Felix this is exactly what I was looking for, thank you! Both the article you reference here and the prototype are very enticing - although I couldn't help notice with the former that the web version of the article has embedded video and active hyperlinks while the PDF version has still shots from the video and the hyperlinks are not active. Surely this is a headache to essentially produce two different articles for publication?
I also can't resist mentioning, at the risk of sounding like Henry Jenkins, that this article looks a lot like a blog posting. Do you see a media convergence taking place that may at one point meld currently autonomous forms a little more closely, perhaps causing journals to become a bit more open access (dodges shoe) as they increasingly link to sources and material outside journal pages?
Elsevier has clearly made a sound strategic decision here and I do hope it's an emerging trend as you imply. I agree with you you that once that technical scaffolding is constructed, the real juicy issues will then emerge about copyright, ethics, etc. For instance, what do you do with a video clip that has background music playing (as in a store) that is copyright protected? The last thing we need is Elsevier getting sued by Sony and blaming an author or something. Also, inevitably journals may have to begin asking authors to collect video appearance release forms from people as we do in TV production - and perhaps they would need to make those forms available? I hope this wouldn't be the case, that we are trusted as scholars to have consent, but they are some issues to consider. Of course, anthropology has been dealing with those issues for over 100 years, we could always look to them for guidance (dodges another shoe).
The other issue here, just to push it a little further (as you know I am prone to do), is at what point, given Elsevier has made this jump, they might start commissioning whole video or audio articles. I still think it's a shame that we stifle much create output by conforming to particular output expectations. I know that is mostly for bureaucratic reasons and has little to do with the desires or wishes of editors or "authors" but it would be great to see journals lead the charge on that. After all, as Mike Crang has written “literature is…
just one creative ‘media’ through which cultural ideas are produced and
reproduced” (Crang 1998: 81).
;)
-Brad
On 25 Jun 2011, at 12:16, Driver, F wrote:
Bradley
good question.
The Journal of Historical Geography in common with all Elsevier journals (Geoforum, Political Geography, for example) is already set up to take embedded video content. This was a strategic decision by Elsevier. Video is embedded in the article. Not sure this applies to many other Geography journals yet but it won't be long. History is a bit further behind though.
Incidentally shortly Elsevier are launching a new look for articles in all their online journals ('article of the future') which will allow for new ways of presenting and interacting with data on screen, including visual data. For one prototype see
http://www.articleofthefuture.com/S0031018208004690/.
I am not sure if this is 'progressive' or 'daring' in your terms, but this is the way science/academic publishing is going. Actually the main issues now are not technical, they are legal, aesthetic, cultural, ethical etc. Copyright is the big one, I would say.
best
FD
Hey Critters,
I'm currently writing a book chapter on video as geographic method, building on my
Progress article last year some of you may have seen (
http://phg.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/12/03/0309132510388337.abstract). As I'm digging through the very limited literature on the topic (much if it out since I wrote my article just a few months ago!), I am being struck by how journals are handling increasing requests to utilise video in articles. Some include hyperlinks to videos "outside" the article, some ask so put still frames in as figures, others "sync up" the article and video in some way on their websites and the most progressive or daring, like
Geography Compass and
Liminalities, are actually commissioning video articles (I have one in each).
Given that most journals are now primarily digital, cameras costs are decreasing rapidly and becoming more ubiquitous, and more people are (finally!) writing about the merits of video as method (Eric Laurier for instance has produced a veritable mountain of work), we are clearly going to see more people wanting to use video in their publications and produce videos aspublications. It seems clear that standards will soon begin to be laid for how this is going to work. I would be interested to hear from journal editors on this issue. Do you have plans in place for this? Is it discussed in editorial meetings? Do you think video has the potential to become an alternative form of scholarly publication? Do you find it painful when someone says "I have a video clip I want to include?" or does it excite you?
I am not asking this to painfully goad anyone having trouble dealing with the issue - I myself am writing the first PhD in the Geog Dept at Royal Holloway that will be composed of and marked on text, photography and video and it is a tough negotiation figuring out how to make the digital copy jive with the paper thesis. Anyway, I would be happy to to responses on or off list. Please be aware that I may incorporate your responses in some way into the book chapter.
Thanks!
__________________________________
Bradley L. Garrett
PhD Candidate
Department of Geography
Royal Holloway, University of London
P: +001(310) 694-1155 (until July 2011)
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