New Genres for Scholarship

Abstract

Four Harvard and MIT scholars will open with remarks on new genres, after which we’ll open up for discussion within the panel and questions from the audience. The panelists represent the natural sciences, humanities, arts, and libraries. Pierre Bélanger is an Associate Professor of Urbanism, Landscape, and Ecology at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Robert Darnton is the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor of History and Harvard University Librarian, Emeritus. Jessica Polka is a Visiting Scholar at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. Suzanne Wones is the Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategies and Innovation at Harvard Library. Peter Suber will moderate. Peter is the Director of the Harvard Library Office for Scholarly Communication. We hope the discussion will stimulate imagination and new thinking on questions like these: • Why might we want new genres for scholarship? What are the potential benefits to authors and readers? What’s lacking in the current genres (primarily articles and books, but also datasets, databases, presentations, wikis, blogs, videos, podcasts...)? • What new genres are already emerging? What do they bring to research and scholarship? • What new genres do the panelists and audience participants use, recommend, or wish to see? • What are the obstacles to the emergence of new genres? • What tweaks would enable open-access repositories like DASH and Dataverse to accommodate new genres that they cannot currently accommodate?