Performative Publications

This article is a print rendition of a web-based experimental publication which reflects upon and at the same time is itself an example of performative publishing. A performative publication wants to explore how we can bring together and align more closely the material form of a publication with its content. Making use of hypothes.is software, the web-version of this article has been written ‘in the margins’ of the performative publication it reflects upon, entangling itself with this project at various points. The reflections written in hypothes.is extend the performative publication both theoretically and practically by examining the correlation between performative publishing and technotexts (Hayles), performative materiality (Drucker), liberature (Fajfer), and feminist design (McPherson), and the ethical and political challenges towards academic publishing these kinds of concepts and practices pose. The web-version of this article stresses the collaborative and processual nature of scholarship, where through hypothes.is both annotators and reviewers have become active participants on this evolving publication, which is both open-ended in time and collaborative in authorship

Living Books: Experiments in the Posthumanities

Reimagining the scholarly book as living and collaborative—not as commodified and essentialized, but in all its dynamic materiality. In this book, Janneke Adema proposes that we reimagine the scholarly book as a living and collaborative project—not as linear, bound, and fixed, but as fluid, remixed, and liquid, a space for experimentation. She presents a series of cutting-edge experiments in arts and humanities book publishing, showcasing the radical new forms that book-based scholarly work might take in the digital age. Adema's proposed alternative futures for the scholarly book go beyond such print-based assumptions as fixity, stability, the single author, originality, and copyright, reaching instead for a dynamic and emergent materiality. Adema suggests ways to unbind the book, describing experiments in scholarly book publishing with new forms of anonymous collaborative authorship, radical open access publishing, and processual, living, and remixed publications, among other practices. She doesn't cast digital as the solution and print as the problem; the problem in scholarly publishing, she argues, is not print itself, but the way print has been commodified and essentialized. Adema explores alternative, more ethical models of authorship; constructs an alternative genealogy of openness; and examines opportunities for intervention in current cultures of knowledge production. Finally, asking why it is that we cut and bind our research together at all, she examines two book publishing projects that experiment with remix and reuse and try to rethink and reperform the book-apparatus by taking responsibility for the cuts they make

The processual book. How can we move beyond the printed codex?

Behind the finalised pages of any academic book lies a range of processes and contributions that led to its creation. Discussing her recent work Living Books, Janneke Adema explores how open online tools have given expression to these procedural aspects of academic book publishing and points to how they provide a space in which to re-consider long-held practices contributing to, and the uses of, the contemporary academic book

On Open Books and Fluid Humanities

In light of the recent shift toward increasingly open access to scholarly work,particularly online content, this article examines the concept of openness and thepotential to reuse, adapt, modify, and remix online material in the production andconsumption of knowledge within the humanities. To this end, the theoretical andpractical applications of authorship, stability, and authority are explored, in additionto those of archive, selection, and agency in an attempt to devise a concept of the bookbuilt upon fluidity

Publication practices in motion: The benefits of open access publishing for the humanities

The changes we have seen in recent years in the scholarly publishing world - including the growth of digital publishing and changes to the role and strategies of publishers and libraries alike - represent the most dramatic paradigm shift in scholarly communications in centuries. This volume brings together leading scholars from across the humanities to explore that transformation and consider the challenges and opportunities it brings

The Surge in New University Presses and Academic-Led Publishing: An Overview of a Changing Publishing Ecology in the UK

This article outlines the rise and development of New University Presses and Academic-Led Presses in the UK or publishing for the UK market. Based on the Jisc research project, Changing publishing ecologies: a landscape study of new university presses and academic-led publishing, commonalities between these two types of presses are identified to better assess their future needs and requirements. Based on this analysis, the article argues for the development of a publishing toolkit, for further research into the creation of a typology of presses and publishing initiatives, and for support with community building to help these initiatives grow and develop further, whilst promoting a more diverse publishing ecology