Getting to grips with self-publishing might be time consuming at first but Elizabeth Eva Leach shows that welcome engagement and expert editorial input can be gained from going it alone without publishers

Leach, Elizabeth Eva

English

LSE Research Online

by Blog Admin August 16, 2012Getting to grips with self-publishing might be time consuming at first but Elizabeth Eva Leach(http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/blog-contributors/#Elizabeth_Leach)shows that welcome engagement and expert editorial input can be gained from going it alonewithout publishers.A tweet back in July f rom the @LSEimpactblog with a link to Aimee Morrison’s blog onguerrilla self -publishing (http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactof socialsciences/2012/07/11/scholarly-publishing-broken-guerrilla-self -publishing/) asked if  it  was time f or more academics toconsider it. I’d started tentatively nearly a year ago–August 2011– with a short article on a newly discoveredconcordance f or a medieval motet (http://eeleach.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/a-concordance-f or-an-early-f ourteenth-century-motet/), and was asked to write this post about the experience. My three most recent‘articles’ (see my publications page (http://eeleach.wordpress.com/publications/)) are currently blog-onlypublications, although the most recent wasn’t designed that way. I’ll ref er to them as X, Y, and Z (links f orthose that are interested are given in the discussion below).In what f ollows I conclude that senior academics need to lead the way on getting online self -publicationaccepted. The advantages (immediacy of  publication and f eedback, accessibility, use of  links, revisability oftext) seem to vastly outweigh the disadvantages (which I think are largely imaginary; see my responses tocommon questions below).I have experimented with dif f erent publication f ormats. Each item has a blogpost introducing the publicationand then a link to an HTML version of  the article hosted on my institutional webspace; X also has a PDFversion produced by the typesetting sof tware LaTeX. To ensure the f ull content is accessible to websearches I have posted them all in HTML and I recently moved to using Scrivener(http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php) to enable output in various f ormats f rom one f ile. Technicallimitations with its handling of  HTML code have meant that I’ve had to host the HTML f iles of f  myWordPress site. This is a shame because it divorces the comments box (on the supporting blogpost atWordPress) f rom the f ull text (on my university Webspace).Pros and consOne drawback with self -publishing is thus immediately apparent: it ’s t ime consuming and requires that theauthor learn to use new applications and be prepared to f iddle with them. The advantages, however, aregreat, many of  which are conf erred by the online medium itself . Article Y is vastly improved f rom its f latdraf t paper version by having links to the high quality colour images of  the medieval manuscriptilluminations it discusses in detail – what journal would do that?! I’ve also taken the decision to make all thearticles a bit more f riendly f or students and general readers by peppering the main text with hotlinks toopen access entries, mainly in Wikipedia, that serve as a glossary of  terms and/or thumbnail sketches ofthe historical f igures, works, and events mentioned. I’ve retained links in the f ootnotes to more tradit ionalacademic publications (books, articles, dictionaries and databases), which are typically paywalled, f or thosethat want them.Article XThe speed of  being able to get one’s work out to people who might f ind it interesting is certainly anadvantage of  self -publishing. My f irst blog-only publication, X, (pdf(http://eeleach.f iles.wordpress.com/2011/08/dijon-motet2.pdf ) or HTML(http://users.ox.ac.uk/~musf 0058/Dijonmotet.html)) was about reporting a new discovery and elucidating thequestions and f uture directions f or research that it prompts. A tradit ional journal might well have rejected itas too slight or preliminary, but it has been used in a number of  ways by others, nonetheless. Pingbacksshowed that the publication had been cited in a debate about developmental edit ing (see Dan Cohen(http://www.dancohen.org/2011/11/17/what-will-happen-to-developmental-edit ing/) and Writ ing History(http://writ inghistory.trincoll.edu/2011/11/developmental-edit ing/)). Although Dan Cohen noted that I didn’treceive a hundreds of  comments, he noted the quality of  those I did receive. What is invisible, too, is thatmost people pref erred to email me rather than post their comments, so I received more f eedback than itappears. And email comments received commented on how great it was to have something so instantly,which would have taken a year or more to go through the mill at a journal.As updates to the blogpost intro reveal, article X did indeed f orm, as I hoped it would, the starting point f ora Masters dissertation by one of  my students this year. I quite like the instant drawing together of  researchand teaching that this provided: I had a ready-made suggestion f or a dissertation topic that was simply‘have a read of  article X and see where it takes you’. The distinction-standard dissertation that resultedthrew up theses that I could never have imagined and is proving the basis f or a f uture doctoral dissertationthat will look probably end up reviewing the received view of  the links between notational orthographies andchronology – I won’t bore those of  you who are not medieval musicologists with too much technical detail,but I’m really excited!Article YMy second self -published article, Y, was rather dif f erent: the paper in question had already been given orallythree times (twice in dif f erence disciplinary f orums in Oxf ord and once at a conf erence) and then had beenrejected f rom two dif f erent journals in 2009 and 2010 as not quite their thing (supporting blogpost here(http://eeleach.