otw_news | Journal Committee Announced

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Journal Committee Announced

We'd like to announce our new Journal Committee, whose function is the launching of an international, blind peer-reviewed journal published online twice a year by the OTW. The journal will be committed to publishing high-quality academic research as a way to document and analyze fan histories, cultures, and artifacts. Its first issue is slated for publication in September 2008.

Journal Committee:
Chair: Karen Hellekson
Kristina Busse
Cynthia W. Walker
Deborah Kaplan
Alexis Lothian
Cole J. Banning
Julie Levin Russo

The journal has been named Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC). The committee is in the process of appointing scholars to the journal's advisory and review boards. They plan to have a call for papers by February 2008.

Henry Jenkins, director of the comparative media studies program at MIT, author of such works as Textual Poachers; Fans, Gamers and Bloggers; and Convergence Culture and member of TWC’s advisory board, says:

The field of Fan Studies has come of age: there are dozens of gifted young scholars from a range of different disciplines doing groundbreaking work in the field at the moment, each bringing their own distinctive theoretical and methodological perspectives to the topic, each connecting the study of fans to larger debates surrounding media and society. The time is ripe for a journal which will bring all of these researchers together and provide them with an intellectual home. And ideally that journal will come bottom up—from the community of fans and fan scholars. Given this context, Transformative Works and Cultures is a dream come true—an exciting chance to consolidate this field and at the same time, bridge the gap between fans and fan scholars.

TWC will publish articles about transformative works and related areas, including fan fiction, fan vids, fan communities, film, TV, anime, comic books, video games, and machinima. The journal invites a variety of critical approaches and encourages authors to consider writing personal essays integrated with scholarship, hyperlinked articles, or other forms that test the limits of the genre of academic writing. TWC’s aim is twofold: to promote dialogue between the academic community and the fan community, and to provide a publishing outlet that welcomes fan-related topics.

TWC plans a mix of traditional academic articles and shorter contributions in a Symposium section. We hope to solicit contributions from leading figures in the field, emerging scholars from a variety of disciplines, and theoretical-minded fans. Like OTW, TWC has an expanded notion of fair use. The publication permits the duplication of stills, and the journal will include the ability to embed video clips. TWC will be copyrighted under a Creative Commons license.

ETA: From the Journal Committee... The journal accepts four types of contributions: theory, practice, Symposium, and reviews. Theory is comprised of full-length research essays that are 6,000–9,000 words long. Essays in this section propose novel ideas that are placed within a coherent theoretical framework and add something new to the field.

Practice is comprised of 3,000–6,000 words long essays that apply a specific theory to a community; explicate fan practice; perform a detailed reading of a specific text; or otherwise relate practice to theory within a theoretical framework. Theory and Practice essays are blind peer-reviewed by up to three reviewers, who are scholars in media studies, fan studies, English, communication, and related fields.

Symposium is named in homage to the fan-based collection of meta essays and in its spirit collects collects short, thematically contained essays. These 1,500-word essays provide insight into current events on any topic.

Reviews are of items of interest in the fields of fan and media studies and include a description of the item's content, an evaluation of its importance in a larger context, and an assessment of the likely audience. Symposium essays and reviews will be editorially reviewed.

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femmequixotic,

bethbethbeth,

ciderpress,

mirabile_dictu,

shrift,

svmadelyn
Community Relations Committee

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I have seen a "post comment" option for one open access journal publisher (BioMed Central), but I've gotten addicted to the threaded comments -- and icons ;) -- on LJ. Of course, anybody could start an LJ comm -- I'm not trying to saddle you with another item on what's already surely a hefty to-do list!

No, it's a great idea. I'm wondering how successful it would be, because I know that the Symposium's LJ comm rarely generated much debate, so it might be easier to comment physically closer to the actual essay.

Otoh, like you, I vastly prefer threaded comments, plus, if the different interactions at Henry's blog and fandebate showed us anything it is how the context and interface affects conversation. (Flow's response feature, for example, is not used all that much, I think.)

There are other sites with threaded commenting, though -- Slashdot comes to mind. And isn't that part of old open-source LJ code anyway? You might be able to do a quick-and-dirty cut-and-paste job into TW&C's site. I agree with you that it's easier to comment on-site, rather than keeping a tab open for LJ elsewhere.

Also, I'm incredibly tempted to submit one of my term papers, but it would be totally obvious who it was from and would thus eliminate the "blindness" factor, I think. On the other hand I loved what Henry had to say -- you're all right, the time is now, we have to make a go of it, so I might as well submit when it's ready. Provided you get that review board up, of course. :)

One more thing: if you're committed to fair use, does that mean I could Creative Commons-license my article and publish it elsewhere, if I was lucky enough to get it through your review board?

