Epilogue to “Questioning Life and Cognition” by John Stewart

In 2012, John Stewart contributed a book manuscript entitled “ Questioning Life and Cognition: Some Foundational Issues in the Paradigm of Enaction” to the Enaction Series in Online Collaborative Publishing, edited by Olivier Gapenne and Bruno Bachimont. Along with Mattéo Mossio, I was invited by Olivier to serve as a glossator of this text. The purpose was to thereby continue our long and fruitful dialogues with John that began when we were both students. I took advantage of the opportunity to also express my gratitude to John for his participation in that formative stage of my personal academic journey. My reflections were included as an epilogue to his book. In memoriam, the epilogue is reproduced in this report unchanged. I will always be grateful to John for making the research community of enaction feel like family to me and for helping me recognize that there is a place for my diverse interests in the continued pursuit of an academic career.

Authors, peer reviewers, and readers: What is expected from each player in collaborative publishing?

Scholarly publishing is in a crisis, with the many stakeholders complaining about different aspects of the system. Authors want fast publication times, high visibility and publications in high-impact journals. Readers want freely accessible, high-quality articles. Peer reviewers want recognition for the work they perform to ensure the quality of the published articles. However, authors, peer reviewers, and readers are three different roles played by the same group of individuals, the users of the scholarly publishing system—and this system could work based on a collaborative publishing principle where “nobody pays, and nobody gets paid”.

The Unparalleled Growth of COVID-19 Publications (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED The global pandemic of COVID-19 has generated an unprecedented number of research papers from clinicians and scientists worldwide. We searched PubMed for articles on coronaviruses from 1970 to June 2020. Surges of publications occurred in 2003 from SARS and, again in 2012 from MERS. Although the name COVID-19, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was only announced by WHO in February 2020, the number of publications has already exceeded 16000 by June this year. China and the US lead in publications, but a significant number also come from countries hardest hit by the illness. International collaborative publishing is significant. Since these publications are generally free to access worldwide, it provides a rich evidence base for clinicians and scientists combatting the COVID-19 pandemic.

From Bubbles to Foam, A Nomadic Interpretation of Collaborative Publishing: A Review of Jorge Lucero and Colleagues’ Article in Art Education

This review is a bricolage of nomadic encounters with Jorge Lucero and colleagues’ (2016) article on ways to engage with collaborative publishing. Lucero presents a Facebook discussion amongst practitioners denouncing the limited power of practitioners in shaping academic discourse. It shows how social media can serve as a platform for inviting the practitioner’s voice into research. The authors illustrate that by using Facebook, practitioners’ unfamiliarity and discomfort with academic standards can be bypassed. It demonstrates metalogue as a conceptual form of writing that disrupts the structure of conversations and challenges the authorial researchers’ voices. A critical note, however, is whether it is beneficial in the long term to consider the academic and social media parts as separate accounts. We argue that collaborative publishing requires collaborative research and writing in the first place. In response to the article, we started a WhatsApp conversation. This enabled us to reflect on the content of the article and experience the use of social media as a collaborative writing method ourselves.

Consumer cultural studies

This collaborative publishing project was built following those trends; it embraced the participation of diverse international authors, whose perception, rationale and research development helped signify the interest and need for an in-depth approach in consumer cultural studies to provide perspectives to tackle the market’s influence over popular culture, its diverse identity resources and intersections between influential analytical categories, such as surroundings, organizations and circulation and distribution of tangible and intangible products

Benchmarking publication metrics for Indian business researchers

Purpose There is no particularly efficient way to measure research output, but effectual assessment of research output is necessary to motivate and encourage researchers to enhance their research performance and disseminate knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the exacerbating pressure on Indian academics to deliver incessantly in terms of research output and identify an agreeable way to increase research output. The metric explores trends in management publications by Indian academics and presents an overview of collaborative practices by Indian management researchers that could shine a light on the trends of collaborative publishing future. Design/methodology/approach The study focuses on publications in the area of Business and Management. Scopus was used with advanced filters to draw relevant research papers. Data were then sorted and filtered on the basis of quality determined through Australian Business Deans Council rankings and diverse bibliometric information to understand the pattern of research output of Indian academics. Findings The research found that the rate of collaboration with researchers from the home country is low for top rated publications. Majority of publications were listed in Scopus indexed journals, whereas a handful featured in A and A* journals. A and A* journals were predominantly co-authored with academics from universities outside the country. Tradeoff was achieved by majority of authors by getting published in B, followed by C category journals to achieve research outputs. Research limitations/implications The study is limited to publications in the area of Business and Management and may be extended to other disciplines such as economics, engineering, law, medical sciences, etc., to understand publishing trends at universities in the country. The study can also be conducted in understanding a similar dilemma with academics at other countries that are evolving in research culture. Practical implications The study would help management researchers to dig deep into the root cause and understand why and how collaborations within and outside the country impact the quality of publications. The results would further encourage ranking agencies to award suitable grades to colleges that promote collaboration within the country as well as international collaboration. The study also conducts a benchmarking exercise of the institutions in the country that would be useful for researchers, journals and colleges. Originality/value While earlier studies have highlighted the importance of foreign collaborations in academic publishing, there are a handful of studies that have focused on the role of collaboration within the home country. The practice of Indian authors collaborating with Indian counterparts at other universities would help understand the expertise of researchers at different universities and encourage the collaboration process and quality of publications in the country.

Digital Theoria, Poiesis, and Praxis: Activating Humanities Research and Communication through Open Social Scholarship Platform Design

Background: Scholarly communication has not experienced the kinds of digital enhancements enjoyed by researchers. The continuing domination of journals and monographs as primary venues of professional exchange and validation signifies lingering habits of critical perception, but also an opportunity to imagine and implement new collaborative publishing environments, models, and platforms. Analysis: Examples of innovative projects bottlenecked by traditional reporting methods illustrate the need for such transformative practices.Conclusion and implications: Developing flexible digital environments to establish open social scholarship as the default mode of critical inquiry and reporting is essential to the digital transformation of scholarly communication.