Chapter•4
Open Access in the Humanities
開放近用在人文學中
Even though dealing with electronic publication is now a normal part of historians’ or literary scholars’ teaching and research work, the debate on Open Access in the humanities has not met with much response so far. Unlike in the STM disciplines (science, technology and medicine), only a few representatives of the humanities know in detail what Open Access means, let alone comply with the call to archive texts on university servers or discipline-specific repositories. The current attitude towards electronic forms of publication is still predominantly passive. There are a variety of reasons for this.
儘管處理電子出版品在歷史或文學學者的教授和搜尋工作是一個很正常普通的部份,有關開放近用對於人文方面的爭議現階段還未得到相當的重視。不像STM知識領域學科(STM:科學科技醫學),只有少數代表性人物了解非常細節到底開放近用的意義為何;更別說遵守把文獻傳到共同的伺服器或特別訓練過之文獻儲藏所的要求。目前對於電子形式的出版品大多數仍是被動的,是有很多原因造成的。
Often it is simply due to ignorance regarding the creation and stability of digital publications. It seems that there is a widespread, albeit false, notion that electronic publishing requires such a high degree of personal data-processing skills that a layperson is not capable of handling it.
常常只是因為對於數位出版品的創造力和穩定性的無知。看來似乎是普遍的,儘管有誤,觀念即電子出版品需要具備程度非常高的個人資料處理技術那是一個門外漢沒有能力來勝任的
Another presumption frequently cited is that electronic publications are per se transient and peripheral since their long-term archiving can not be guaranteed.
另一個經常被引述的推論則指出,電子出版品本質上是倏忽即逝以及次要的,因為他們長期歸檔的想法不能得到保證。
A connected argument often used is that large and important expert contributions can naturally only be presented in books: ‘What are we supposed to do? Read
Hegel on our computer screens? That’s out of the question!’
一個連續性的議題經常被討論的是有關重大和重要的專家貢獻文獻,只會出現在書中,「那我們應該怎麼做呢?」、「在電腦螢幕上讀德國哲學家黑格爾的著作嗎?那是不可能的!」
The fact that such statements combine two completely unrelated issues, i.e. the question of the medium’s material form and the question of the quality of scholarly texts, is treated as irrelevant.
事實上,這樣的陳述結合了兩種完全不相關的議題。也就是媒介傳播的物質型式問題和學術性文件品質的問題是完全視為不相關的。
The final worry cited by scholars in the humanities is that if they were to participate in the ‘fun culture’ of the Internet, they would run the risk of losing respectability amongst their peers in the field.
最後藉由人文學科教授被提出的令人憂心的原因,是如果他們參與像網際網路這樣 ”有趣的文化”,他們是在冒著可能失去名聲和在此領域中他們的地位身分的風險。
Notwithstanding all these still existing reservations, electronic publications have been able to gain a foothold in the humanities over the past few years. This is true for example regarding the online review journals created in the past 10 years, which have become a permanent fixture of expert discussions, even though the ‘im portant monographs’ continue to be the main form of publication in history and literary studies.
盡管如此,全部這些仍然存在的預定的電子出版品已經有能力取得一個立足點在人文學領域中,在過去的這幾年中。這是如實的,舉例來說,有關於創立線上的期刊評介,在過去的十年之中,這項建立成為一個永久的專家評介固定裝置;即使重要的專題文章,繼續成為出版品主要的形式,在歷史和人文學科的研究當中。
Besides the quality of their book reviews, online review instruments such as sehepunkte (www. sehepunkte.de), which publishes approximately 100 reviews from the fields of history and art history, or the review service of the Berlin mailinglist H Soz u Kult (
http://hsozkult.geschichte. hu-berlin.de/) have successfully established themselves in their field, a main reason being that they can react faster to new publications than printed academic journals.
除了其書刊評論的品質,線上工具例如: sehepunkte(網址:www.sehepunkte.de),它發行了將近100種評介形式,關於歷史和藝術史,亦或是書刊評介服務系統,在柏林郵寄名錄 H Soz Kult(
http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/),已成功的建立他們的系統於其領域,這是他們可以比印刷學術期刊更快速的對新出版品做出反應的一個主要原因。
Without the support of large funding organisations
such as the DFG (German Research Foundation) or ministries, Open Access services in the humanities would be inconceivable.
若沒有像DFG(德國研究基金會),這類大組織的基金會或神職人員的支持,人文學方面的開放近用服務會是難以想像的。
Thus, thanks to the North-Rhine Westphalian initiative ‘Digital Peer Publishing’(55), 10 online journals in different fields of expertise have been created since 2004, including zeitenblicke (www.zeitenblicke.de), a history and art-history online journal with a wide readership addressing a specific research focus in every edition.
因此,幸虧有北萊茵河威斯特伐利亞體系”數位出版同行”, 從2004年起,10種不同領域的線上期刊被創建,包括zeitenblicke(這是一個歷史人文線上期刊開放近用網站,其網址為
www.zeitenblicke.de)這是一個擁有廣大閱讀群眾的歷史和藝術史學的期刊位址,並在每一個版本做具體的重點研究。
An important and forward-looking factor for the dissemination of the concept of Open Access is doubtless the commitment of learned societies: unlike those societies that pay relatively noncommittal lip-service to Open Access, the German Historians’ Association (Verband der Historiker und Historikerinnen Deutschlands, VHD) set up a subcommittee for the area of ‘electronic publications and specialist information’ at the historians’ annual congress in Constance in September 2006.
一個對於開放近用的概念上的散布傳播很重要且前瞻性的要素,無疑的就是這些學術性的學會:不像這些學會對於開放近用付出相當程度含糊又假殷勤,德國歷史學家學會(VHD),在2006年九月康斯坦絲歷史學家的國會年鑑中,為電子出版品領域和專家訊息設立一個小組委員會。
The subcommittee has the mandate to develop strategies to strengthen integration of the new forms of publication into their field of studies.
This is a central concern, particularly with regard to the next generation of academics, who will definitely benefit from the Internet’s multiplying effect, since every manuscript reproduced electronically by definition has a greater visibility than an article published in little-read journals that may seem somewhat old-fashioned. In the long term, even the humanities will not be able to escape the triumphal march of the new informal forms of communication or p ublishing known as ‘blogs’ or ‘wikis’, which include experiments with collaborative authorship.
小組委員會有授權令可用來發展,在他們的學習領域加強整合新形式出版品之策略。
這是最主要的擔憂,尤其是關於到下個世紀的學術教育;從網際網路的倍增效益來看這是肯定會有益的,自從每個手抄本都被電子化的再製造,按照定義來說,比稍微舊式將文章出版在很少被讀的期刊內的方法有更好的可見度。
從長遠來看,即便是人文學科,也將不可能可以避免成功的前進到,使不一樣的文件關於傳遞或出版;像知名的如'部落格'或者是'wikis'(WIKIS為教育提供獨特的合作機會。自由地結合容易接近的信息,迅速反饋、被簡化的HTML經由多位編輯, wikis迅速地被採取作為修建知識一個創新方式。) 這些都包含了嘗試合作的著述。