The usual fix
March 12, 2008
<post edited March 13 thanks to a clarification> On our AAUP listserv today was a note from Greg Tananbaum of Consulting Services at the Intersection of Technology, Content & Academia quoting researcher Atanu Garai, who was calling attention, among other things, to the fact that articles submitted to institutional repositories before publication will be posted before the articles are copyedited and thus will be shared in a rough form potentially embarrassing to their authors.
In his note, Garai quotes Adam A. J. Deville, the author of “Sinners Well Edited” from the most recent issue of the Journal of Scholarly Publishing. I haven’t read the article, but Deville is quoted as criticizing some unedited papers as “rambling, repetitive, insufficiently researched, and badly argued.” Copyeditors can fix the first two, but university press copyeditors don’t, at least in my experience, usually introduce new sources, and they can’t fix an argument that is truly faulty, though they can repair and at least query some missing links.
Maybe my reaction to Garai’s pointing to the lack of copyediting in articles in repositories and his quote from someone complaining of writing problems that might not be addressed in the editing process is the standard gripe by editorial managers when we’re asked to fix something in copyediting that isn’t really fixable in our usual copyediting workflow. But I’ve also noticed that when university presses want to distinguish themselves and praise the work they do as a reason for why libraries shouldn’t become publishers or why scholars shouldn’t introduce their work into institutional repositories, they like to hold up copyediting as an example of their care and art. That was the context in which this note came to the listserv.
I’m not making a judgment call here about the repository. I’m merely pointing out that we (that is, university presses) are inconsistent about the value we place on copyediting. I’ve seen copyeditors criticized for “doing too much” when they attempt to revise, even intelligntly so, or when they question content, and I’ve been asked to do a triage edit to move a book through the pipeline more quickly when someone feels it’s more important to get the book into the hands of readers than it is to make sure everything’s just so.
If I were to make a judgment about the Harvard mandate, I’d say that I don’t feel concerned about the lack of copyediting. The pieces being put in the repository are being called drafts, even though they are papers accepted for publication. They’ll be shared as information, not as finished packages.
And you know how I feel about text as information.
March 13, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I am not actually the author of the post you cite, Kristin. I was responding to a question posed by an Indian researcher asking why institutional repositories were so much more prevalent than discipline-based and consortial repositories. Here is what I said:
Atanu Garai poses an interesting question. Essentially, I believe he is asking why the industry is pursuing institutional repositories when subject-matter repositories and consortial repositories may have greater upside. Discipline-based approaches should resonate with the researchers, as their first loyalty is to the field. Consortial-approaches should resonate with the sponsoring bodies, as they distribute costs. Why, then, have institutional repositories initiatives have gotten the lion’s share of attention/money/effort/publicity? Primarily because they are far easier to get up and running. Repository advocates within a single school should have a good sense of their institution’s idiosyncratic bureaucracy and decision-making structure. They are also likely to have a basic understanding of how to secure the resources (funds, staffing, hardware, etc.) to get an IR launched. Extrapolating that knowledge beyond the school’s boundaries is a challenge. Who does what work to support a discipline-based repository? How are expenses fairly distributed among the partners of a consortial approach? In either instance, how is the free-rider problem minimized?
This is but a quick observation on the subject. There are obvious examples of both subject-matter (obligatory arXiv reference here) and consortial (CDL) successes. The bottom line, however, is that launching an IR is a more straightforward and capturable task for most institutions.
March 13, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I’m embarrassed to have mis-cited you. Apologies. Thank you for the clarification.