Fandrogyny,

why would it be obvious? Of course, if a peer reviewer were dedicated enough, they could google the title or ideas and possibly find the author like that, but I'm not sure most reviewers would go to that trouble :)

I'll let someone else take the CC question, but I'm pretty certain that most journals (including us) demand original material, so even if our license allowed you to do with your article as you please, I doubt you'd be able to publish it elsewhere.

Many journals allow you to republish other works and give you rights to publish elsewhere. It's primarily aimed at allowing authors to put papers on their websites, and also to allow republishing of figures and photographs without permission hassles. I mean, republishing anything in total is pretty counterproductive....

And this is why I won't publish anything in Elsevier anymore -- they are backwater idiots, imho...

One more thing: if you're committed to fair use, does that mean I could Creative Commons-license my article and publish it elsewhere, if I was lucky enough to get it through your review board?

Sorry, catching up late—the journal CCs the article, not so much you (in terms of the content being up on the org's Web site), but what that means is that you, or anyone else, can duplicate it if it is nonprofit.

Basically that means you can put it up on your Web site or copy it to your LJ once it appears in the journal. A scholar could reproduce it for her students in a coursepack. Another scholar doing meta could copy the article to some Web site she maintains. Etc.

If someone wanted it for an anthology, then that would be for profit, which the CC doesn't permit, and you'd have to grant special permission to let them do that.

We thought it provided the greatest amount of control and reuse over your own work while also permitting the free dissemination of ideas.

If you wanted to publish it elsewhere, certainly you could, but you'd have to of course divulge its previous appearance, and most publishers then won't want it (unless maybe in an anthology?).

In small fields, there is always a risk of a certain amount of non-blindness in so-called blind peer reviewing. As a rule, blind peer reviewers do their best to operate without assumptions about who's work is whose, and the editors do their best to match up papers with reviewers who are appropriate for the paper in question but who have the potential to be blind about the submitter. But in some fields, everybody knows that, Dr. X. is the only person working on, say, concealed questions as they appear in lolspeak, and that paper will never be truly blindly reviewed. The reviewers just do the most objective review they can.

That being said, keep in mind that the blind peer reviewers for the journal will be coming from a much larger pool of academics than the people in livejournal acafandom, so the obviousness of authorship maybe less clear than you fear.

ObDisclaimer: I am speaking here as an independent academic, not in my role for the journal. Both of the editors have spoken up already, and they are certainly the authoritative voice of speaking for the journal.

But you sound so much more authoritative than my "hey, it happens" :)

I haven't quite learned yet to match the proper LJ account with the proper speaking voice....

I keep being petrified that I'm going to speak as a fan from my professional identity and say something utterly inappropriate. Not that such a thing would be the end of the world, but I'm easily petrified by silly things.

Second the threaded comments. And icons! (or even macros *cough*)

It would be great to be able to thread in the journal's site, as well as having typical "letters" type comments that allowed responses to be associated.

I find the open-source LJ format so much more congenial and productive - and like fandebate wrap-up comments have noted, so noticeably different - I'd be reluctant to sacrifice such lively and welcoming commenting capacity to a desire to have the journal "stand-alone." Because ... er, it might do that then. Or at least, it would not invite fans in the most immediately friendly way: by using the same software they use, by existing where they exist, by being part of their world, instead of appearing to stand apart from it.

Regarding the anticipated call for papers - it will, I hope, have good academic cred as well as being accessible to all levels of readers, such that it can be submitted to lots of list-serves, and posted in our departments as well. To that end, some thumbnail bios of the board, OTW, etc., might be a strong feature of the CFP along with the usual list of topic types, 'fine print,' etc.

I will certainly look forward to sharing it at the two universities where I am! Congratulations on this crossing of another frontier!

(take 2—sorry)

I find the open-source LJ format so much more congenial and productive - and like fandebate wrap-up comments have noted, so noticeably different - I'd be reluctant to sacrifice such lively and welcoming commenting capacity to a desire to have the journal "stand-alone." Because ... er, it might do that then.

I agree, but at the same time, I kind of don't, if that makes sense, because LJ is a tiny little part of the online world. Of course, it's the most important part of the world! Clearly! But to outsiders, LJ is a little threatening, a little confusing, a bit too in your face, and if we took conversation off LJ, I fear that, like at Henry's blog, all the most interesting discussions would be taken off the main list and made not part of the MAIN text but some COROLLARY to it. And that kind of sucks.

