The Internet Revolution in the Sciences and Humanities

The Internet Revolution in the Sciences and Humanities takes a new look at C.P. Snow's distinction between the two cultures, a distinction that provides the driving force for a book that contends that the Internet revolution has sown the seeds for transformative changes in both the sciences and the humanities. It is because of this common situation that the humanities can learn from the sciences, as well as the sciences from the humanities, in matters central to both: generating, evaluating, and communicating knowledge on the Internet. In a succession of chapters, the authors deal with the state of the art in web-based journal articles and books, web sites, peer review, and post-publication review. In the final chapter, they address the obstacles the academy and scientific organizations face in taking full advantage of the Internet: outmoded tenure and promotion procedures, the cost of open access, and restrictive patent and copyright law. They also argue that overcoming these obstacles does not require revolutionary institutional change. In their view, change must be incremental, making use of the powers and prerogatives scientific and academic organizations already have.

Table of Contents:
Table of Contents About the Companion Website Chapter 1: The Internet and the Two Cultures Ideal Types The Scientific Culture and Scientist as Ideal Type The Humanistic Culture and Humanist as Ideal Type The Sciences and Humanities Transformed The Book Itself The Audience Chapter 2: The Scientific Article: What's New Revolution or Evolution? A Survey of the Web Article Increasing Accessibility The Changing Nature of Authorship Coping with Complexity Increasing Inter- and Intra-textuality Including Reader Comments and Reader Statistics Enhancing Visualization Internet Visualization and the Science of Shape Birth of a Science of Shape The Mathematical Visualization of Shape Science of Shape and the Internet Conclusion Chapter 3: The Internet Humanities Essay: Seeing and Hearing Anew Historians See Anew Photographs as Historical Evidence Art as Historical Evidence Reinterpreting the Civil War: The Role of Visualization Meeting the Challenge of Urban History: A Multi-Media Los Angeles Re-imagining the Roman Forum: Vision as Hypothesis Musicians See and Hear Anew Film Scholars See Anew Conclusion Chapter 4: Archival Web Sites in the Humanities and Sciences Web Sites That Provide Resources for Scholarship Web Sites That Store Data for Scientific Research Web Sites That Store Scientific or Scholarly Papers Web Sites That Create Knowledge Through Volunteer Participation Web Sites That Codify Existing Knowledge Conclusion Chapter 5: Evaluation before Publication: Opening up Peer Review The Case for and against Peer Review Argument Theory and Peer Review Theory Application Open Internet Peer Review in the Sciences Open Internet Peer Review in the Humanities Peer Sourcing: The Wave of the Future? Conclusion Chapter 6: Evaluation after Publication: Setting the Record Straight Science Blogs What Science Blogs Reveal How Science Blogs Work Humanities Post-Peer Review Post-Publication Peer Review: The Article Post-Publication Peer Review: The Book Conclusion Chapter 7: Overcoming the Obstacles to Internet Exploitation The Opportunities Gated Access: The First Obstacle Current Tenure Rules: The Second Obstacle Digital Preservation: The Third Obstacle Patents and Copyright: The Fourth Obstacle Freedom of Information: The Fifth Obstacle A Path Forward

About the Author :
Alan G. Gross work is firmly grounded in the humanities, having been trained as a Shakespeare scholar at Princeton under Gerald Eades Bentley. In a long career, he has been an English professor at Wayne State, a Dean at Purdue-Calumet, and professor of Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota. In the last quarter-century, he has written and co-written a steady stream of major-press books on academic communication. Joseph E. Harmon works as a science writer, editor, and manager at Argonne National Laboratory. He is the coauthor with Alan Gross of Communicating Science: The Scientific Article from the 17th Century to the Present, The Scientific Literature: A Guided Tour, The Craft of Scientific Communication, and Science from Sight to Insight: How Scientists Illustrate Meaning.

Review :
"The Internet Revolution in the Sciences and Humanities presents a broadly well-conceived comparison between two traditions of academic enquiry. The book is at its strongest when it lays out the ways in which the major asymmetries between how these two fields differ from one another in their use of the Internet." -- Internet Histories "While it is true that readers must turn to the companion websiteto see in action some of the Internet features the authors describe, the fact that readers can follow and appreciate the authors thesis without having recourse to the website shows why the traditional print monograph is a durable, serviceable, and often sufficient vehicle for scholarship, even when that scholarship makes a compelling case for its reinvention." -- Journal of Scholarly Publishing "Gross and Harmon s The Internet Revolution in the Sciences and the Humanities is not a time-stamped review of content on the Internet, which would be out of date within a month of publication. Instead, it is a rich assessment of what the Internet has and, more importantly, can achieve in the communication and evaluation of scholarly knowledge." -- Metascience