While we struggle to accommodate Web
2.0 and all of its implications, however, we are paying too little
attention to another reality of our time: that the traditional ways of
disseminating knowledge have grown well beyond our capacity to
assimilate information. There is scarcely a field of academic inquiry
that has not experienced massive growth in the past three decades. Few
scholars even attempt to stay current in their broad discipline; most
operate, sometimes in a near panic to keep up, in sub-disciplines, if
not sub-sub-disciplinary fields. Those in multi-disciplinary or
inter-disciplinary areas of inquiry face even more profound challenges.
When
I entered the academy in the mid-1970s, it was quite possible to keep
up with major developments in my sub-discipline of Canadian history.
Each book, even in a distant area of Canada’s past, was worth noting,
if not reading, and the handful of academic journals in the field were
easily accommodated. Now, the profound growth of scholarly output has
made it a formidable challenge to try to stay current, forcing many of
us to retreat into narrow fields of inquiry, in my case northern
Canadian and Aboriginal history.
Many academics have responded to
the challenges by being more focused and, ironically, by reading less
than in the past. After all, with professional rewards focused on
productivity rather than receptivity, many realize that additional
publications are more important career-wise than keeping up with the
journal literature and reading the latest academic books, save for
those germane to their current research. Now, of course, with online
material expanding exponentially, the task of staying current has
become that much more difficult.
But before we attribute the
intellectual explosion to the Internet and digitization, we need to
realize that the scale of academe has grown well past the point of
saturation. Consider not the material available through new
technologies, but focus instead on the old-knowledge systems: academic
journals, books and conferences. The proliferation of journals has
proven simply remarkable, providing numerous venues for scholarly
dissemination (and producing an unhappy debate about the list of
top-tier publications, impact factors, citation numbers and the like).
The list of scholarly books grows seemingly exponentially – although
the sales of these same volumes have been hit severely by declining
library budgets, soaring costs and a flooded market among penurious
academics.
And then there are the conferences. For those
academics with professional development funds at their disposal,
admittedly a more select group this year, there are dozens if not
hundreds of professional meetings. They range from tiny workshops to
national disciplinary sessions, from quiet retreats at vacation
hot-spots to cattle-call mega-conferences. The attractions are obvious:
a chance to network with academic colleagues, exposure to the brightest
minds in the field, an opportunity to try out new ideas, book fairs and
social time with like-minded thinkers.
There are brilliant
conferences, where stunning ideas are introduced and where academe is
at its very best. There are boondoggle conferences, which attract many
registrants, few attendees, and produce little of scholarly merit. Most
are in the former category and most scholars approach these events with
seriousness of purpose and professional commitment. But even here,
there are abundant signs that the scale of the academic operations has
vastly exceeded our individual and collective capacity to assimilate
and disseminate scholarly information.
Consider a major
sub-disciplinary meeting in political science meeting, held recently in
New York City. A junior colleague from my university attended and asked
for advice on picking the most appropriate sessions. The online program
was staggeringly large, running to more than 185 pages. The event
lasted for four days, with sessions running, at 1 hour and 45 minute
intervals, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Almost 50 sessions ran concurrently,
with an average of four presenters per session. With five time slots,
this meant that there were close to 250 sessions and some 1,000 papers
per day, or a total of 4,000 scholarly presentations. This was an
impressive conference. A quick review of the presenter lists revealed
the presence of top scholars in the field, with contributors coming
from around the world.
Intellectually, the conference offered a
wealth of opportunities. Paring the massive list of possibilities down
to a manageable selection proved extremely difficult, even with access
to a convenient online feature that produced a personalized program. An
initial run of preferred sessions revealed a minimum of three sessions
per time slot, making the final decision very difficult. By any
measure, this meeting had the potential to be a challenging and
impressive intellectual experience.
Of course, the execution
proved much different than the promise. The same math would suggest
that, with 4,000 paper-givers and perhaps another 1,000 others
attending, that there would be approximately 100 people at each session
(varying according to the speakers, topic and collective interest). The
sessions my colleague attended attracted small audiences, typically
around 20 people and sometimes many fewer. By the time that the chair’s
introduction and the commentator’s contributions were added to the
presentations, there was rarely time for more than a handful of
questions. The tightly packed schedule – only 15 minutes between
sessions – restricted opportunities for follow-on conversations. The
debate and exchange that one hopes for in academic sessions was
episodic rather than commonplace.
Given that this conference was
devoted to my colleague’s sub-discipline, it is not a stretch to
suggest than 50 percent of all of the papers related somehow to her
teaching, professional and research interests. So, back to the math
quickly. Assume that papers were collected from these selected
presentations – some 2,000 in total. It would take, realistically,
approximately one hour to do justice to each contribution. The time
frame is daunting. Two thousand hours represents the equivalent of 50
weeks of full-time reading, clearly an unachievable number. So, let’s
reduce this to a mere 10 percent of the papers, or 400 in total, and a
more “manageable” 10 weeks of full-time reading. Allow for some
speed-reading – half an hour per paper instead of an hour – and the
time frame is compressed to a mere five weeks of reading.
