In order to move our deliberations forward, I want to put four specific
proposals on the table. I look forward to a lively discussion of each.
1. Affiliate conference rates
Participating organizations in an umbrella organization (which I'll call
ADHO, for allied digital humanities organizations) would agree to offer
members of the other organizations the same terms of registration as they
offer their own members, at their conferences. So, for example, a member
of STS could register at the members' rate for an ACH/ALLC conference, even
if he or she was not a member of ACH/ALLC. This would bring a benefit of
membership to all participating organizations. It would apply at whatever
level "membership" applied in each organization, as well, so that in TEI,
for example, that benefit would apply to all members of a project (div3
members) or all members of an institution (div0 members). Likewise, it
would mean that individuals who were members of ACH or ALLC could attend
the TEI annual meeting for free, if that's the cost for TEI members. This
benefit would obviously need to be subject to a register-by date, for
planning purposes.
2. Affiliate conference slots
Participating organizations in ADHO would draw up an agreed-upon protocol
for proposing (and reviewing) panels in other organizations' conferences,
and would agree on language that would be used to invite such panel
proposals in each organization's call for papers. So, for example, there
would be a standard mechanism for proposing a TEI panel at an ALLC
conference, or a NINCH panel at a TEI meeting, etc..
3. Affiliate publication
Participating organizations in ADHO would have the option of making
Literary and Linguistic Computing the print journal for their
organization. LLC is owned by the ALLC, and published by Oxford
UP. Oxford keeps track of subscriptions, sends reminders to renew, and
provides ALLC with a portion of the income from each
subscription--individual and institutional. Participating organizations
could, likewise, use Oxford's subscription mechanism to keep track of their
membership and prompt renewals of membership, and income would go back to
the participating organization in proportion to the number of individual
subscribers it accounted for in the journal's overall
circulation. Institutional subscription income would be pooled, and used
to promote the aims of ADHO, or its constituent organizations (by
application, I suppose). One of the activities of ADHO would be a free
electronic publication designed to promote the activities of all the
participating organizations through high-quality, peer-reviewed, free
scholarly publishing. The journal would also be designed not to compete
directly with LLC, as follows:
--it would publish "best essays" from back issues of LLC (and, if Kluwer
wanted to participate, from CHUM), perhaps along with some updating,
response, commentary, etc.. These selected essays would be clearly labeled
as to their original publication source, would make it easy for readers to
subscribe to the print journal (or join the organization, or both), and
would not constitute enough of the back issues to make the print run of
back issues unnecessary.
--it would publish new essays that would appear in electronic form
only. These would be peer-reviewed, using the same process used to review
for LLC, but essays of this sort would presumably be things that could only
appear in electronic form, because of their content.
--it would publish supplementary material to essays published in the print
journals (datasets, additional illustrations, etc.. Here again, if Kluwer
wanted to participate, in re: CHUM, we would invite them to do so, but only
on the condition that we could also pick "best of" from the back issues of
CHUM.)
--it might also encompass newsletter activities--that is, more informal
kinds of news and publication about the participating organizations.
For ACH, the implication of going this way would be that LLC would become
the print journal of the ACH (as well as of the ALLC, and whatever other
organizations sponsored it). CHUM would continue, one assumes, but it
would be disconnected from ACH. Geoff has mentioned the possibility that
Text Technology might become an all-electronic journal; if he's willing to
countenance its also being free, on the terms outlined above, then it might
morph into the electronic journal of ADHO.
Organizations with only institutional members (like NINCH and TEI) would
require some special adaptation of this scheme--perhaps simply the option
to offer individuals at their member institutions a members' rate for
subscription to LLC, or perhaps a special library rate for the journal, at
member institutions.
In general, this would seem to concentrate more of the reviewing and
publishing in one or two places, making LLC (and Text Technology) stronger
journals that draw on more authors and reviewers and represent more
scholarly societies. It would initially cost ALLC something to do this,
since they'd be putting their institutional income in a pool, but if the
purpose of that pooling is to advance goals that are shared by the ALLC,
then that may not be a problem.
4. Legal structures, committees, meetings.
I suggest that ADHO should not exist, legally. If legal structures are
necessary (for holding accounts, for example) then participating
organizations that already have legal status (ALLC, TEI, Ninch, at the
moment) should be used. If an umbrella organization such as ADHO is
created, the goal should be to do that in a way that uses existing
structures as much as possible, and creates the smallest possible amount of
new work, new meetings, new committees, etc.. To keep ourselves honest on
that point, we should be aiming to disband two committees for every
committee we create, or make sure that each meeting we envision will
combine what had previously been two meetings, etc.. If we're not strict
on that point, this exercise will have missed an important opportunity,
whatever else it accomplishes.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Oct 14 2002 - 17:59:27 EDT