τeκτoniκa, a journal for an open future

<p>τeκτoniκa is an up-coming community-led diamond open access (DOA) journal, which aims to publish high-quality research in structural geology and tectonics. It is a grass-roots community-driven initiative that relies on the involvement of Earth Scientists from around the globe; that together represent the wide and diverse spectrum of the structural geology and tectonics community. </p><p>Beyond the obvious objective of publishing novel research on structural geology and tectonics, it is intended to offer an alternative to traditional publishing models, which hide scholarly work behind exclusive and expensive paywalls. τeκτoniκa is a new addition to the growing set of DOA journals that have appeared in recent years. Along with preprint platforms, data and software repositories, it is part of an expanding movement within academia focused on breaking the barriers inherited from the pre-internet publishing era, to ensure free and open access to knowledge.</p><p>This contribution aims to showcase the value of this ambitious project as well as our vision for how DOA journals in general (and Tektonika in particular) might shape the future of geoscience publishing.</p>

Romani literature and its digital forms

Since the late 1990s and particularly after 2000, Romani literature has been characterized in part by the influence of international and global developments within the Romani movement as well as the growth of digital technologies and the internet. Romani publications are going digital in different formats, including the digitization of public domain materials, e-books, audiobooks, internet publishing and social media publishing. This article discusses how digital technologies have been incorporated in Romani literature production and proposes a typology of the digital forms of Romani literature. It also provides an analysis of the issues and challenges that are observed in Romani digital publishing, some of which are specifically related to this type of publishing, while others apply to Romani literature in general.

The Future of Academic Journals in a COVID-19 World

Many academics are critical of the current publishing system, but it is difficult to create a better alternative. This review relates to the Sciences and Social Sciences, and discusses the primary purpose of academic journals as providing a seal of approval for perceived quality, impact, significance, and importance. The key issues considered include the role of anonymous refereeing, continuous rather than discrete frequency of publications, avoidance of time wasting, and seeking adventure. Here we give recommendations about the organization of journal articles, the roles of associate editors and referees, measuring the time frame for refereeing submitted articles in days and weeks rather than months and years, encouraging open access internet publishing, emphasizing the continuity of publishing online, academic publishing as a continuous dynamic process, and how to improve research after publication. Citations and functions thereof, such as the journal impact factor and h-index, are the benchmark for evaluating the importance and impact of academic journals and published articles. Even in the very top journals, a high proportion of published articles are never cited, not even by the authors themselves. Top journal publications do not guarantee that published articles will make significant contributions, or that they will ever be highly cited. The COVID-19 world should encourage academics worldwide not only to rethink academic teaching, but also to re-evaluate key issues associated with academic journal publishing in the future.

Higher education, impact, and the Internet: Publishing, politics, and performativity

This paper considers how and why scholarly publishing has changed over the last two decades. It discusses the role of the Internet in overcoming earlier barriers to the rapid circulation of ideas and in opening up new forms of academic communication. While we live in a world increasingly dominated by images, the written word remains vital to academic life, and more published scholarly material is being produced than ever before. The paper argues that the Internet provides only part of the explanation for this growth in the volume of written material; another key contributing factor is the use of performance-based research funding schemes in assessing scholarly work. Such schemes can exert a powerful influence over researchers, changing their views of themselves and the reasons for undertaking their activities. With their tendency to encourage the relentless, machine-like production and measurement of outputs, they can be dehumanizing. Of even greater concern, however, is the possibility of systems based entirely on metrics, ‘impact’, and revenue generation. The paper critiques these trends, makes a case for the continuing value of peer review, and comments briefly on the subversive potential of the Internet in resisting the dehumanization of scholarly work.

The Rise and Fall of the Ŭnhasu Orchestra

The Ŭnhasu Orchestra was a major North Korean ensemble in 2009–2013. It was established by Kim Jong Il (Kim Chŏng’il, 김정일) and was composed of young musicians and singers of both genders, several of them having studied in foreign higher educational institutions in countries like Austria, Italy, Russia and China. Its members represented the core class of the North Korean society. It was ostensibly meant to display the high quality of North Korean art and engage at this level also in international cultural diplomacy, both in terms of physical visits, and in terms of DVD and internet publishing. In addition to domestic concerts, the Ŭnhasu Orchestra performed with visiting Russian artists, and gave a concert in Paris in 2012. The Ŭnhasu Orchestra exemplifies also the problems with regime transition in North Korea. It was so closely tied with the Kim Jong Il regime that the change at the end of 2011 to the Kim Jong Un (Kim Chŏng’un, 김정은) regime did not proceed altogether smoothly. In August 2013 it was disbanded rather abruptly, causing an international uproar, and signalling the beginning of a wave of other purges leading up to the highest leadership levels. The article attempts to shed light on the nature of the Orchestra as a North Korean cultural phenomenon and the reasons for its sudden ending, trying to dispel some of the disinformation surrounding the event.

Framing of National Image in a Climate of Socio-Political Uncertainty

The climate ripple of socio-political relations between countries can be seen to directly influence trading and international business relations. Discourse within the socio-political realms reflects in discourse within the economic realms. A common channel through which such perspectives are mediated between the political realms, corporate relations, and public opinion is the news media, both traditional and new, such as social media and Internet publishing. This chapter examines and compares how major business newspapers in Sweden, Dagens Industry (DI), and two business newspapers in Russia, Kommersant (Ъ-Газета - Коммерсантъ) and RBC (РБК) represent Sweden's national image between 2014-2015, a period of uncertain socio-political relations between Russia and the Nordic Eurasian states, in particular, Sweden, in the process of the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014.

Digitization, Internet publishing and the revival of scholarly monographs: An empirical study in India

This research shows the growing utility of internet-based digital models in reviving the crisis-stricken traditional print monograph publishing. The rising prices of scientific journals in the past three decades forced academic and research libraries to resort to cutbacks on monograph budgets. The declining sales to libraries and rising production costs led to a significant drop in global demand for print monographs, rendering monograph publishing financially unattractive. Combining the flexibility of digitized content with the global reach of the Internet, three emerging digital models — print on demand, bundled e-books, and e-consortia — are beginning to revamp the monograph publishing business.