So in short, LJ, sure! Why the heck not! But at the same time, there's going to be something shiny and new, and maybe that other space wouldn't feel so exclusionary to some of our target demographic. We're trying to create a space where both can meet and talk, that doesn't freak out either party.

Taking conversation off to LJ may just further the very divide that we are attempting to bridge with this project. We deliberately chose the journal software on the basis of, among other things, its commenting feature.

BUT also keep in mind that we're using a CC license for the copyright. That means authors may post their published articles to their LJs. And certainly that is fine by us and we anticipate that people will do that. That will also draw discussion to LJ.

Pardon me. I'm using "LJ" and the recent fandebate as simply one, admittedly limited, example of the potential and need to improve on the power-imbalanced, monologic, Owner-vs-guest structure of the typical blog format, which as we saw this summer, can ravage LJ too.

Form follows function; I love seeing fandom subvert and transform both. I hope to see OTW reach past dominant (!) computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools for something that would allow OTW's work to be as transformative to online commentary as fanworks are to their texts.

LJ is FAR from my ideal, especially after this year's demonstration of 6A's deep unprofessionalism and shallow social conscience. My fan activity takes place in many sites beyond LJ; similarly for many OTW folks, I know.

ANY software that allows for a robustly interactive, non-ephemeral, and many-to-many conversation --- the sort humans LIKE to have, as opposed to the sort computer limitations force upon us --- is going to be better than the one-sided conversation privileged by hierarchically structured fora and owner-dominated blogs. Those models are steeped in the same Sage-on-the-Stage, Voice-of-the-Master assumptions that I work to change in classrooms and other settings.

One reason I love fandom is its capacity (not always realized) to be non-hegemonic, to invite and include many voices, rather than being run by the few, to open up new frameworks for thinking and being, to have fic-fests rather than blogging flame-fests, or the physical slugfests that rule the RW news.

Just as fans surface "other voices" in a text, and fandom voices other views alongside the author's, and classrooms and meetings can either encourage or stifle new conversations and voices, so can CMC tools do, through structuring for it, or against it.

I agree the CMC options at hand have their limits.

I hope that OTW's journal fen (*g*) might seek maximum openness, USING ANY SOFTWARE, rather than default to software that is convenient, "shiny," and OMG beloved by the patriarchies it so perfectly replicates. That would be ironic since one purpose of OTW & its journal is to celebrate fandom being the opposite!

So the more things change, the more they stay the same. (Not! Hopefully not!)

Feminist theory is one touchstone for me in work on environmental science and discourse. Currently on my desk for that are notes from Marilyn French's 1986 feminist classic, "Beyond Power." Maybe I'll get back to that from this lovely fun break to check email (and thus LJ) by sharing this incredible parallel.

Twenty years old and it's still so relevant:

Feminism is not [simply about] access to existing structures and their rewards. This is how many people see it, however: as a strictly political movement through which women demand entry into the "male" world, a share of male prerogatives, and the chance to be like men. This perception of feminism alienates many nonfeminist women.

Not to mention feminist ones too! Like me. Whether it's feminism vs patriarchy, "fanboy vs. fangirl," blog vs. LJ (IJ/GJ etc), "media fandom" vs. stabbity*hate*that*name, OTW "owners" vs fandom "users," I follow French's call to change the relations, not just the owners or their gender. Change the dualism - and not into monotonous all-the-same-ism, either.

Let me change "feminism" to "fandom," as French continues, to underscore the striking parallels to one wonderful debate OTW's start-up has started up (because debates are wonderful! like OTW!) -- the question of how transformative OTW is really meant to be. Will OTW be politically advantageous for some, or the many? Will OTW transform how fandom is viewed -- even, how society views itself? -- or just how some fandom scholars, fanartists, or BNFs are viewed? Where French wrote this for "feminists" or "feminism," I'll change it to fandom:

[Fandom] is a political movement demanding access to the rewards and responsibilities of the "male" [mainstream corporate ownership-of-text] world.

[This absolutely includes the highly conservative, power-world of academia!]

It is more: it is a revolutionary moral movement, intending to use political power to transform society, to "[fandomize]" it. For such a movement, assimilation is death. The assimiliation of [fans] to society as it presently exists would lead simply to the inclusion of certain women/fans (not all, because society as it presently exists is highly stratified) along with certain men [male fans/academics] in its higher echelons.

