Relaunch of the ISR blog

Since agreeing to relaunch the ISR blog I've been mulling over what to write, how to write it and who to write it for. When Willard McCarty made his first post in November of last year he reflected on what the ISR blog could be: “My guess is: an experiment to discover what the Editor of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews thinks about the journal as it is happening (thoughts mostly unknown, perhaps even to himself), and then whether these thoughts are of interest to readers” (see here).

Over the past few weeks I've been researching aspects of the history of letters and correspondence for an article that I'm writing for the forthcoming Digital Humanities in practice. Collections of essays such as Correspondence and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400-1700, edited by Francisco Bethencourt and Florike Egmond (Cambridge University Press: 2007), have given me some fascinating insights into the role of correspondence in early-modern Europe. In their introduction, Bethencourt and Egmond present a sketch of Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637). Known as the 'General Attorney' of the republic of letters, they write that he corresponded with more than 500 persons, among them “princes, popes, cardinals, … bishops, … ambassadors, magistrates, scholars, librarians, secretaries, artists, writers, scientists, pharmacists, jewelers, merchants and clergymen” (p.2)”. His interests encompassed scientific and cultural areas, including astronomy, perfumery, literature and music. He chose (it seems) not to publish any of the 10,000 letters that we know he wrote during his lifetime but “[h]e knew that his letters were simultaneously private and public, confidential and open: they could be exchanged and read aloud in small groups, a common practice in the republic of letters” (p.3-4).

This overview of Peiresc has raised many interesting questions that have helped me to probe my understanding of what the relaunched ISR blog could be. Like Peiresc's letters, can a blog be simultaneously public and private? Of course the ISR blog is freely accessible to all. But how can we encourage readers to post their comments, so that responses to blog posts that might otherwise have been made in private or in private conversation with colleagues might be made public? Who will read this blog and can we build a readership as diverse as that of Peiresc? One might naturally expect this blog's audience to comprise the same people as those who read ISR. Yet, it seems that in many disciplines blogging, and the use of other social media such as twitter, is not the most prevalent or conventional means of scholarly communication. How might this influence the profile and distribution of people who might read and react to this blog?

In order to explore all of these questions a little more I've decided that the first aim of this blog is to be reflective. I'm going to reflect on the role, take-up, implications and impact of blogging and social media in interdisciplinary research. I also intend to take advantage of the fact that a blog is not an official scholarly publication, and so here we will have more scope to explore issues that may be of interest to readers, but do not tend to be explored in the journal proper. I'll begin by blogging about my experience of being the book reviews editor of ISR for the past two years, try to give some advice to young scholars who are planning to write book reviews and try to give some advice to more established scholars about the kinds of reviews we especially like to publish in ISR.

Finally, I'd like to make room for other voices apart from my own. Though topics such as the intersection of social media and interdisciplinary research communication may seem emblematic of our age, I'd also like to look back at the history of ISR and those who have helped to shape it since its first issue in 1976. Likely topics will be readers' favourite articles or reviews, and perhaps short pieces that analyse how the treatment of particular topics has changed in ISR over the past years (thanks to Anne Welsh for this idea). If you would like to contribute a piece to the blog please do let me know and please do post comments, suggestions and reactions to this initial plan of work!