61、Rethinking Academic Authorship in the Digital Age

Rethinking Academic Authorship in the Digital Age

1. Introduction to Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Kathleen Fitzpatrick is the Director of Scholarly Communication of the Modern Language Association (MLA) and a Professor of Media Studies at Pomona College. She has authored several notable books, including Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy and The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American Novel in the Age of Television . She is also a co - founder of the digital scholarly network MediaCommons. Her role at the MLA involves exploring the digital future of the association’s traditional publications and developing new platforms for born - digital scholarly communication.

2. Motivation for Planned Obsolescence

Fitzpatrick wrote Planned Obsolescence while working on starting up MediaCommons. She realized that technical changes in the communication process would not succeed among scholars unless there were changes in their thinking about writing and publishing, and in the institutions’ relationship with scholarly communication. The key changes were social, intellectual, and institutional rather than technological. The book focuses on an academy in transition, dealing with new ways of knowing in digital culture and the survival of its values in new knowledge production modes.

3. Anxieties about Authorship

3.1 Authorship and Originality

Many of our anxieties about authorship stem from values promulgated in the West since the 18th century. We still believe that authorship is inseparable from originality, despite the prevalence of intertextuality. In the digital age, remix culture challenges this belief, as important works in art, media, and literature are often remixes. This causes anxiety because it threatens the intellectual property regime and our concept of “real” authorship as requiring unique, original ideas.

3.2 Single Authorship in the Humanities

In the humanities, single authorship is highly valued over co - authorship and collaboration. We assume that real ideas come from a single brain, and we are suspicious of co - authoring. However, scholars are always in dialogue with others, and claiming sole ownership of ideas is an individualist ideology that contradicts what we critique in other aspects of culture.

3.3 Credit and Authorship

Challenging the Romantic notion of authorship involves issues of credit. Credit operates in a citational sense (who originated the discourse) and an economic sense (what can be put on a vitae). We claim to value collaboration, but when it comes to getting credit, individual work is emphasized. If we recognize that most work is collaborative, we need to let go of possessiveness about our work.

4. Key Stakeholders in Academic Authorship

The key stakeholders in discussions about academic authorship are:
| Stakeholder | Concerns |
| — | — |
| Authors | Retaining control of their ideas |
| Publishers | Wrestling with new publishing models and copyright paradigms |
| Readers/Viewers/Users | Wanting to interact with texts in dynamic and productive ways |
| Administrators and Faculty Committees | Determining where credit is due for hiring, promotion, and tenure reviews |

5. Changes in Authorship

Fitzpatrick believes that the situation is changing, albeit slowly. Exposure to new forms of scholarly communication like blogs shows that collaborative and conversational forms can co - exist with the individual voice. However, the development is uneven, and some parts of the academy may remain unaffected for a while.

graph LR
    A[New Forms of Scholarly Communication] --> B[Exposure to Blogs]
    B --> C[Recognition of Collaborative Forms]
    C --> D[Slow Change in Authorship Perception]
    D --> E[Uneven Development in Academy]

6. Challenging the Romantic Notion of Authorship

6.1 Tenure System Reform

A tenure system that accounts for a broader range of authorship practices would shift its focus. It would no longer privilege the moment of publication as a singular event. Instead, it would recognize that scholarship is an ongoing process and evaluate a scholar’s engagement within the supporting networks.
- It would assess non - traditional forms of work on their own merits.
- It would value the labor of editors, curators, and others who filter, process, and distribute work, as this may be the most valuable in the scholarly communication circuit.
- It would move away from quantitative measures of productivity and focus on the qualitative impact of a scholar’s work on a field.

6.2 Undergraduate Evaluation System

An undergraduate evaluation system based on a more complex notion of authorship would focus on students’ contributions to team - based knowledge production.
- It would value students’ responses to their peers’ work as much as their own completed work.
- It would recognize and reward different modes of learning and communication in which students have strengths.

7. Types of Scholarship Affected

Our fetishized notions of the single author have led to an over - production of certain types of scholarship and an under - production of others:
| Over - Produced | Under - Produced |
| — | — |
| Books that are really long - padded articles to meet the book requirement | Texts of the right size for their argument |
| Texts making unearned claims for field definition or re - definition | Arguments genuinely situated within an ongoing conversation in a field or collective conversations |

8. Media and Cultural Studies

Scholars in media and cultural studies are not more at fault than those in other humanities fields in perpetuating outdated assumptions about authorship. However, there is an irony in a field that advocates for the study of contemporary media texts restricting its own outputs to linear, print - based forms. They should be leading the way in exploring new forms of scholarship, such as:
- Thinking about how arguments can be shown rather than just told.
- Considering the benefits of allowing work to circulate through online networks.
- Exploring how scholarly production can benefit from a more collective environment.

9. Relationship with New Media Theorization

Our ability to understand and adapt to new models of academic authorship is tied to our ability to theorize new media. In theory, knowledge of new media forms should assist us in adapting to new authorship models. However, in practice, the tenure review process often hinders experimentation.

graph LR
    A[New Media Theorization] --> B[Theoretical Assistance for Authorship Adaptation]
    B --> C[Tenure Review Process]
    C -->|Can Hinder| D[Experimentation in New Authorship Models]
    D --> E[Caution and Conservatism in Scholars]

If media scholars can embrace new modes of working, their critical approach to media and network structures could be beneficial. They could better understand how the visual, algorithmic, and rhetorical structures of their work support the argument, identify unquestioned assumptions, and prevent discourse networks from becoming echo chambers.

10. Authorship on Digital Platforms

On digital platforms like blogs, authorship becomes more about the process than the product.
- We acknowledge that all ideas are provisional to some extent.
- We float ideas, receive responses, engage in discussions, and continuously develop our thoughts.
- This allows readers, especially students, to understand how ideas are formed and trace their lineages. It corrects the misconception that scholars’ ideas spring fully - formed from their heads.

11. Scholarly Authorship vs. Culture Industries Authorship

Scholarly authorship is a form of media authorship as it uses a medium to communicate with an audience. However, there are differences between scholarly authorship and authorship in the culture industries:
| Aspect | Scholarly Authorship | Culture Industries Authorship |
| — | — | — |
| Payment | Indirectly supported through teaching positions, not directly paid for products | Often directly paid for products |
| Profit Motive | Not primarily focused on profit | Often driven by profit |
| Audience Consideration | Rarely considers audience engagement | Usually more focused on audience appeal |

The hope is that networked scholarly texts can bridge the gap between the academy and the public, creating connections and facilitating better communication.