Logging On

Cheryl Ball, Editor

In This Issue

In this special issue of Kairos, we are pleased to present a guest-edited issue by Karen Lunsford, John Logie, and TyAnna Herrington on Ownership, Authorship, and Copyright, which follows in some respects the 1998 special issue Kairos published on Copyright, Plagiarism, and Intellectual Property. The guest editors spend significant time unpacking this issue, reflecting on the previous scholarship in this area in digital writing studies, and introducing the webtexts we publish here today. So we point readers toward their CoverWeb, which includes a copyleft manifesto and a memorial to TyAnna Herrington, who sadly passed away while this special issue was being put together. This issue stands as a representation of the foundational work Ty gave this field in terms of how copyright law intersected with digital writing studies.

Ty served on the editorial board of this journal since before I came on board in 2001, and Doug recalls her having been involved with the journal from its inception in 1996. I was always grateful to work with her on editorial reviews, because of her thoughtfulness and care in responding to authors; she wanted to make sure her responses helped mentored authors into producing their best possible work. Her co-authors in this special issue, Timothy R. Amidon, Les Hutchinson, & Jessica Reyman also mention this mentorship in their IP Cast discussion that memorializes her. Please make sure to check out the Coverweb linked above for an introduction to the rest of this very special issue.

Comings and Goings and Returnings

We mentioned in the previous issue's Logging On column some of the editorial staff changes that have taken place across multiple sections of the journal in the last year. We are excited to announce how we decided to move ahead in filling those roles, with many familiar faces from other sections and roles at the journal! We had a plethora of excellent internal candidates for the roles of Topoi and Praxis Section Editors, and we hesitated to slot folks into any one particular section for all the crossover reasons mentioned in the previous column. So we are pleased to announce a new editorial collective that merges the editorial functions of the Topoi and Praxis sections while retaining each section's distinct foci. Serving as our new section editors for Praxis and Topoi, we are happy to welcome Tim Amidon (previously an associate editor), Chris Andrews (previously Reviews editor), Erin Bahl (previously an assistant editor), and Elizabeth Fleitz (previously Reviews editor), who join Elkie Burnside, who has been Praxis editor for a few years now. Work that gets routed through the kairosrtp email address, with the continued assistance of Managing Editor Michael Faris, will be divvied between the editorial collective, assigned a lead and secondary editor, and tracked into the appropriate section for review. We are eager to see how this new collective model works out, as we've seen success with it in other digital journals including Hybrid Pedagogy and Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy.

With the change-up of section editors moving around, we also needed to hire two new Reviews editors, and we are still taking applications for that position. We are also in the process of hiring one additional Interviews editor, who will join an alum staff member returning to us in a new role, Monica Jacobe. Monica had served as an assistant editor and, later, as Communications Editor for the journal in the mid-2000s to early-2010s. We are thrilled to see her back with the Kairos family as an Interviews editor! In addition to these changes and moves in staff positions, we welcome Rick Wysocki (previously an associate editor) who is now serving as Disputatio co-editor with Moe Folk.

And the changes keep coming! We couldn't be more pleased to welcome Vy Manivannan as Communications Co-Editor with Howard Fooksman. Vy's strong social media presence and advocacy for ethical practices in that arena are a necessary component for Kairos to continue excelling at in our online communication practices. We look forward to her strong voice in our social media streams. We are onboarding all of these editors now, so be a little patient with us as we begin our training and communication process over the next few months. It is exciting times!

With change also comes regret. We are sad to see Hilarie Ashton step down from her role as assistant editor for Kairos to pursue several scholarly projects she has in the works. Hilarie has been with the journal for several years, hired as one of the initial cohorts to copy-edit the PraxisWiki section and work on other publishing projects, including webtext production, as Kairos needed. We are happy to see her thrive at her work in New York, and wish her all the best in her career! And with all these changes, we will need to be hiring new assistant editors in the coming months. Stay tuned for that job ad, which will be circulated on social media.

Other News of Note

In collaboration with some other organizations and entities, Kairos will be embarking on some new communications and educational training webinars in the coming year, and as part of that endeavor, we wanted to make sure readers had seen the webinar we livehosted on YouTube back in February of 2019, called "Why Academic-Led and Why Now?" for Academic-Led Publishing Day (#ALPubDay). This webinar, which I moderated, included a panel os new and esteemed open-access scholars and activists, and their discussion served as an introduction to Academic-Led Publishing Day, focusing on the "what" and “why” behind the event. Panelists briefly share how they are involved in academic-led publishing and answer the questions: “Why do you believe more academic-led publishing initiatives are needed? And why is now the time for both scholarly institutions and individual scholars to get involved in academic publishing?” The speakers included

  • Rebecca Kennison, Open Access Network Co-Founder
  • Virginia “Ginny” Steel, Norman and Armena Powell University Librarian, UCLA Library
  • Brian Cody, Co-Founder and CEO of Scholastica
  • Max Mosterd, Head of Operations and Analytics for Knowledge Unlatched
  • Mike Taylor, open-access advocate and paleontologist with the University of Bristol
  • Hugh Thomas, Editor-in-Chief for Algebraic Combinatorics