Hevel.org: A Chasing after Wind

Nuances aside, the big picture remains the same: DRM for digital media distribution to consumers is a mathematically, technologically, and intellectually bankrupt exercise. It fails utterly to deliver its intended benefit: the prevention of piracy. Its disadvantages, however, are provided in full force: limiting what consumers can legally do with content they have legitimately purchased, under threat of civil penalties or criminal prosecution.

via The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age – Ars Technica.

This quote is from the best summary of the technological and culture issues surrounding e-books that I have read.  John Siracusa of Ars Technica shares his experiences in the early e-book industry and explains 1) why ebooks are the inevitable future of print publishing, 2) why consumers and publishers might be slow to grasp that fact, and 3) how individual readers are the key to overcoming social and commercial barriers to e-book adoption.  His article is long and detailed, and imminently worth reading for scholars who are heavy into the production and consumption of written material. (Bonus: keep a lookout for his delightful Beastie Boys reference.)

I want to raise two points in this post.  First, the electronic text phenomenon that Siracusa discusses is central to the current transformation of the academic guild.  Second, we as scholars and publishers must not make the same mistakes that consumers and publishers have made in the popular e-book arena.

The Old Network

Much of what makes our professional guild so byzantine springs from an increasingly obsolete model of communication and networking.  What are the three most important factors in the early career of a biblical scholar (assuming sufficient aptitude and discipline)?

1. Access to senior scholars who will not only teach but also connect their students with an established peer network.
2. Access to books and articles so that knowledge may be gained.  Very rarely did I find myself needing a book that wasn’t somewhere in the bowels of Speer Library at PTS.
3. An outlet for the budding scholar’s writing, especially cutting-edge journals and monograph publishers willing to print narrowly focused dissertations.

The advice I got when considering graduate school was that if I wanted to maximize my chances of getting a job, I needed to go to one of the top 3 Hebrew Bible programs.  This was not necessarily a comment on the quality of preparation at these places, but rather a recognition that Deans want to hire people with status, and that mentors at these schools are well-connected and eager to see their students placed in good jobs (to further enhance status, you see).

Anyone who has applied for a PhD program along with friends from the Master’s program, or who has served on an admissions committee, knows that many more of the applicants are qualified and able to do the work than can be admitted.  There is a final layer of idiosyncratic or arbitrary decision making in the process of deciding who’s in and who’s out.  The same thing can probably be said for journal submissions to the top journals and paper proposals for the top SBL sections.

Membership in the guild is defined by the acquisition of knowledge, and until now, that knowledge has been hidden away in remote places and accessible only by the navigation of an archaic system, aided by a fair amount of good fortune.

The New Network

So, what is different now?

There has been an explosion of SBL sections because there is an increasing number of scholars who want to present and interact with other scholars.  This may be due to increasing professional standards/pressure at home institutions, but in any case, it seems to me that the number of active guild members is growing.  The SBL has taken, in my opinion, an admirable position of letting new sections multiply.  Some have complained about the dilution of quality of papers, but this “quality” problem is more an indication that the process of constructing sections, and choosing sections to attend, is not as efficient as it could be.

Scholarship increasingly happens in the context of a new technological reality.  In this new world we have instant communication across vast distances; we have the ability of small players (like me) to interact with other scholars directly and efficiently, allowing academic work of merit to gain an audience even without the gatekeepers of the JBL; and we have the potential to make all of our scholarship available at the push of a button to every scholar worldwide, simultaneously.

This means that we have new, and better, options for accomplishing numbers 2 and 3 above, and some new, more widely accessible, ways of accomplishing number 1.  There is no substitute for face to face teaching, and I wouldn’t trade my graduate seminars for a lifetime of “distance learning.”  Our peer networks are still essential, but today we can build networks of scholarly communication and collaboration that are not necessarily mediated through the old process of seeking out the right places, getting to know the right people, and acquiring the right printed resources.

On Academic Publishing

The key to all three factors (building academic networks, acquiring knowledge, and broadcasting knowledge) is written communication, traditionally known as publishing.  Before the advent of the web and of dead-simple “weblog” content management systems like Wordpress, how would these comments have made their way to you?  If you are my friend, you might have heard me rant about this over a pint or while hiking.  Students and colleagues at my university have been subjected to my presentations on the subject.  I might have earned a spot in the niche-market of the Computer Aided Research section at SBL.  If I felt particularly motivated, I might even have written up something for a journal, though I’m not sure which one.

These days, I can make these arguments to you directly by means of a simple click.  There is still the problem of finding readers (JBL has a ready-made audience, I must admit), and readers must sort through an increasing amount of detritus to find what they are interested in reading.  These are just problems of workflow and perseverance, however, technical problems that can be overcome.  We are good at overcoming technical problems if the payoff is sufficient.

What Kind of Communication Do We Want?

This brings me to my second main point.  If things have changed, and for the better, what must we do as readers, writers, and publishers to maximize the benefits of the new situation?  What promise does electronic text have for transforming the discipline of biblical studies?

1. Scholars should build academic networks based on merit and similar-interest, not for the purpose of building prestige or status.  These new networks are open to people in other parts of the world, to scholars with non-traditional backgrounds, and to those with a range of formal education.
2. People who create content should look for ways to distribute that content as widely and freely as possible.  All academic work builds on previous work.  The best way to make sure that my work is valuable in the future is to get it into people’s hands.  I owe it to those who have laid the groundwork for me.
3. Publishers should make content as widely available as possible.  The economics of electronic printing are such that money can be made even while charging much lower fees for books and journals.  Printed volumes should always be available, of course, for those who need them or want them.  Let the market decide!
4. Scholars should encourage publishers to make material as widely available as possible.  For example, a senior scholar might choose to publish in a journal (such as Biblica or JHS) that has an open-access electronic policy rather than one (such as Biblical Interpretation, fine journal though it may be) that has an expensive and restrictive online access policy.

Some would say I shouldn’t worry about how expensive BI is because I can login to my university library and have any BI article delivered to me instantly for “free.”  It’s free for me because my university has a subscription, and indeed many journals and monographs in biblical studies are priced so that only libraries can afford them.  That is not an accident, it’s the business model.

I believe that academic publishers like Brill have served an essential service to the guild.  They have kept books in print that would have long disappeared from mainstream publishers’ catalogues.  Dusty bound volumes of journals going back into the 1800s have been an invaluable resource for graduate students and scholars.  In the electronic age, however, keeping items “in print” or “archived” is a problem with a simple technological solution.

My point is that restrictive access policies, expensive resources, and traditional “who do you know and where did you go to school” status networks are no longer necessary or desirable.  As Siracusa points out, publishers have priced electronic editions not only to prevent piracy (ha!) but to avoid cutting into print sales.  As an academic guild, we are not motivated by, or defined by, the market for print publications.  We are defined by the access and dissemination of knowledge in communities of learning.  The things we write, read, and publish ought to be designed for that purpose.