publishing

Intelligences

Mapping the Messy: Using Visual Noise to Convey Not All Journeys Are Linear

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LISA KOEMAN Elsevier In order to communicate research findings, industry researchers rely on a wide range of tools to convey insights. A prime example are visualisations depicting steps in a journey in a sequential order. The use of such a visual representation is often meant to summarise commonalities in a simplified way; they act as a standalone shareable shorthand designed to narrate ‘the experience(s)’. This PechaKucha instead makes a case for messiness: visual noise aimed to overwhelm. My research on rejection in academic publishing shows that the reality of publishing papers in journals is anything but linear. In order to communicate this message to stakeholders, I set out to paint a vivid picture of endless loops and hoops authors go through to achieve success. This talk is a call for conveying the messy, and an ode to the resilience of academic researchers. Figure 1. Diagram depicting an author’s experience of trying to publish two academic articles. Several loops can be seen: both manuscripts were rejected...

Intelligences

Repurposing Risograph Machines: The Allure of Small-Scale Printmaking in the Era of Big Data

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JOYCE S. LEE University of California, Berkeley PechaKucha Presentation—Paper documents are increasingly being replaced with digital files, infinitely replicable for seemingly no cost. Yet I've always felt the pull of paper, with a personal affinity for physical books and a background in magazine production. Through my recreational publishing practice, I learn of the “riso” or risograph, a duplicating machine increasingly adopted by Bay Area artists and technology corporations alike. Upon first glance, most risograph models resemble familiar Xerox machines, with their boxy, gray exteriors, protruding buttons, and hinged tops that cover glass beds for scanning. Through my own experiences and interviews with subject matter experts, however, I come to understand the allure of the risograph: its temperamental nature as an analog machine and the uniquely “human” quality of the prints it renders. I posit the risograph's popularity is a response to technological advances and resulting societal changes, acting as a reprieve...

Perspectives

Evolving Conversations on Open Access: Oysters and Adventures at AAA

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by DONNA LANCLOS The 2014 American Anthropological Association meetings for me consisted of a long and occasionally ranty (on my part) conversation about Open Access publishing. My conversations at the 2013 meetings in Chicago around OA hinted at high levels of anxiety and also misinformation among academics in anthropology about what OA is, what is at stake, what it might look like, and the impact it might have on their professional success. I had hoped that in the course of a year those negative feelings would shift a bit, especially with the relatively high-visibility experiments in OA at Cultural Anthropology, and HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory (the latter is both a journal and entering into an experiment in monograph publishing with University of Chicago Press). The conversations I witnessed in DC this year did little to assure me that anxiety levels have lowered. From the lament of faculty who do not see how OA publishing can be peer-reviewed or prestigious, to publishers who wish that academics would stop pretending...