Where to for Scholarly Discourse?

Ross Priory, Scotland.
The last presentation here at ICE 3 is a group act by Bruce Ingraham, Gráinne Conole, Chris Jones, and George Roberts, who have also set up a group blog in preparation for this talk, which some of us have already contributed to. Their focus is especially on scholarly communication through new media environments - and they begin by noting that unfortunately few ICErs did respond to their original blog-based challenge, which in itself provides some insight on the extent to which scholarly discourses have changed so far. Why is this so - are the topics available too dull; is there too little time available to participate in such environments; or are emerging new media not suited to scholarly discourse (which could also mean that scholarly discourse is unsuited to the modern world, however). If we are not professing our disciplines to one another using such new media environments, however, how can we enocurage our students to do so? If we do not do so, then who will - the people formerly known as students?

Part of the impetus for the group's use of a blog as a tool for scholarly communication was a dissatisfaction with conferences, which often produce relatively ephemeral results - good discussion during the conference itself, but few longer-term tangible results. Other forms of scholarly retreats do not necessarily work much better, either. There is perhaps a need for a more collaborative approach to developing scholarship and expressing knowledge (using wikis, for example), but such collaborative work is not well suited to traditional models of academic publishing - and indeed, getting on board an academic publisher to projects of collaborative scholarship tends to fundamentally change the mode of knowledge production, and reintroduces established conventions of print publishing (acknowledgment of individual authorship, ownership of intellectual property, etc.).

At the same time, it is interesting to note that written (and printed) text does still predominate in the academic environment, and that there may also be some very good reasons why such forms of text still persist (and even if such text is now available also in digital formats, it has not necessarily significantly changed format - and is likely to be printed out again as scholars engage with it). There may be a need to be suspicious of privileging interactivity in new media if this is done to suggest that there is no such interactivity in print.

What, then, is the role for scholars - can we both pursue new opportunities in new environments, and maintain a sufficiently sceptical stance towards them?

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