Publishing and Information

Eve, Martin Paul (2019) Publishing and Information. In: Phillips, Angus and Bhaskar, Michael (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Publishing Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (In Press)

Abstract

Digital artefacts take a variety of novel forms. Indeed, it is frequently suggested that one of the most exciting possibilities for publishing in the era of the internet is the ability to create and disseminate radical new forms of work that it simply was impossible to create in the time of print. These range from colossal datasets through to computer programs and interactive aural texts. However, these new forms of information require new architectures, financial models, and labour structures of publishing in order to filter, frame, amplify, and preserve such works. Current commentators, with a utopian naivety, often overlook the fact that existing infrastructures and business models are inadequate for the publication of work that does not attempt just to replicate paper-based structures in a digital world. In this chapter, I outline the current state of play, beginning with overviews of digital objects and their non-rivalrous nature, before moving to the challenges that publishing faces in disseminating non-traditional information structures. I here argue that the economics of digital dissemination often occlude our thinking about necessary labour practices in an immaterial information space. I also set out the preservation challenges for such material, noting that the technological knowledge at libraries and publishers is not currently at a state where such material can be adequately preserved.

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