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/another-machaut-patron/); direct link to HTML version here(http://users.ox.ac.uk/~musf 0058/MachautMelun.html)).Had I just committed the ult imate in vanity publishing by of f ering readers something rejected by moretradit ional organs? Surely if  it ’s been rejected by two journals already, it can’t be any good? But experiencesuggests that the anonymous peer review process in the humanities is conservative and can be quiterandom. One of  my other journal articles was rejected by f our dif f erent journals bef ore being published andgoing on to win an award f rom a major scholarly society. There was nothing f actually wrong with it; it  wasjust very controversial in methodology and interpretation. And I like the idea that humanities scholarship isan ongoing discussion rather than a series of  last words. Far better f or my hypotheses to be tested–andperhaps used prof itably–by dozens of  Machaut scholars in a public f orum, than kept f rom the world by twoanonymous readers f rom a general journal who might not be particularly specialist (and how would I knowgiven that they are anonymous?).Article Y has now been widely read–or, at least, looked at and downloaded–thanks to people clickingthrough f rom a link I put on another online resource, Dominique Gatté’s magnif icent Musicologie Médiévale(http://gregorian-chant.ning.com/), which is a sort-of  specialized Facebook f or medieval musicologists(nearly 1000 members worldwide to date – which I can’t help thinking must be nearly all of  us!). On the day Inotif ied that site about new article Y and about a new HTML version of  the previous year ’s article X, I hadthe busiest day on my blog ever. And again the email responses rolled in, ranging f rom simple ‘thanks f orposting’, to lengthy serious engagement with the text along the lines of  ‘have you looked at such-and-sucha source which would help that bit of  the argument’. Humanities research can be a lonely business, so thiswas really welcome engagement and I’m just really excited to be able to interact with other experts in thef ield in this way.Article ZOn a roll with Scrivener, I thought I’d start the process of  HTMLing publications f rom my back catalogue incases that the publisher has not allowed me to post the f inal pdf . In all these cases, so my understandingis (f rom reading SHERPA/RoMEO (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/) and tweeting Qs at the ever-helpf ulEmily Goodhand (https://twitter.com/copyrightgirl), I retain the right to post a pre-edited version of  the text.My f irst port of  call was article Z, which appeared in a Festschrif t in 2009. At the same conf erence thatprompted me to self -publish article Y, I also went to a paper covering some of  the same themes as myarticle Z, whose presenter–unsurprisingly–hadn’t come across my article. Usually I try to avoid publishing inplaces that aren’t somewhere online, either as f ull text or at least as an abstract. Festschrif ts are theref orea nightmare–one has to produce something creditable with good grace because one wants to celebrate thededicatee, but in terms of  scholarly impact it ’s like chucking one’s work down a black hole. I don’t publish toget myself  well known, but because I want the ideas that I’ve had about things to enter the scholarlydiscussion, whether they are eventually taken up or utterly dismissed. Article Z seemed, theref ore, like agood candidate f or a bit of  web-based accessibility.I planned to do virtually no edit ing except f or hotlinking the main text (it ’s another paper with a f airly largeand specialist/obscure dramatis personae) and the f ootnotes. In the process of  revisit ing my work (which Idid about six years ago now as the result of  teaching a course slightly outside my usual area of  expertise),I discovered misconceptions that badly needed correcting: I had misread one of  my sources because Ihadn’t looked at that source’s ult imate source. As the ult imate source had, in the interim, been put online(as I f ound out when I was searching f or a hotlink f or it), I was able to correct my mistake and revise mytext. The self -published version of  this article is now better than the print version (with apologies to theFestschrif t ’s dedicatee!).Questions people askThe story of  article Z answers one of  the question people ask about self -publication: aren’t you worriedthat your work won’t have proper peer review or editorial input? Article Z had a very high quality editorialteam and the volume is beautif ully produced, but it ’s not the editors’ job to spot f actual errors, misreadingof  one’s sources, and so on. While I appreciate expert editorial input into my work (in terms