The problem is of course how to make available to the readers of the
review the state of the resource as reviewed in the review.
With a conventional book or CD-Rom review, the review refers to the copy
in the library or in the shops. Since its publication in a physical
format, the author, editor, or press may have changed their ideas about
certain issues, but the economic reality of the product prevents them
from publishing the 'revised' or 'rethought' publication before the
stock is sold. Since on-line resources are in flux and are ideally
designed to be in flux, the published product can change over time. So
a review reporting on the state of an edition or publication X on-line
at time t1 may not reflect the state of X at time t2 when the review is
published (on-line). How do we assure that readers of the review can
access the reviewed resource X at any time and are not presented with
the non-reviewed X.2, X.3, etc. (which might, however, even be better
products)? Especially with editions, the advantage of on-line
publication is the permanent opportunity to revise, add, or delete the
published materials. The Wiki-style edition which will create an
international collaboratory is the extreme exponent of this advantage.
What can be reviewed, however, is the editorial board, the editorial
methods as outlined in an account of the edition or publication, the
technical guidelines which should be published along the edition and
form an essential part of the publication, and the extent to which these
guidelines and principles are put in practice on t1 of the review. The
edition itself can never be reviewed for its on-line characteristic is
in contradiction to an expected finality or completeness. The mentality
and the tools are not in place yet to have a version controlled
publication system for on-line resources (although Ted Nelson did
provide this functionality in his original ideas about hypertext systems
back in the systems).
Apart from the fact that reviewers themselves are apparantly hard to
recruit with the reward of academic kudos instead of a free physical
object, a point which--as every review editor will witness--cannot
simply be underestimated, the on-line publications themselves are
essentially problematic objects to review.
Best,
Edward Vanhoutte
Caroline Macé wrote:
> This is a very good sign, I think, from the Bryn Mawr Classical
> Review, a "journal" which is specialised in reviews in the field of
> classical studies.
> Caroline Macé
>
> [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>> (From BMCR 2005.12.20)
>>
>> From the Editors' Disk: Reviewers wanted.
>>
>> -------------------------------
>> To read a print-formatted version of this note, see
>> http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2005/2005-12-20.html
>> -------------------------------
>>
>> BMCR is passing its fifteenth birthday in these weeks and is settled in
>> its ways of doing business. It remains a mild irony that this, the
>> second-oldest electronic journal in the humanities, is devoted to
>> disseminating information about the print medium. More than an irony,
>> it is a puzzle to us that various efforts to bring digital resources
>> within the purview of reviewership have fallen flat. Occasionally we
>> succeed in placing a physical manifestation of a digital artifact with
>> a reviewer (usually a CD publication), but despite having gone so far
>> as to promote the establishment of BMERR (Bryn Mawr Electronic
>> Resources Review), we have not sustained a community of practice around
>> serious reviews of web-based publications.
>>
>> This is a concern for the scholarly world as a whole in two regards.
>> First, there are more and more very high quality and quite serious
>> scholarly works that appear in digital form; second, many observers and
>> participants in the scholarly communication world argue strongly for
>> Open Access publication -- that is to say, publication whose costs are
>> defrayed in some way *other* than by user charges. A freely accessible
>> web publication done to appropriate technical standards is the ideal in
>> that regard, and we are pleased that BMCR has indeed followed that
>> model for the electronic version (some of you remember that there was
>> once also a print version) for all its history.
>>
>> But if it is true that reviewers are so strongly enticed by the
>> prospect of a free book or a free CD that absent such an enticement
>> they are unwilling to come forward, then we will soon be at an impasse,
>> as more and more important material becomes available in a form
>> unsusceptible to the enticement of reviewers. Now the future of
>> reviewing itself is a subject of interest to us, not least because one
>> of us will be participating in a panel on that subject at the APA
>> meetings in Montreal, but we are for now convinced that the first and
>> most obvious way forward is to insure that serious scholarly work,
>> however published, gets serious scholarly reviews.
>>
>> To that end, this message is designed to elicit our traditional BMCR
>> volunteers on the usual terms. Indicate to us your qualifications and
>> interest, and if we approve your request, we will assign you the review
>> -- this time, without a free book to take away at the end. The
>> following resources have been commended to us in recent weeks (and we
>> pass them along on the same terms with which we report Books Received,
>> not as special selection or commendation, but simply as report of
>> notice received by us). Given the scope of these particular works, we
>> would welcome proposals for collaborative reviews.
>>
>> *Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity (http://www.insaph.kcl.ac.uk/ala2004/) ,
>> second edition, by Charlotte Roueche/.
>>
>> *Vindolanda Tablets Online (http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/) , ed.
>> Alan Bowman et al.
>>
>> *The editions of the D-Scholia and the Lexeis Homerikai
>> (http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifa/klassphil/vanthiel/index.html)
>> by H. Van Thiel, of Cyril's Glossary (one ms. version only) by U.
>> Hagedorn.
>>
>> *J. Lundon's Scholia Minora in Homerum
>> (http://www.gltc.leidenuniv.nl/index.php3?m=52;c=238) .
>>
>> This note is also notice that we welcome encouragement from authors,
>> publishers, or readers to pay attention to other good new work as well.
>> We also welcome suggestions for other ways to improve attention to
>> important work.
>>
>>
>>
>> -------------------------------
>> The BMCR website (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/) contains a complete
>> and searchable archive of BMCR reviews since our first issue in 1990.
>> It also contains information about subscribing and unsubscribing from
>> the service.
>>
>> Please do not reply to this email as this is an unmonitored mailbox.
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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>
--
================
Edward Vanhoutte
Researcher
University of Antwerp
Associate Editor, Literary and Linguistic Computing
University of Antwerp - CDE
Dept. of Literature
Universiteitsplein 1
b-2610 Wilrijk
Belgium
edward dot vanhoutte at kantl dot be
http://www.kantl.be/ctb/
http://www.kantl.be/ctb/vanhoutte/
http://www.kantl.be/ctb/staff/edward.htm
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