is built up over time and that it is normal for ideas to mature, evolve, be discarded, be taken up later, etc. I don't imagine many people have actually taken a look at much of it, but I have received a handful of emails over the years thanking me for attempting to make (just a tiny bit of) academia transparent.
I'd especially like to echo this notion that blogging might help you develop a kind of informal seminar or reading group that is always presenting its discussions to the public, always inviting more members. Often we are one of only a few people working in an area at our institution, and even when there are other students, their interests may be attracted by very different fish. Blogging, especially collaborative blogging, offers an alternative.
Back when I was a graduate student, I found myself at the end of a thread on a popular academic blog (started when many of its members were graduate students, I believe), commenting about something that was important to me but had become less important to the bloggers. There I met Christy Dena, a fabulous Australian transmedia researcher who already had a vibrant web presence, and we decided that rather than stay chatting at the end of a long lost thread, we'd start our own ball of strings and place our shared interests at the center of the site. Another friend, Jeremy Douglass, had also been working on related issues and had a backlog of posts for a blog he had never published. Thus was born Writer Response Theory. You can read more about our origins here.
At various times, one or more of us would act as primary blogger while the others disappeared into the background. Soon we drew the attention of the academics we hoped to engage.
Later, and sort of naturally, we came to collaborate on projects, culminating in a 2005 Digital Arts and Culture paper, Benchmark Fiction. This grew out of watching and responding to each other's posts.
In my own work, WRT has served as the proving ground for many of the ideas I'd later write papers on, including Critical Code Studies, which would go on to be an article or two, a working group, and a blog of its own.
This all came full circle, when we ran the Critical Code Studies Working Group, facilitated by HASTAC Scholar Max Feinstein, who was taking an independent study with me on the subject. Perhaps curiously, we made that a particular online community a closed group, requiring an application email. At that time in the development of CCS, I felt the need for the slight seclusion of an application process to provide a little privacy for developing methodologies and a wall around the exposition hall to give those committed enough to join some exclusive swag for their effort. However, the goal was not to close off the discussions. Not at all. In fact, the weekly discussion threads are being published in electronic book review (see an introduction and Week 1 here). Incidentally, I believe it was the potential publishing credit in ebr that helped the academics to justify their time spent in the woring group. (Hmm, perhaps that example complicates this discussion a bit.)
Anyway, that is just one academic's story of the role open blogging has played in his life -- though it's really the story of how he became part of a network, just as you are all doing.
Perhaps I can let Max tell about his experience bringing his scholarship to a fairly broad networked audience early on in his academic career.