Introduction: Scholarly Communication and German Studies

In this new special section of Seminar, we are interested in focusing on issues of increasing importance to our profession that often do not have room for expression in more traditional forms and formats of publication. For our initial topic, we have chosen “the changing nature of scholarly communication.” There are likely few of us who have not been impacted by these changes and who have not also registered at one time or another a range of reactions to them. Our aim is to initiate a conversation that begins to address these reactions in more systematic and open-ended fashion. The forum’s goal is to discuss emerging problems as well as identify creative solutions to such problems. Communication is not an aftermath of ideas but a means to constitute them. The question we thus want to ask is, how will the changing nature of scholarly communication change the nature of scholarship?

To this end, we are thankful to have three thoughtful pieces by distinguished colleagues reflecting on the changing nature of scholarly communication in German studies and its relevance to debates in the public sphere. In “Mobilizing Knowledge,” Jill Scott addresses the problem of knowledge stagnation, the remarkable degree to which our ideas as academics do not disseminate. Whether as the result of over-specialization or hyper-saturation, Scott wants us to be more attentive to the relevance of our ideas, attaching our concerns as literary and cultural scholars more firmly to contemporary debates. This is not a means in Scott’s view to give up on the past – on historical knowledge as one of the bedrocks of humanistic inquiry – but simply to think harder about how to integrate and mobilize what we know more extensively in the present. As the digital humanist Gary Hall has argued, we need to make our ideas go further.

In “Accounting for Scholarship,” Markus Reisenleitner reminds us of some of the more pernicious outcomes that the new “accountability” can have on scholarly research and communication. When measurability becomes the sole basis of knowledge production – indeed the more knowledge is thought of as a “product” – it is clear that certain kinds of knowledge and certain kinds of argumentation are discounted. One of the more historically salient and arguably valuable functions of the university has been its ability not to be subsumed by market thinking, a position that digitization makes increasingly hard to defend. Even as a public institution, the university’s apartness – its mediated position vis-à-vis society – has been crucial for the different kind of knowledge it engenders and disseminates. The more measurability takes hold, the more that tradition will recede.

Finally, Carrie Smith-Prei addresses in “Notes on Opening Access” the importance that “access” plays in debates about higher education today. Presenting a range of experiments with forms of open access publishing, Smith-Prei wants us to take seriously our public mission as educators and researchers and explore ways of breaking down barriers between ourselves and the public. But ultimately, Smith-Prei sees the value of the discourse on access to be related to our disciplinary future. As she writes, “[t]he rhetoric surrounding open access models should be harnessed to impact the discipline and the individual researcher by opening up new avenues for re-envisioning disciplinarity.” Openness can be a tool through which we rethink the specialization and isolation that are driving the problems of stagnation identified in the reflections by Jill Scott.

The challenges that face us in the field of scholarly communication today are complicated and reticulated. How can we address the seeming isolation of our scholarship without sacrificing the unique knowledge for which we stand? How can we make our work more accessible – broadly speaking – while still maintaining a sense of distinction about our work and the way we communicate? How can we harness the opportunities of openness and interdisciplinarity afforded by digital platforms without also falling prey to the limiting logic of perpetual measurability? These problems are not easy to reconcile, but it is vitally important that Germanists be a part of the debate. We are indeed thankful that our contributors have...