MediaCommons is an in-development all-electronic scholarly publishing network in media studies, being created in partnership with the
Institute for the Future of the Book and with the support of
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, ...
and the
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...
.
MediaCommons established its first
presence on the web in November 2006 with a now-defunct development site named "making MediaCommons," and opened its current web site in March 2007. The first project established on MediaCommons wa
In Media Res an ongoing feature in which notable scholars in media studies present and comment upon brief, timely videoclips, aiming to promote dialogue between scholars and the broader public about the significance of media representations and forms.
MediaCommons claims among its goals a transformation in scholarly publishing, suggesting that the network "will not simply shift the locus of publishing from print to screen, but will actually transform what it means to 'publish,' allowing the author, the publisher, and the reader all to make the process of such discourse just as visible as its product."
[MediaCommons » About MediaCommons]
/ref> The network promises to speed up the processes of publishing, but also to shift the focus of scholarly publishing back to communication amongst scholars. For this reason, the editors describe MediaCommons as a "scholarly network" rather than an electronic journal or press.
MediaCommons is also an experiment in reimagining the processes of peer review in the humanities, opening up the process to public debate and discussion, and using both web-based metrics and commentary to create a process of "peer-to-peer review." The backbone of this system is a social networking system currently being built by the NYU Digital Library Technology Services.
MediaCommons has thus far published two commentable papers, one o
the future of scholarly publishing
and the other o
CommentPress
the WordPress
WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in PHP, hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported secure hypert ...
theme developed by the Institute for the Future of the Book that allows for paragraph-by-paragraph commenting on lengthy documents.
The co-coordinating editors of MediaCommons are Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Avi Santo, and the project draws on the support of an editorial board of scholars from across the digital humanities
Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanities, as well as the analy ...
.MediaCommons » Founding editors
/ref>
External links
MediaCommons
Institute for the Future of the Book
Article on MediaCommons on Inside Higher Education
Article on MediaCommons on ZDNet
Article on MediaCommons on AcademicCommons
References
{{Reflist
Academic publishing
Electronic publishing