On Aug 5, 2015, at 8:02 PM, Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

great discussion, glad I started this thread!  Let me say, even as
founding co-editor of an online book review journal, that I don't
think the traditional book review is an eternal solution to a
permanent problem:  just that it's what we've got, and it's heavily
implicated in the 'commercial' model of publishing in a way that so
far at least seems inextricable.  By all means, other solutions:
fascinated by *ride* and wish them well.  I also *am* a library
director keenly interested in hosting innovative things like this, and
from BMCR as well we'd be very interested in conversations about ways
to advance what I take to be the common cause:  reliable production of
intellectually responsible evaluation of scholarly work that has been
made available to the public, whether for fee or for free.  That's
what I think we all have an interest in promoting.

jo'd

On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 10:19 AM, Joshua D. Sosin
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
 (1) Venue makes individuals and their reviews (ideally even discrete
 recommendations) permanently addressable.
 (2) TM publishes feed of changes, identifies same
 (3) Venue aligns those with reviews

 Then, even if the "problem" disappears more or less immediately everyone
 still gets to know who identified it. That's what I had in mind in my clumsy
 reference to issue tracking.


 On 8/5/15 1:06 PM, Mark Depauw wrote:

 A short postscript: if I got my hands on a review of Trismegistos, I would
 try to improve on the issues raised as soon as possible. Chances are that
 some of the defaults would have disappeared by the time other people read
 the review.

 How to
deal with that?



 On 5-aug.-2015, at 18:55, Mark Depauw <[log in to unmask]>
 wrote:

 Following up on Josh, www.trismegistos.org would be happy to be reviewed.
 Or would be happy to get feedback of whatever kind, documenting frustrations
 and the like.
 Having said that, we almost *never* get feedback on features of the
 website. People just curse, I guess, and don't bother. The best feedback
 I've got was from the students I gave assignments to use digital tools.

 Mark



 On 5-aug.-2015, at 18:42, Joshua D. Sosin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

 Point them at papyri.info if you like. We would love
to have the
 feedback.
 josh

 On 8/5/15 12:38 PM, Simon Mahony wrote:
 We're always looking for websites to review for the exam (in December).
 Any volunteers? We would have to get permission from the students to share
 their reports.
 Simon


 On 05/08/2015 17:31, Joshua D. Sosin wrote:
 Gabby writes:

 "But I wonder if the difference noted below is rather, or at least in
 part, that people are uncomfortable with how to go about writing a review of
 a sophisticated web resource? Do they feel they would need to be an expert
 in digital publishing, and comment on issues like software, APIs,
 accessibility and so forth, as well as only the ancient history content?"

 I think this is a great point
and wonder the same.

 I wonder also what a review venue for such resources would look like.
 Each resource might have its own bit of real estate, on which could be
 arrayed a variety of reviews, written from a variety of perspectives (as
 Gabby says: domain content, performance, UI, interoperability,
 documentation, etc.). Co-location of multiple reviews, from multiple
 perspectives, could be highly useful to users but also to leaders and
 developers who are responsible for the resources under review.

 To a certain extent the creation of such a review venue, outside the
 control of any given project, asserts a wider disciplinary interest in
 'issue tracking' which is sometimes open, often black-boxed. And with a
 little care and creativity developers might even include in their own public
 tracking mechanisms references to the users who suggested the change (even
 feed that back to the review venue). This would give us a way not only
to
 capture who observed what, but also which observations were operationalized.
 Credit given for helping to make things better. That'd be nice.

 josh

 On 8/5/15 12:03 PM, Gabriel Bodard wrote:
 Interesting point. By the same token, I have for a while done some
 work with a review publication (outside the classics) and at first I
 expected to see exactly the pattern Jim describes below, vis à vis print
 books vs Kindle/Epub or PDF e-books, but in the last couple of years the
 difference in uptake between books available on paper and (otherwise
 traditionally formatted) books available only in e-formats is pretty close
 to zero.

 Obviously an e-book isn't necessarily an open access publication, so
 some of the social transaction that Jim notes is still present in this
 anecdotal example. But I wonder if the
difference noted below is rather, or
 at least in part, that people are uncomfortable with how to go about writing
 a review of a sophisticated web resource? Do they feel they would need to be
 an expert in digital publishing, and comment on issues like software, APIs,
 accessibility and so forth, as well as only the ancient history content? If
 academics were (and I suspect they increasingly, if slowly, are becoming) in
 the habit of reading scholarly works on a Kindle or iPad, would the uptake
 of print vs e-book titles at BMCR be as radically different as we're seeing
 now?

 Best,

 Gabby


 On 2015-08-05 16:11, Jim O'Donnell wrote:
 All of us.

 By this I mean a distinct thing:  the economics of pre-OA publishing
 make books $$-valuable.  So if the publisher generously spreads a
 few
 free copies around
to journals and we in turn offer them to
 reviewers,
 reviewers are glad to get the books and happy to write the review in
 return.  We get the review quid for the publisher's quo. That's an
 economic transaction deeply embedded in the "commercial" model of
 things.  We *all* benefit from that because we all get to read the
 book reviews, and a certain number of us get nice free books.

 At BMCR, we have repeatedly experimented with getting reviews for
 "non-commercial" resources, chiefly sophisticated web resources
 available for free on the open net.  The take-up by would-be
 reviewers
 is statistically indistinguishable from zero.  So nobody gets a
 "free
 book" and nobody at all gets to read a review of that resource.

 My point is only that the social embeddedness of the current system
 is
 intricate and has many benefits as well as many costs.

 jo'd

 --

Associate Professor, Classical Studies, Duke University
 Duke Collaboratory for Classics Computing
 Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies
 Duke Data Bank of Documentary Papyri

 www.duke.edu/~jds15


 --
 Associate Professor, Classical Studies, Duke University
 Duke Collaboratory for Classics Computing
 Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies
 Duke Data Bank of Documentary Papyri

 www.duke.edu/~jds15