Beyond the PDF 2 Conference: Revolutionizing Academic Publishing

Beyond the PDF 2 Conference: Revolutionizing Academic Publishing

Beyond the PDF 2 Conference: Revolutionizing Academic Publishing

By : Tadween Editors

[The following article was originally published on Tadween Publishing`s blogFor more information on the publishing world as it relates to pedagogy and knowledge production, follow Tadween Publishing on Facebook and Twitter.]

New technology has created a multitude of avenues through which academics, scholars, publishers, librarians, and other related fields can communicate. The challenge, however, is using such technology to communicate effectively and change old habits that no longer seem to be working. This is a challenge that the participants of the Beyond the PDF 2 conference have sought to tackle.  

“Individually and collectively, we aim to bring about a change in modern scholarly communications through the effective use of information technology,” states Force11, the organizer of the Beyond the PDF 2 conference held in Amsterdam in mid-March.

Force11, which stands for the Future of Research Communications and e-Scholarship, is an online community that aims to transform how scholars communicate and engage, particularly in the digital age. The group arose from the first Beyond the PDF conference held in 2011.

Aside from generally enhancing communication between scholars, the conference brought to light how dramatically the world of academic publishing has shifted in recent years. As conference attendee
Peter Brantley explains in Publishers Weekly, academic publishing has been confined to the pages bound in books and academic journals for decades and far too long. Technology has broken the spine of these books and journals and has allowed for academic publishing to experiment with new technologies. “What is happening now is that academic researchers are beginning to reconsider the underlying, fundamental workflow of research and publication,” claims Brantley.

Nothing illustrates this more than
Beyond the PDF 2’s winner of the “Agent of Change” award, Carole Goble. Goble’s suggestion, titled “Don’t Publish. Release!,” argues that the idea of an academic publication being complete is ultimately flawed. Given all the new attributes of the digital age and the ability to modify data with a click of the “edit” button, it appears that nothing can ever be finished, nor should it.

Let`s face up to the fact that we release research rather than publish it. Let’s start applying a 20th century software release paradigm instead of a 18th century print a book paradigm to scholarly communication,” stated Goble, who insists that data and methods will inevitably change and impact previous research, requiring academics to repair and re-work previous publications.

One clear message from the conference is the need for academics, scholars, and publishers to embrace the change that has come, and that the current academic revolution taking place will do more good than harm.

Force11 has a list of outcomes, reflections, and summaries from the Beyond the PDF 2 conference, which can be found
here.

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NEWTON in Focus: Egypt

This week we highlight various NEWTON texts relevant to the study of Egypt. The authors of these texts write from a wide range of perspectives and approach questions with which Egypt has grappled, not only in the wake of Tahrir, but throughout its modern existence. We encourage you to integrate these texts into your curricula in the coming semesters.

If you wish to recommend a book or peer-reviewed article for a feature in NEWTON—whether on Egypt or on any other topics relevant to the region—please email us at reviews@jadaliyya.com. To stay up to date with ongoing discussions by scholars and instructors in the field, sign up for Jadaliyya’s Pedagogy Section

Gilbert Achcar, “Eichmann in Cairo: The Eichmann Affair in Nasser`s Egypt.”

Nezar AlSayyad, Cairo: Histories of a City

Jason Brownlee, Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the US-Egyptian Alliance

Ziad Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture

James L. Gelvin, The Modern Middle East: A History, Third Edition

Paolo Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism

Pascale Ghazaleh, editor, Held in Trust: Waqf in the Islamic World

Bassam Haddad, Rosie Bsheer, and Ziad Abu-Rish, editors, The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings: End of an Old Order?

Mervat F. Hatem, Literature, Gender, and Nation-Building in Nineteenth-Century Egypt: The Life and Works of `A’sha Taymur

Nelly Hanna, Artisan Entrepreneurs in Cairo and Early Modern Capitalism (1600 1800)

Linda Herrera, “Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Age: A View from Egypt.”

Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat, editors, Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North

Wilson Chacko Jacob, Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870–1940

Karima Khalil, editor, Messages from Tahrir

Marwan M. Kraidy, “The Revolutionary Body Politic: Preliminary Thoughts on a Neglected Medium in the Arab Uprisings”

Alan Mikhail, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History

Roger Owen, The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life

Paul Sedra, From Mission to Modernity: Evangelicals, Reformers and Education in Nineteenth Century Egypt

Mohammad Salama and Rachel Friedman, “Locating the Secular in Sayyid Qutb"

Jeannie Sowers, Environmental Politics in Egypt: Activists, Experts, and the State

Joshua Stacher, Adaptable Autocrats: Regime Power in Egypt and Syria