Impact of Social Sciences – Of conspiracies and frontiers: the scandal of open access publishing

"Our October book, The History Manifesto, reached broad audiences. It was a first for academic history to follow in the trails long ago paved by Radiohead: we put the book online for free; we started a twitter hashtag; we invited the public in, and when they tweeted at us, we read, and sometimes tweeted back. But open access has new rules, and the rules keep one busy. Somewhere in the midst of watching the commentary and making revisions, we fell afoul of some of our readers, when we accepted their suggestions and updated our text accordingly. I believe that we (and the Press) made a mistake in February by releasing a new edition of The History Manifesto without announcing that a revised manuscript was available. There was a new edition of The History Manifesto, in two parts. A revised version of Figure 2 came out on November 20, 2014. Ten lines of tightened prose and five revised footnotes came out on February 5, 2015. Some readers took this failure to announce a revised edition as evidence of the intent to deceive. It’s important to differentiate, however, between an intentional conspiracy to sabotage one’s critics and the active, ongoing, evolving task of experimenting with a new format of publishing. We had no desire to lead our readers astray, nor to cover up the ongoing debate, when we issued a revised edition. Far from it, we believed that we were living into a commitment to bringing new, online, open-access forms of publishing into the heart of scholarship. Publishing on the internet opens up the possibility of an ongoing process of revision that is new to publishers, writers, and readers in the academy. I believe that our experience is an exemplary moment for the institution as a whole to learn from, and to benefit from, the lively public engagement that the new frontier of open-access publishing makes possible.  The concession that we should have announced the 'revised manuscript' has been backed up by action, a collective action undertaken not only by us the authors but also by the whole host of staff at Cambridge University Press. On Monday March 30, a revised website came out that went go beyond merely remarking a 'manuscript of record' in the way suggested to us in private correspondence by Peter Mandler – that Cambridge University Press should announce that there has been a revision posted. On March 30, we listed all of the revisions in detail – the tightened lines of prose, the footnotes, and the altered illustration will are available on the front page, where a document describes them exactly as they were given to the typesetter. Those who select 'download' on The History Manifestowebsite now have the opportunity to choose between an 'original edition' or a 'revised edition.' The process is meant to be as transparent as we, the Cambridge University Press editors and designers, could possibly make it ..."