of  writ ing style Ilearned a lot f rom the in-house editors at Cornell University Press(http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/aboutus/), when I published my f irst book), I am now experiencedenough to be at least as good an editor as most of  the people who edit my work in established journals.Like most senior academics, I’ve served my time as a journal editor and edited volumes of  essays. Althoughthey overlap, the issue of  peer review– f act-checking and argument honing – is a slightly dif f erent matterf rom stylistic textual issues of  edit ing. I would rather have the scholarly input of  a self -selecting, non-anonymous crowd of  readers than the anonymous (and of ten in my experience sadly vicious and dim)comments of  hand-picked anonymous peers. And the beauty of  self -published stuf f  is that one can alwaysrevise it as one lives and learns.But the perception that self -published work lacks peer review leads to the other question people ask: don’tyou worry that this work just doesn’t count f or anything prof essionally? This perception is a particularproblem f or junior scholars and, I think, is where senior academics need to spearhead change. The only wayto make self -publication reputable is f or senior scholars to resolutely publish scholarly stuf f  online. Whilethe REF guidelines might claim that the location of  the publication doesn’t count, only the quality, it isinevitable that people short-cut to a community-validated idea of  quality based on where the thing waspublished. But journal articles – unlike books – are very rarely reviewed af ter publication and only get wherethey are af ter a small number of  anonymous readers OK them. It ’s possible to click on the ‘this article citedby n others’ link in JSTOR, f or example, but that only gives the citations that are in other paper journalpublication archived by JSTOR. By contrast the comments posted on a blog in response to an article, or theresponse of  another online publication linking to another–could surely provide a more legible measure ofthe ‘impact’ and ‘peer esteem’ of  a particular publication.The other question I f requently hear is whether self -publication makes one’s work harder to f ind. This justbaf f les me. Academic journals are obscure organs of  publication: students coming to university have neverencountered them bef ore (and now, because they access them via JSTOR and/or online, still have no ideagenerally what they are in ‘real lif e’). Searching the internet using a simple search engine will locate self -published articles and individuals self -publishing can use Facebook, Twitter, Academia.edu, and specialistsites like Musicologie Médiévale (see above) as well as their own blogs. In my experience, it ’s much morelikely that people today will f ail to turn up your work if  it ’s in a resource that’s not online. People vary ofcourse (and not, in my experience, in any way that can allow sweeping statements about age, gender,discipline, etc.): this year I’ve been told not only things like ‘no one reads things only on-screen’ but also ‘Ireally can’t be bothered to look at stuf f  when I have to go the library’.One question I have asked myself  is about long-term sustainability: what happens to my blog if  WordPressdies and/or to my self -published articles if  I lose my Faculty webspace? If  the beauty of  online publication isthat there’s no f ixed version of  one’s stuf f  because knowledge isn’t stable, the danger is that everything isult imately ephemeral. Perhaps the counting f or REF and sustainability birds could be killed with the onestone (doorstop) of  a paper publication of  the collected self -published works in their more stable, postmajor commented f orms several years down the line.Note: This article gives the views of the author(s), and not the position of the Impact of Social Sciences blog,nor of the London School of Economics.Related posts:1. There is a pathetic lack of  f unctionality in scholarly publishing. We must end f or-prof it publishing andallow libraries to make available the works of  their scholars f or all(http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactof socialsciences/2011/11/09/f unctionality-academic-publishing/)2. Do more tweets mean higher citations? If  so, Twitter can lead us to the ‘personalised journal’;pinpointing more research that is relevant to your interests.(http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactof socialsciences/2012/02/09/more-tweets-more-citations/)3. How to move towards a system that looks to ‘publish, then f ilter ’ academic research(http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactof socialsciences/2012/07/10/publish-then-f ilter-research/)4. The ghosts of  Christmases past, present and f uture come bearing lessons of  academic publishing.(http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactof socialsciences/2011/12/23/the-ghosts-of -christmases-past-present-and-f uture-come-bearing- lessons-of -academic-publishing/)5. Scholarly publishing is broken: Is it t ime to consider guerrilla self -publishing?(http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactof socialsciences/2012/07/11/scholarly-publishing-broken-guerrilla-self -publishing/)

We need to say yes to academic self-publishing but senior academics must lead the way

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