That was the subtitle of a talk I gave at a seminar of the Centre for Humanities Innovation (CHI) at Durham University yesterday.
What I wanted to do was initiate a conversation about new and old forms of scholarly communication and offer a way of classifying them to help scholars consider taking up new forms.
Along the way, I presented two examples where scholarly use of blogs and social media led to a significant production of knowledge (and in one case, was submitted to REF, albeit as an impact case study). See (1) Mark Goodacre’s reflection of how Paul Foster, in a peer-reviewed article, engaged with an argument Goodacre made in a blog post; and (2) Francis Watson’s paper arguing that the so-called Gospel of Jesus’ Wife was a forged document (cf. the REF submission).
(By the way, well done Mark Goodacre whose blog continues to make an impressive scholarly and public impact).
I offered the following ‘final thoughts’:
- Try something new. (see DiRTdirectory.org)
- Don’t let REF be the tail that wags the dog.
- Be prepared for a measured ‘reaction’ publication.
- We are increasingly our own publishers: Think like one.