Sarah Evans CCR:732 Patrick Berry 18 April 2013 Online Publishing and the Benefits of Transparency Leveraging the

affordances of the internet to improve the academic publishing process should only seem natural. However, I am both surprised and unsurprised that it has not become more popular. Though much published material is now available online such as in archives like Google Books, it remains that these items still took months, if not years to publish and become available to circulate. I contend that a freer, more rapid publishing process wherein sophisticated drafts or works in progress could become available may enhance the flow of knowledge coming from academia and encourage new writers to play a larger part in the information creation economy. Online publishing, practiced in this way, affords both transparency and malleability that benefits both scholars and the average reader/writer (new and seasoned). Throughout the semester weve focused on the importance of process to creating meaningful writing. Kathleen Fitzpatricks article notes a useful, but underutilized affordance of digital publishing: by enabling an author to continue working on a text even after its publicationby making the history of changes to that text available, the process of an arguments growth and change could become part of the text itself (4). When processes become available for public view, beginning writers can not only see the variety of approaches that writers use to achieve a final product (to garner ideas for what may work for themselves), but also gain the insight that published works were not

originally conceived of in their final form. Purdy and Walker echo this assertion: Scholars benefit from having multiple versions of their text saved for easy comparison; other researchers benefit by having a built-in repository of work to study (190). By publishing drafts that express promising and significant ideas and allowing authors to revise over time (while making previous versions available), we would not only enrich the book/article itself, but burgeoning writers. I remember being a young teen interested in poetry and not understanding why my poetry did not look or sound like Anne Sexton or Rita Doves. It took me years to realize that poetry (and all other writing for that matter) does not pour out of writers pens or keyboards finalized and in the exact form that it will take when published. The poems were heavily revised and commented on by reviewers and friends, yet I never saw that until much, much later when I sought their biographies. Though it seems nave, I really thought that great writers were just gifted, not excellent revisers with helpful reviewers as I know today (though having revisers does not negate giftedness, but rather enhances it). As a final thought, something I am particularly appreciative of is the pedagogic practices of game studies scholar Mark Chen. On his website he includes a page documenting all versions of his published article Communication, coordination, and camaraderie in World of Warcraft, including some comments by reviewers and even a presentation version of it. As he notes on the webpage: If you feel so inclined, you can check out the differences between all these versions... :) This is all in an effort to make academia more transparent, goddammit (Chen). I enjoyed being able to see the early versions of a paper from my own field of interest. Further, I find it encouraging that someone I respect in the field is performing transparent academia. It allows room for

writing that not only adds to our knowledge on a subject, but to our knowledge on what the writing process can look like.