Academic publishing relies on an often invisibilized set of tools such as editorial chains, formats, writing tools and the technical environments associated with them, and preset article formats, which are a fundamental part of the emergence of thinking. These components participate in the editorial enunciation (Souchier 1998), set the markers of the structuring of content and determine the possibilities of reception and understanding of knowledge. Historically, scholarly journals have been real workshops of the collective production of thinking: from the formation of scientific communities to the definition of the borders of the disciplines to the organization of modes of validation, legitimization and valorization (Vittu 2001). Far from being only a question of just embodying “content”, the materiality of the text is itself a crucial part in the emergence of new knowledge and scientific innovation. This is what Karen Barad’s “Matter matters” assertion means, combining a feminist approach with a new understanding of the ontological function of matter (Barad 2007), a renewed interest in materiality from the scholarly community, and an opportunity to raise important political questions regarding equity, diversity and inclusion.
The question of the materiality of scholarly writing becomes more urgent at a time when the transition to digital knowledge ecosystems is reconfiguring the processes of production, structuring and dissemination of knowledge. Digital technology has instigated the emergence of new knowledge regimes, particularly in the context of scholarly journals. How does this shift to digital reconfigure journal practices? How can plural and particular worldviews, specific methodological frameworks, epistemological and conversational models (Sauret 2020) specific to a community, and diversity in epistemologies and language practices be implemented in technical environments, formats, editorial chains, writing practices? What are the issues related to the design and implementation of such technical environments in terms of collaborative practices? These questions are essential insofar as we are witnessing in the SHS a standardization of writing practices and a formatting of forms of knowledge operated by a handful of tools and formats. This normalization of ways of writing has not yet made it possible to explore what could be more interesting potentialities and future features of digital writing. Tools and structures of academic publishing increasingly impose a single, global model of competitive, metricized and monetized “knowledge production” that replicates and reinforces the hegemony of dominant forms of knowledge – those of the large, Global English-speaking institutions, leaving little room for the diversity, plurality and multiplicity of models and points of view that should characterize research.
Contributions to this panel discuss alternative strategies, tools, workflows, and review principles of scholar-led academic publishing re-imagined as knowledge commons, a collective effort in the responsible stewardship of a multiplicity of knowledges and epistemologies in plural languages.
Presenter: Canada Research Chair on Digital Textualities.
Since their emergence in the seventeenth century, scholarly journals have steadily increased their impact in the production and dissemination of knowledge (Larivière and Sugimoto 2020). The advent of digital technology has contributed to this exponential increase (800K articles produced in 1980, 5M in 2018 ; 3500 new journals created in 2013 alone), but it also constitutes a threat: that of a standardization of models and languages limiting the plurality characterizing academic freedom (Sauret 2020).
How can we guarantee that future Humanities journals will continue producing plural and transformative knowledge? How can we ensure that digital technology remains a catalyst for their mission? In order for journals to maintain their editorial and epistemological diversity, it is urgent to question current ecosystems that guide the production and circulation of scientific content and to imagine new models while avoiding any homogenization. Thinking about the journal of tomorrow means thinking about the knowledge of tomorrow.
In this communication, we will present the project Revue3.0 : Write, Communicate, Explore, led by the Canada Research Chair on Digital Textualities. The project is a collaboration between 14 Humanities journals and the major digital actors of knowledge dissemination in the French-speaking world. This project aims to develop a common knowledge to create protocols, infrastructures and tools for the publishing of Humanities journals in order to systematically observe the contribution of these digital objects to the production of meaning and to ensure that scholarly journals continue generating new and diverse models of knowledge.
Presenter: Nanditha Narayanamoorthy.
Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies is a multilingual, open-access journal of international visual culture studies with a focus on the interdisciplinary and transcultural study of visual culture studies. As an open platform for scholarship in the Humanities, Imaginations creates a place for academic debates on the decolonization of knowledge production, particularly for scholarly communities in the Global South. In this presentation, we reflect on the process of reviewing and editing a special issue on visual culture for the journal put together by the Humanities Editors Collective (Department of Humanities) at York University. The edited collection on contemporary critical theory and decolonial visual praxis in pandemic narratives brings scholarly contributions from the Global South to reflect on ways in which decolonial methodologies and praxes center resistance, survival, hope, and healing for marginalized communities through visual culture.
Our project draws on the Decolonizing Library Project (DLP), a grassroots collective and counter‑platform that brings together scholars, visionaries, and community members, and aims to provide a platform for the production and dissemination of knowledge by the disenfranchised. The DLP is a community resource for marginalized scholars with a focus on intersectional, postcolonial, feminist, Black, and Indigenous work to resist colonial frameworks and highlight alternative ways of knowing and being. Our special collection in Imaginations similarly works to provide a variety of perspectives in visual and/or digital media practices with the vision to privilege marginal realities and prevailing structures of colonial hegemony in this precarious period of global, economic, political, and ecological crises.
Presenter: Markus Reisenleitner.
In this presentation, Imaginations will serve as an example to discuss how the technological affordances of open tools can streamline production workflows and multi-platform, multi language publishing. Imaginations uses a production workflow that generates typeset texts in both html and PDF from a single galley and automates aggregation in multiple venues (OJS, Wordpress and Érudit) through API calls. Particular emphasis in the production is placed on the challenges and potential of visual and multimedia material, multilingual side-by-side publishing, static site generation as a sustainability principle, and ease of workflow through version control. The workflow attempts to establish best practices on the basis of minimal and sustainable computing.
After a brief presentation of the main workflow and tools used, the presentation will reflect on the implications of the principles that guide this publication process. Scholar-led, sustainable publication strategies in the Humanities that are re-imagined as a collective effort in the responsible stewardship of a multiplicity of knowledges in diverse plural languages for the benefit of communities and neighbours have the potential to decolonize knowledge hegemonies. As collective endeavours, such strategies can open up Humanities to a plurality of epistemologies and cultural texts and practices through the mobilization of digital tools and instruments.
Presenters: Servanne Monjour and Nicolas Sauret.
In this presentation, we will analyze an experiment of co-authoring a scientific article through the GitLab platform. We will focus on the conversational dynamics that take place into the commits, those metatextual elements that are typical to digital forges, and whose heuristic dimension would benefit from reappearing within the editorial factory of scholarly journals.
In 2021, we published an article entitled “Pour une gittérature. L’autorité à l’épreuve du hack”, in the printed French journal Reconnaissance littéraire, edited by Classiques Garnier. Despite its seemingly traditional form, this article was written in less than two weeks on the GitLab platform, at the end of an editathon that allowed us to comment but also to experiment the git protocol as a mode of literary and scholarly writing. Our presentation will show how the multiple commits and branches that allowed the conception of the published version of the text, can be considered as a metatext where we performed a scientific conversation. The goal of this presentation is to demonstrate the heuristic potential of this computer writing protocol, characterized by a hack culture, in terms of authority (retribution and recognition of each contribution) and of knowledge construction (reintroduction of a conversation, negotiation of ideas). Thanks to theses writing tools such as GitLab, borrowed from the community of programmers, can we imagine a new epistemic model and maybe rethink the concept of knowledge?