Our recently-concluded social justice topic series “Scholarly Communication in the Digital Era for the Public Good” is now available as an eBook.

Scholarly Communication in the Digital Era for the Public Good

As we’ve done before with “Imagining New York City After Stop-and-Frisk” and “From Punishment to Public Health,” we curated a topic series – blog posts and multimedia content, like podcasts, around a specific topic – then compiled them into an ebook. In each one, we feature guests and highlight work here across traditional silos of academia, activism and journalism and media.

In the 20th century, scholars communicated within relatively small fields of other experts and did so primarily through monographs and peer-reviewed journal articles. Those works of scholarship were discoverable because they were indexed and sorted into card catalogs and bound reference manuals.

These analog forms of scholarly communication are now joined by new modes of digital expression that augment and occasionally supplant earlier forms.  In this topic series, we explore changes in the modes and emphases of scholarly communication, examining the shift from book- and journal-centric academic publishing to open access hybrids and alternatives, including film and video.

We also explore the ways that social media can serve scholars to connect their work with wider audiences, including non-academic readers, activists, journalists and engaged citizens. We examine scholars’ responsibilities to shape and reflect public understandings, and what academics do to contribute fully to efforts to enhance the public good.

We encourage you to read, re-use, re-mix and share this eBook with fellow scholars, activists, journalists, and citizens.  If you’d like to reach out, you can find us on Twitter @JustPublics365, Facebook or email us directly at justpublics365@gmail.com.