It would mean continued stratification and continued contempt for "[fandom]" values. Assimilation would be the cooption of [fandom]. Yet it must be admitted that the major success of the movement in the past twenty years [past summer's fandebate?] has been to increase the assimilation of [academic fans] into the existing structure. This is not to be deplored, but it is only a necessary first step.

Some would disagree with French's last sentence. What strikes me is how well her critique applies to fandom's efforts to gain not only a similar social parity, but beyond that, to "transform" the society that so automatically defaults to DIS-parity.

I assume, however, that the collective and very bright minds in OTW's 'management' have noted that yes, even such a small (?!) thing as the journal's comment function can be as transformative as the work OTW supports, or can simply default into the structures of control that already exist to suppress fandom, feminism, and other social movements for new forms of col/laboration.

I feel sure that at least some of you in OTW will do your best to make the journal and its comments as supportive to wide-open conversation as you can. What a grand experiment in so many ways! Those of us who use CMC for teaching, for team-based widely-based research, for institutional governance and for public participation work (yes, some of us bravely fight to make even the current US government more publicly responsive and accountable) will find this journal not only a source of information and great pride -- but an additional case study in the global struggle for peaceful and productive multivocality.

Whee!

I assume, however, that the collective and very bright minds in OTW's 'management' have noted that yes, even such a small (?!) thing as the journal's comment function can be as transformative as the work OTW supports, or can simply default into the structures of control that already exist to suppress fandom, feminism, and other social movements for new forms of col/laboration.

I love your feminism/fandom recasting!

I don't really know what to do about the structures of control. The journal will be less fannish and more academic, because we want the journal to be authoritative and important. It will be geared to that acafan-meta intersect mostly. But we want to be sure we have timely, accessible, shorter content too. So we're trying to have a little something for everybody thinky.

I haven't experimented much yet with the software's commenting feature, but we need the software for a bunch of things other than commenting, like tracking MSS through peer review and keeping a database of subscribers so they can RSS feed the articles. We need a lot of functionality, and we have to make compromises while keeping within our #1 priority, which is open access and freedom of exchange of information. I have no idea if commenting is going to be such a compromise. I hope not.

I also hope that the people who want to discuss the articles will do it within the purview of the journal and its software, to keep it all together (TEXT and COROLLARY permanently linked, so the COROLLARY becomes part of a DIALOGUE). LJ is so easy, so comfortable, and we all know so well how to handle it—I personally get irritated at, say, WordPress or Blogger because they are so stupid. But I'd hate to see discussion moved elsewhere simply because the software is annoying. Work with us here!

Of course, we're not live yet, and so who knows how it will all play out? I'm just really excited that people are excited. How bad is it that we had to start a new journal because fan studies is so inadequately represented in media studies outlets? What is that even about??

There's a niche that we need to fill, and we want to do it right.

by using the same software they use, by existing where they exist, by being part of their world, instead of appearing to stand apart from it

Not all fans use LJ, nor do all fans use sites with similar features (threaded comments, etc.). It's not any less inviting to LJers to use non-LJ-esque software than it is to non-LJers to use LJ.

Of course. I think we all know that. My own fan activities take place in many locations that are not LJ - thank goodness. So do those of many of the OTW people, I know - perhaps all.

My point is that ANY software that allows for a robustly interactive, iterative, non-ephemeral, and many-to-many conversation --- the sort humans LIKE to have, as opposed to the sort computer limitations force upon us --- is going to be better.

One of the values of fandom is its ability to be non-hegemonic and non-dictatorial, to invite and include many voices, rather than being run by a few individuals unwilling to open up to new perspectives or organizational frameworks. Just as fan activity sees "other voices" in a text, and fandom allows other voices to surface alongside the author's, and college classrooms, corporate meetings, and government processes can either allow -- or stifle -- multiple and diverse conversations and voices, so computer formats can also either allow and encourage, or inhibit and stifle, multiple voices.

My work is not only in fandom but in facilitating collaborative, open, many-to-many communication -- in the classroom, in governmental and organizational processes, and in social and environmental sustainability. I am keenly interested in seeing OTW's activities foster productive new social openness, USING ANY SOFTWARE, rather than default to software that is convenient, "shiny," and OMG the favorite of the existing hegemonies and patriarchies, and thus replicate or perpetuate inaccessibility, conventionality, and divisiveness (such as LJ has helped create just this summer ;-) even while studying fandom's celebration of the opposite!

Form follows function.

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Journal Committee Announced

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Amusing: Plus ca change ... .

Re: Amusing: Plus ca change ... .

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