The
point is obvious, simple and telling. A scholar cannot begin to do
justice to the intellectual potential of an academic conference by
attending the event. In this instance, assuming full-time attendance
over four days (which would be an accomplishment given New York City’s
many fine attractions), my colleague could attend only 20 sessions and
hear only 80 papers – a full enough slate but representing only 2
percent of the fare on display at this intellectual buffet. Nor,
realistically, could one person ever collect and read more than a small
percentage of the total academic output from this one gathering. And
this is only one conference in one year, only a tiny drop of water in
the floodwaters of the contemporary academy.
So, in our haste to
prepare ourselves for Academe 2.0, let’s recognize that the old
analogue academe has already overwhelmed our capacity to gather, read
and assimilate the research, analysis and collected wisdom of our age.
Wading through hundreds of conference programs, scanning (thankfully
now electronically) thousands of journal indexes, and struggling with
hundreds of book catalogues – let alone finding the time to read all of
the relevant material -- has us already falling well short of staying
truly current.
There are those who argue that the proliferation
of scholarly output is a case of bad writing driving out good, and that
we should turn to the best journals and the best university presses as
gatekeepers for what truly matters. I am not in that camp, having
long-ago realized that insight and inspiration can come from many
quarters, that some of the big name venues are more conservative than
courageous intellectually, and that we need to let as many scholars as
possible find their voice.
But there is a fundamental problem
here that needs to be addressed. Look at this issue from the other
side. A significant number of articles, including many published in
small circulation periodicals, are never cited by anyone. Think, too,
of the conferences papers that fail to attract meaningful audiences,
the journals that have tiny circulations and very small readerships,
and the fact that most academic books are published in press runs of
under 1,000 copies, despite the growth in the number of academics and
university and college libraries. Put bluntly, we are researching
without having an impact, speaking without being heard and writing
without being read. Furthermore, our tenure and promotion procedures
reward publication more than they do awareness of the field, thus
pushing up conference attendance, and journal and book submissions.
There
may well be a convergence possible between Academe 1.0 and Academe 2.0.
New technologies certainly do find things faster and share them more
broadly. Digitized materials are readily assembled and moved from
producers to libraries to end-users. But there is a major impediment to
improvement in this regard: the capacity to read. No one has yet found
a system that will truly allow us to assimilate new research more
effectively. And so, we read indexes rather than journals, abstracts
rather than papers, review essays rather than books. Awash in a sea of
academic discourse and analysis, we look desperately for an
intellectual life-raft, all the while feverishly seeking to add to the
accumulated scholarly wisdom ourselves.
It is time to take a very
deep breath and to step well back from our current approach to academic
dissemination and publication. Consider that New York conference. Would
the discipline and the practitioners not have been better served if
there were three or four large concurrent sessions, each involving the
key and most innovative thinkers in their field, rather than a vast
proliferation of tiny sessions? But how many colleges and universities
will provide travel funds, or even partial support, only for scholars
who are giving a paper? And do we, in the world of Web 2.0, really need
to constantly add to the number of published – and sadly unread –
academic journals and books. Can we not elevate the scholarship of
synthesis and interpretation back to the highest rank of professional
inquiry, recognizing the remarkable talent needed to bring together in
a readily digestible form the accumulated insights of thousands of
scholars?
The irony in all of this is that it is academic career
and advancement requirements, more than faculty preferences, which are
driving the current pattern of academic dissemination. New doctorates,
eager for a place on the tenure track, work like crazy to get into the
right conferences and journals. Recently hired faculty know that tenure
rests on getting the right hits in the right journals and, maybe,
getting their dissertation published as a book. Tenured faculty know
that merit and final promotion – indeed, their personal standing in the
field – rests on continued and even accelerated publication output.
We
have collectively created the equivalent of an academic monsoon over
the past three decades, with no change in the forecast for the coming
years. Without a major reconsideration of how we share and use
information, how we keep up with the field, and how we recognize
academic accomplishment, we will continue to add to the floodwaters,
all the while spending less attention on whether or not anyone reads
our work, listens to our presentations, or appreciates our professional
contributions. Academe 2.0 offers tools to build more effective dikes
and even to regulate the flow. But we need to realize that the lakes at
the end of the bloated academic rivers – our faculty, researchers and
students – have finite capacity, in terms of time and ability to
assimilate information. Controlling the scholarly input is crucial to
ensuring that we actually learn from and about each other, and ensuring
that our academic work truly makes a difference.