Blog Post #2: Dana

I'd be out of my mind and living under a rock if I didn't agree with everyone and their mom that the future of peer review in the humanities depends on the abyss that is online publication. However, like Mike, I think the mechanism of online publishing deserves deeper consideration and criticism. For instance, Dalton's article addresses the issue of establishing quality assurance for the millions of circulating journals out there. To add to the resources given in Module 2 (e.g. evaluating Web Sites on Olin & Uris) the Ulrich and MLA sites do serve as an excellent way to sort through the credibility mess. However, access to these sites and to the online journals themselves is not available to every scholar. Angus Phillips brings up the overlooked point that internet access isn't available everywhere and that second and third world country scholars are set at a disadvantage in attaining these "preferential" resources. Regardless of whether you have high speed internet access or not, the trend towards online scholarship is inevitable.

I suppose I participate in an invisible college, which frankly is really just a silly way to say that I have mastered basic social skills. I gather scholarship relevant to my field by shamelessly trolling the internet, though I give equal weight to my Professor's suggestions. I do click around on Scholar and find myself forever indebted to links instructor's will post on a whim. As for putting information out there, I tend to discuss my interests (academic or benign) via social networking sites if not word of mouth. I use Twitter, Google+, and Facebook as a means for conveying my interests, and every once in awhile someone finds it useful.