Introducing Inventio
Inventio, a new section of Kairos publishing one webtext each year, invites authors to explore and showcase the process of creating new media scholarship.
Inventio focuses on the decisions, contexts, and contributions that have constituted a particular webtext. As we envision it, Inventio authors will be able to include, alongside or integrated with their finished webtexts, materials that help them articulate how and why their work came into being.
For some authors, this will mean focusing on the editorial process that happens behind the scenes at Kairos: the feedback from reviewers and editors that, for the past 11 years, has helped Kairos authors shape their work. For other authors, Inventio will provide a forum for discussing production choices that have gone on behind the scenes, in essence allowing authors to guide the interpretation of their work by highlighting the hows and whys of its creation.
In addition to showcasing sophisticated and successful webtexts, then, Inventio aims to help readers understand the creation of new media scholarship, both in individual acts of production and in the collaborative process of publication.
Indeed, the overall goal of Inventio--which is also a key goal of Kairos--is to advance the composition and appreciation of smart, insightful, scholarly webtexts. We want to work with researchers in our field as they use multimodal design and new media technologies to present their arguments effectively, expand the application of production technologies, and teach and inspire others.
Publishing New Media Scholarship
Anyone who has ever composed, thought about composing, or asked students to compose a multimedia piece knows that there are many decisions to be made along the way: how to design the interface, what interactive options to offer readers, what modes to include, how to structure navigation. These kinds of decisions are not typically associated with academic writing, and yet they are all part of digital scholarship and contribute to its meaning.
Moreover, these decisions are not made in isolation. Kairos' editors and reviewers offer substantial feedback and guidance on submissions, with a unique, three-tiered peer reviewing process. As they make decisions about content, structure, design, and other issues, authors draw on the expertise of Kairos' section editors and editorial board, who are leading researchers in digital scholarship, rhetoric, pedagogy, and technology.
Writing for Inventio, then, an author might decide to include correspondence with editors and reviewers alongside the final webtext in order to make explicit the exchange of ideas that went on behind the scenes, as the webtext was shaped and revised for publication in Kairos. Inventio would show readers the development of a webtext from a relatively early stage through the mentoring and assistance of editors and reviewers.
Producing New Media Scholarship
Inventio authors can also choose to bring us into their production studios, describing not just the "how" of their digital production work, but the important "why" of the rhetoric behind these production choices, including the software they decide to use, visual and interface design choices, uses of different kinds of media elements (text, sound, image, video).
The material left on the cutting room floor, for example, might also make its way into an Inventio webtext: design concepts and choices that were abandoned (but that perhaps reappeared in another form in the webtext), alternate software, or even ideas and concepts that were interesting in their own right but that, rhetorically, did not serve the purposes of the final webtext.
In Inventio, authors can examine the reasoning behind their choices, the avenues they seek for help and inspiration, and the strategies they use to address particularly difficult and challenging design and production problems. In short, Inventio provides authors with a space for meta-commentary on their work.