Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy

Abstract

While much attention has been paid in recent years to the digital future of scholarship, and in particular to the technological and infrastructural development necessary to new publishing structures, there is a set of social, intellectual, and institutional changes that will be a precondition for any such technological development, as new publishing models promise substantive changes in the ways we write, the ways we publish, and the ways we review scholarly work. Faculty, technologists, librarians, and administrators will thus all need to understand the work of scholarship and its place within the university differently in order for any digital publishing future to become a viable reality.