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Kairos: The Next Ten Years

 

Cheryl E. Ball and Beth L. Hewett, Co-Editors
Douglas Eyman and James Inman, Senior Co-Editors

The Logging On column has traditionally been the place where the Kairos Editors comment on webtexts in the issue at hand as well as on important changes in our field. In this issue’s column, we want to continue the tradition of relaying to you not only what’s in this issue—a very special, celebratory 10th anniversary collection of webtexts for Kairos!—but also comment on some changes (both internal and external) that will affect the journal as it moves into its next 10 years of existence. Kairos has earned its place among scholarly journals for both its innovations and scholarship. Since its inception, Kairos has prided itself on publishing digital scholarship that takes advantage of the medium of the Web.

Our online status made the journal a natural alternative to print journals in that authors could publish hypertextual pieces that demonstrated the theory with which they taught. And one of the benefits that authors and readers (as well as staff members) saw in Kairos’ online nature is that the journal could take advantage of quicker publication cycles than print journals do, making scholarship that appeared herein more timely—a theme that obviously ties into the journal’s name. However, what the editors have come to understand as the journal has matured is that being able to publish quickly while also publishing excellent scholarship isn’t easy. And it isn’t necessarily in Kairos’ interest to keep the notion of quick publication (simply because of its online medium) at play. What readers may not realize is that it typically takes at least a year for a webtext to go through the publication process from submission to publication, and that’s if the text needs fairly little revision after the review process.

The timeliness of Kairos publications is complicated by the seemingly unscheduled nature of academic work and our geographically widely-dispersed staff (i.e., finding time to work together in producing the best journal possible), and it is just one of the many issues facing Kairos as it moves into the next decade of publication. When Beth and Cheryl moved into the editor positions this spring, we discussed with Senior Editors James Inman and Douglas Eyman what lay ahead for Kairos and how best to carry on the traditions of the journal given its replete history. The journal was founded to house cutting-edge, digital scholarship, a mission that invokes ideas of innovation, timeliness, and flexibility. We must continue that tradition, but there is also a need to examine what those ideals mean in relation to producing a credible journal valued by those outside of our field (narrowly including readers such as tenure committees and, more broadly, institutions that index and, thus, publicize the journal’s scholarship).

In many ways, this 10th anniversary marks the journal’s stability, which is both a wonderful and problematic place for Kairos to be. On the one hand, we’ve survived an incredibly long time in Web-years, having become a stable resource for our field. On the other hand, we might question whether the journal’s status—as, perhaps, an institution—will affect the kinds of scholarship we can continue to publish. Kairos has certainly matured, having grown from a graduate-student-produced and -reviewed journal to one whose staff and review board includes top names in the field (although, we are happy to say, the staff and review board still contain experienced junior and senior scholars). These changes certainly show the field’s evolution but they also complicate the journal’s ethos. Where once the journal had a necessary flavor of reactionary youthfulness, playfulness even (an ethos that many on staff and, we suspect readers, still rightly carry), we now find ourselves examining the journal’s ethos with certain expectations in mind. We are working to balance the mission of “pushing boundaries in academic publishing” and supporting “the voices of those too often marginalized in the academy” with the complicated and untimely procedures of publishing what has become a major journal in the field. This moment for Kairos, we believe, is a fine balance between beginnings and what-will-become, fun and scholarly value, flexibility and credibility; the last ten years has certainly been a process of revision as Kairos has searched for its place in the field. In this (unusually lengthy) Logging On column, readers will see the outcome of this history, revision, and balance.

We’re excited to announce some changes that will prepare the journal for a continued innovative and productive future. We’ll start with the fact that new editors are writing this column (with the help of the senior editors) and move to the journal-wide changes—including new sections and revised editorial review processes--changes that will affect the community that is Kairos readers, authors, and staff. We’ll finish with the specifics of this particular issue—the webtexts that celebrate our anniversary, one that places Kairos as the most longstanding online journal in our field. We don’t think it’s too soon to say: We’re proud of our success! And you, readers (who are also authors), have helped us reach that success. Thank you!

 

Overview

Kairos 11.1

Vol. 11 Iss. 1 Fall 2006