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In Wood and Word, or, A Gloss on Documents and Documentation in the Humanities
- Author(s):
- Bonnie Mak (see profile)
- Date:
- 2021
- Group(s):
- Interdisciplinary Approaches to Culture and Society, TM Bibliography and Scholarly Editing, TM Libraries and Research
- Subject(s):
- Scholarly publishing, Library science, Information science, Bibliometrics, Bibliography
- Item Type:
- Book chapter
- Tag(s):
- citation, research metrics, peer review, knowledge production, information practices, Scholarly communication, Academic publishing, Library and information science
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/ztbm-k681
- Abstract:
- Attention in the humanities has lately turned to the re-thinking of traditional modes of publishing. But is the academy prepared to assess work that deviates from the recognised forms and formats associated with ‘digging down and standing back’ (Felski 2015, p. 52)? This chapter investigates whether humanistic research, usually expressed in word, might equally be expressed in wood. In so doing, what becomes apparent is the extent to which the scholarly written document has been organised to aid in its own surveillance. It is configured to generate documentation that, in turn, propagates more documentation: Titles to aid abstracting; abstracting to aid indexing; bibliographic references to aid citation analysis; citation analysis to aid performance assessment. Examined as a site for the exercise of administrative power, the written document makes visible the politics of the infrastructures in which it is enmeshed. As universities increasingly rely on the private sector to organize academic life, we may do well to hone our understanding of the players and practices that continue to influence what ‘counts’ as knowledge and how we count it.
- Notes:
- An invited chapter for the volume, "Law’s Documents: Materiality, Authority, Aesthetics," edited by Katherine Biber and Trish Luker (under contract with Routledge).
- Metadata:
- xml
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 3 years ago
- License:
- Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
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