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  • Boundary-Crossing in the Age of Turf
  • Sarah M. Pritchard (bio)

A version of this essay was presented at the meeting of the Cultural Studies Association, Berkeley, CA, March 20, 2010

Despite the hype that the peer-reviewed journal is dying and does not fit today's modes of scholarship, the number of journals is flourishing; and the problems of editing and publishing them has become even more complex. The digital environment presents new challenges and also throws into high relief some very old ones, for example copyright and plagiarism. We are well past the early days of electronic journals—when the very phrase meant they were not peer reviewed and not indexed and did not represent the respected literature of a field. Digital content can now include everything from junk to the highest quality—and most expensive—flagship academic books and periodicals. There is a proliferation of business models, by which I mean things like regular subscriptions, a whole range of open access categories, and new forms of bundled or aggregated packages of journals. Is it all a big free-for-all, as some say; or, if not, what differentiates these many products? It is not actually the format or the delivery channel or even the business model. As has been the case for centuries, it is a question of who are the scholars that are producing and editing the information, and what are the institutions—such as universities and publishers—that are hosting and issuing the material. Ultimately it is a matter of who has standing and credibility in a given field.

I want to look at that rather traditional problem of validation in the field and what happens as the definitions and scope of the field evolve. This is ultimately what gives birth to so many new journals, as fields of academic and professional interest subdivide into more depth, recombine to articulate wider syntheses, or weave to form interdisciplinary domains. portal is itself a product of this sort of movement and a case study for interdisciplinarity in the field of library science. There may be a chicken-and-egg problem as to which comes first in the dynamics of an evolving discipline. Does the practice change, and gradually the journals catch up? Or, can leaders in a field establish journals with an innovative mission and encourage scholarship to pursue those directions? It is probably a little of both; and, unfortunately, there can be roadblocks and prolonged disconnects no matter which route is taken. [End Page 379]

From the start we have defined a broad, contextualized, and multifunctional scope as the mission of portal. The first editors wrote essays on it, the author guidelines have been rewritten several times, and the editorial board is encouraged to do its refereeing with this in mind. Much of this has come from having a board made up of leaders in the field. Since the inception of the journal, we have been seeing significant changes in what libraries need to do on campuses to adapt not only to new forms of scholarly information but also to new ways of organizing campus services, evolving campus constituencies, and, notably, the significant impact of technology on every aspect of higher education. Making these kinds of changes is difficult and requires significant effort to develop resources and understanding, so solid research is needed more than ever to compare alternatives and to demonstrate the efficacy of methods.

We seek to publish the kinds of articles that will both help libraries develop these new models and help other campus groups understand the interconnectedness of the issues. Prime examples of this interconnectedness are the development of information technologies, the advocacy around journal pricing for which faculty leadership is key, the digital archiving of e-science data, the design of collaborative space for developing scholarly work, and the changes in student learning that are mandating new services. None of these can be addressed by libraries in some sort of internally focused vacuum. portal seeks articles that are grounded in research and formal analysis; but we are open to a range of methodologies, and we especially encourage—or think we do—articles written by, or jointly with, academic faculty or technology...

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