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Digital Studies Group

The Digital Studies Group (DSG) brings together CUNY faculty members, researchers, and doctoral students interested in a broad range of intellectual, cultural, economic, legal, and pedagogical issues related to the growing impact of digital media on the ways we read, think, teach, learn and entertain ourselves in the United States and across the globe. Beginning in fall 2009, the seminar will meet periodically at The CUNY Graduate Center to hear presentations of ongoing digital media research work, to discuss traditional and online texts on digital media issues, and to explore new digital media approaches to cultural production and to questions of teaching and learning.

Admins:

  • New York Times on web based peer review

    Posted by Michael Mandiberg (they/them) on August 24, 2010 at 9:04 am

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/arts/24peer.html

    “That transformation was behind the recent decision by the prestigious 60-year-old Shakespeare Quarterly to embark on an uncharacteristic experiment in the forthcoming fall issue — one that will make it, Ms. Rowe says, the first traditional humanities journal to open its reviewing to the World Wide Web.

    Mixing traditional and new methods, the journal posted online four essays not yet accepted for publication, and a core group of experts — what Ms. Rowe called “our crowd sourcing” — were invited to post their signed comments on the Web site MediaCommons, a scholarly digital network. Others could add their thoughts as well, after registering with their own names. In the end 41 people made more than 350 comments, many of which elicited responses from the authors. The revised essays were then reviewed by the quarterly’s editors, who made the final decision to include them in the printed journal, due out Sept. 17. “

    • Andrea Ades Vasquez
      Participant
      August 24, 2010 at 10:24 am

      Yes, it was nice to see this in today’s paper and to see the names familiar to us from our Digital University Conference. I wondered how the four articles were first selected and how this would change with this new model. It looks like the quarterly’s editors made the initial selections and also made the final decision to publish all four.
      I also wonder about how readily others in the field would be recommend a piece not be published which would, of course, be more difficult than constructive criticism.

    • Steve Brier
      Member
      August 24, 2010 at 2:43 pm

      I have to admit, it gave me quite a buzz to see Dan Cohen, larger than life, on pg. 3 of the front section of the NYT today. It seems our Digital University conference was right at the cutting edge of this issue. I wish we’d known that Patricia Cohen, the Times reporter, was doing the piece. It would have been nice to get her to include something from CUNY in her piece. But it’s all good fodder for our ongoing discussions of this critical issue.

    • Valerie Futch
      Member
      August 24, 2010 at 4:12 pm

      Yes, this is very interesting! Oddly enough on the way in this morning I was reading a printout of this essay by Jonah Lehrer on the influence of power (http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704407804575425561952689390.html) and I thought to myself that that is one of the reasons we have peer review, to keep a check on the quality of research. And then I saw this article. It seems like it opens up many possibilities and also raises dilemmas that are as old as academe. It will be interesting to see how this model takes off and how we adapt. Another good response is here: http://tenured-radical.blogspot.com/2010/08/journal-isms-what-would-it-take-to.html

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