Scholarly journals at the crossroads: a subversive proposal for electronic publishing: Edited by Ann Shumelda Okerson and James J. O'Donnell. Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries, 1995. 242 pp. $20.00. ISBN 0-918006-26-0.

Abstract

The World Wide Web explosion has unsettled strategic relations of power between academic authors and publishers. These disruptions provide an opportunity to reconceptualize those relations and influence future practices. By examining the divergent ways publishers and authors have thought about knowledge and its dissemination, since the 19th century, we reveal the motivations, goals, standards and perceptions of each group. Foucault explained that traditionally, authors have provided particular functions: to classify texts, to establish relationships among texts within their sociocultural contexts, and to identify bodies of work. However the roles of authors, as demonstrated in Web culture, ore shifting dramatically, thereby enabling new functions to emerge. The emerging innovative methods of text distribution and attribution are challenging the way knowledge itself is produced and distributed within particular disciplines. We meet this challenge by drawing on the interdisciplinary work of Steven Harnad (psychology), Bernard Hibbitts (law), Deborah Halbert (law), and Paul Ginsparg (physics) to examine a new authoring in which a fluid archive is drawing “author and reader communities—together” (Ginsparg, 1996, p. 5). We retheorize the relationship between authors and publishers to set the stage for collaboration and negotiation. Our revised definition of Foucault's author-function blurs the boundaries between publishers and academic authors, allowing print and digital publication to peacefully coexist in this late age of print.