Two Fulbrighters walk into a bar…
Isra and I are not peers. That is, the structures of academia are such that our work would never overlap, and therefore I would never “peer review” Isra’s work, nor her mine. Much lip service is paid to creating space for inter/cross disciplinary work, but the actualization of two or more people from different disciplines constructing a shared research program and disseminating it in ways that can achieve professional goals and due credit is not super straightforward. So, we decided to toss out the baby, the bathwater, AND the bucket.
Over the course of my Fulbright fellowship I had the opportunity to fine-tune my self-introduction, meeting a lot of different people, many of whom were not familiar with the inner workings of academic librarianship. Therefore, “I am an information scientist, studying how academic knowledge moves into the world.” That’s a version of the phrase I used at a hotel bar in Luxembourg City, where I had the honor to meet Isra Hussain. Over the course of the conversation, Isra said something I’ve been waiting to hear from an academic: “I’m just not sure publishing this work in a disciplinary journal will accomplish my goals or produce the impact I hope for this project” (paraphrased). A few emails and a skype call later, Isra and I are embarking on a collaborative project that I am attempting to define/not define as a dual disciplinary, non-publishing, translative/interpretive, public scholarship experiment.
Over the next few months we will use this space as the center of our conversation. My goals for the project are to test a concept I have of “translation as scholarly communication” (translation here not being about language but more about ideas and media), and also to explore a model of public scholarship that streamlines the workflow from the researchers brain to a real world impact. Our shared workflow will begin with Isra depositing an early pre-print of her research in SocArxiv (link updated!), followed by a back and forth discussion inside the text using open annotations, and summary signposts expanded into blog posts here. We intend to be as open as possible about the process, the challenges, the successes, and the outcomes of this work. Overall, the hope is that Isra’s research is made visible and consumable (for lack of a better word) and that will provide her a path forward in her career and work. What I get is to learn from, and support, a brilliant early career scholar doing important work that has real implications for our current global socio-cultural moment. No pressure.
And so, Para-Review begins, creating a new scholarly space where, sure, Isra and I aren’t peers. But, we are adjacent to one another, with complementary interests, similar professional goals, and a mutual respect for one another’s expertise. The Fulbright thing helps too. ;)
