The Methodology and Philosophy of Collective Writing

An Educational Philosophy and Theory Reader Volume X

Michael A. Peters, Tina Besley, Marek Tesar, Liz Jackson, Petar Jandric, Sonja Arndt, Sean Sturm

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367775803
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000404043
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This multi-authored collection covers the methodology and philosophy of collective writing. It is based on a series of articles written by the authors in Educational Philosophy and Theory, Open Review of Educational Research and Knowledge Cultures to explore the concept of collective writing. This tenth volume in the Editor's Choice series provides insights into the philosophy of academic writing and peer review, peer production, collective intelligence, knowledge socialism, openness, open science and intellectual commons. This collection represents the development of the philosophy, methodology and philosophy of collective writing developed in the last few years by members of the Editors' Collective (EC), who also edit, review and contribute to Educational Philosophy and Theory (EPAT), as well as to PESA Agora, edited by Tina Besley, and Access, edited by Nina Hood, two PESA 'journals' recently developed by EC members. This book develops the philosophy, methodology and pedagogy of collective writing as a new mode of academic writing as an alternative to the normal academic article. The philosophy of collective writing draws on a new mode of academic publishing that emphasises the metaphysics of peer production and open review along with the main characteristics of openness, collaboration, co-creation and co-social innovation, peer review and collegiality that have become a praxis for the self-reflection emphasising the subjectivity of writing, sometimes called self-writing. This collection, under the EPAT series Editor's Choice, draws on a group of members of the Editors' Collective,who constitute a network of editors, reviewers and authors who established the organisation to further the aims of innovation in academic writing and publishing. It provides discussion and examples of the philosophy, methodology and pedagogy of collective writing. Split into three sections: Introduction, Openness and Projects, this volume offers an introduction to the philosophy and methodology of collective writing. It will be of interest to scholars in philosophy of education and those interested in the process of collective writing.

Part 1

Introduction

1 Towards a philosophy of academic publishing

Michael A. Peters, Petar Jandrić, Ruth Irwin, Kirsten Locke, Nesta Devine, Richard Heraud, Andrew Gibbons, Tina Besley, Jayne White, Daniella Forster, Liz Jackson, Elizabeth Grierson, Carl Mika, Georgina Stewart, Marek Tesar, Susanne Brighouse, Sonja Arndt, George Lăzăroiu, Ramona Mihăilă, Catherine Legg and Leon Benade

Introduction

This article emerges from the members of the Editors Collective, a small New Zealand-based organisation comprised of editors and reviewers of academic journals mostly in the fields of education and philosophy.¹ The mission of the Editors Collective states:

The academic journal was born in the seventeenth century with The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1665 under the editorship of Henry Oldenburg. The Charter of the Royal Society was dedicated to ‘improving natural knowledge.’ The development of the academic journal as the cornerstone of the emerging global system of scientific communication and scholarship was closely tied to peer review and the history of the printing industry. Today academic publishing is undergoing dramatic changes as it shifts from print to electronic format and digital media, and also to video and new social media technologies.

The editorial collective is based around the development of a journal ecosystem comprising a number of journals in order to:

• develop an experimental and innovative approach to academic publishing;
• explore the philosophy, history, political and legal background to academic publishing;
• build a groundwork to educate scholars regarding important contemporary issues in academic publishing; and,
• encourage more equitable collaborations across journals and editors.

At the first meeting of the group in July 2016, members decided to embark on a new project dedicated to initiating a philosophical discussion of some of the main features of academic publishing that we have called the ‘philosophy of academic publishing’. There is as yet no extant literature on this issue, and it is our collective intention to initiate this field. The material production and reproduction of ideas as a form of text now takes multiple forms with the emergence of new digital technologies that have transformed the nature of the academic journal, the book and the textbook and provided new forms of scientific communication. The combined effect of these changes is to change the nature of the text, of reading and writing, and to resituate learning, research and the university in the age of increased interconnectivity. The concept ‘the epoch of digital reason’ (Peters & Jandrić, 2015) is a catch-all phrase that refers to the magnitude of these developments, signalling an epistemological shift equal in significance to changes in the nature and organisation of knowledge that took place during the European Enlightenment. Today the advanced digital technologies that harness increases in computing power provide for greater integration of global research communities than at any time in the past. An emergent global ecosystem of scholarly communications, still largely dominated by Anglo America, is ushering in an era that enables us to talk of ‘new knowledge ecologies’ and ‘three ages of the journal’ as the academic world moves from text to electronic and video communication. Increasingly, scholars embrace a theory of technological disruption to indicate fundamental changes in the system of the digital text with the rise of open access. This theory needs closer scrutiny for its technological determinism. There is still much discussion to be had about the concepts of ownership and rights in this electronic environment, and also whether the changes indicate continuities of the Enlightenment values based around universal access to knowledge and its significance for democracy. The changes in the global knowledge ecosystem do emphasise new concerns for the geographical distribution of journal knowledge and also the effects of global altmetric and peer review systems on scholarly life. A literature search shows that no such field or article with the title of ‘philosophy of academic publishing’ yet exists. We think that the issues we have identified require ongoing and critical discussion, and we think that the field of academic publishing is a good vehicle for doing this.

The article comprises the following sections:

1.2 New knowledge ecologies and the global ecosystem of scholarly communications

1.3 The three ages of the journal—text, electronic and video communication

1.4 The theory of technological disruption

1.5 The digital text

1.6 The rise of open access

1.7 Enlightenment continuities? Universal access and democracy

1.8 Ownership and rights

1.9 The geographical distribution of journal knowledge

1.10 Peer review: history and future

1.11 Peer-reviewed open access journals: the case of APCs

1.12 What do altmetrics measure? Maybe the broader impact of research on society

1.13 Discussion

This article is also an experiment in the collective writing process. Each contributor was invited to write 500 words on a topic that was initially arrived at through discussion and sequenced by agreement. The idea behind the process was for contributors individually or in groups to submit their work to a moderator (Richard Heraud) who sequenced the contributors as they became available and posted it to the Collective.

The second stage was one of editing and review. Two reviewers, (Professors John Ozoliņš and Peter Roberts) who are senior members of PESA the Society that owns the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory (EPAT) and who are long term members of the review board of the journal, were chosen to engage in a process of open peer review before the final discussion section was written. Their remarks, restricted also to 500 words, are included at the end of this article.

A companion paper is being written that is based on the reflections of contributors on the collective writing process.

New knowledge ecologies and the global ecosystem of scholarly communications

It is remarkable that, within the space of a few hundred years, the global ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Previously published chapters
• List of contributors
• Part 1: Introduction
• Part 2: Openness
• Part 3: Projects
• Endnote Exploring the philosophy of collective writing
• Index