November 27, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dear Joseph & Ben:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This letter constitutes my editorial response to your revised submission of \u201c: “History Can<\/em> Be Open Source: Democratic Dreams and the Rise of Digital History”, as based on my readings of two reader reports and the \u201copen\u201d comments of those who chose to engage with the revised piece on the web site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s start with the more \u201cformal\u201d readers. As is the AHR <\/em>custom I returned your revised submission to two of the previous readers, with the request that they evaluate the degree to which you met some of their previous critique or objections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I am happy to report, and as you no doubt can see from the reports themselves, these two readers find your changes satisfactory. Reader 1, it seems, has nothing more to add. Reader 2, a self-professed \u201copen source maximalist\u201d (my designation, true, but the reader appears to embrace this characterization) remains a bit skeptical. As before, they feel you fail to discuss a vast area of scholarship that raises central questions about democracy and open access\u2014the world of journals. That\u2019s true, but I think this will have to be the topic of another article and\/or debate, given the issues it potentially raises (not least about the AHR <\/em>itself). If you see an obvious place to allude to this lacuna, and perhaps at least note what issues it leaves unaddressed, that wouldn\u2019t hurt, in my view. After all, as one reader asks, \u201cWill this article itself be open-access when it is published?\u201d A good question, and one I am not yet able to answer (though if we leave this site open, I guess so).<\/p>\n\n\n\n So far, so good. I profess to being a little disappointed\u2014if relieved\u2014at the paucity of remarks in the \u201copen\u201d sidebar on the revised submission. To this degree, I would count our experiment a failure, though you might see it differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Randall Miller, like reader 2, feels that you remain too parochial in your concerns. First, you focus only on the \u201cAmerican story.\u201d That\u2019s true, and it is a fair critique\u2014but not all articles can do everything. Here too a footnote or even a paragraph may still be in order, at least to remind readers that this is part of a global set of initiatives. Similarly, a \u201cnod\u201d to the important place of community-generated projects\u2014indeed highly democratic\u2014seems worthwhile, as Randall observes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lara Putnam, the Consulting Editor for the section in which this contribution will appear, offers an important cautionary note: \u201cthe target of this particularly essay is something far more helpfully specific than \u201cthe rise of digital history itself.\u201d\u201d You will need to attend to that on the final revisions, lest your essay appear misdirected. You can consult directly with Lara, I think, if you need guidance on this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dan Gorman offers a nice fillip on your attention to the New Left\u2014what about the cyber-libertarians (if that\u2019s the correct term) or techno-libertarians like Stewart Brand as important political predecessors? Gorman also notes (par. 10) that digitization also can lead to stretch-outs for support staff\u2014and I agree, since that remains my critique of Open Access journals as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, par. 35 returns us to this question (I like how you quote from the process itself here, incorporating it into the article). I do not want to be misunderstood\u2014the problem is not the lack of compensation for people like me<\/em>; it is the real editors who after we accept this will do the fact-checking, copy-editing, and proofreading. All publishable academic work needs this compensated<\/em> non-academic and value-added labor, which many academics (including me) are not qualified or competent to do. I have yet to hear of a revenue-generating model of open access that will be able to pay for this. In any event, you may want to address Jordan Taylor\u2019s concern (if only to dispute it, if you care to) that DH can be anti-democratic because it throws up potentially high entry costs. See Jordan\u2019s further caveats at par. 52. Both he and Miller Wright feel you bury the lede a bit here, so if you can highlight or foreshadow this call to arms at the outset, that might not hurt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All and all, with attention to a few of the above suggestions\u2014especially Lara\u2019s\u2014we should be able to move forward to publishing this in 2021. How and when I leave to another, private, discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thank you both for initiating this. From where I sit, the results of this experiment are mixed. I do think that the process solicited some really useful comments that much improved the article; that said, I am less convinced that the more traditional form of peer reviewed wouldn\u2019t have led to the same destination, and perhaps with fewer detours. But that\u2019s less of a concern than what one person called the \u201cthe politics of the editorial letter\u201d, with which they took issue. That leaves me\u2014or any editor who does things this way\u2014in a difficult position. On the one hand, I feel obligated to provide authors with a fully honest letter (as this one is). On the other, knowing that such a letter is open to public scrutiny, it is hard to maintain the kind of honesty that the more \u201cconfidential\u201d process underwrites. For example, my critic was unhappy with my characterization of open access journals (yes, this goes back to reader 2, above). So, should I have left that part out (as reader 2 recognizes, this is a pretty important issue)? Or should I have communicated my views on that issue to you privately, in a kind of ex parte <\/em>letter or email? That, of course, defeats the entire purpose of \u201copen peer review.\u201d Or does it? An unanswered question about the process\u2014perhaps only the reader comments need be open, while author-editor communication of necessity remains private, preserving the kind of unvarnished exchange this sometimes entails. For example, in letters like this I often say \u201cdisregard reader X, for they have little of substance to offer.\u201d That becomes awkward in an open process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alex Lichtenstein<\/p>\n\n\n\n Editor, AHR<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" November 27, 2020 Dear Joseph & Ben: This letter constitutes my editorial response to your revised submission of \u201c: “History Can Be Open Source: Democratic Dreams and the Rise of Digital History”, as based on my readings of two reader reports and the \u201copen\u201d comments of those who chose to engage with the revised piece […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":12,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-138","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ahropenreview.com\/HistoryCanBeOpenSource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ahropenreview.com\/HistoryCanBeOpenSource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ahropenreview.com\/HistoryCanBeOpenSource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ahropenreview.com\/HistoryCanBeOpenSource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ahropenreview.com\/HistoryCanBeOpenSource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ahropenreview.com\/HistoryCanBeOpenSource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139,"href":"https:\/\/ahropenreview.com\/HistoryCanBeOpenSource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/138\/revisions\/139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ahropenreview.com\/HistoryCanBeOpenSource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}