Ehud Ben Zvi, the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, and Hypertextuality

In an article in the current issue of the SBL Forum, Ehud Ben Zvi discusses the open-access model of scholarly publishing. The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures is a pioneer in this respect, and Ben Zvi links to beta-versions of three articles with an exciting degree of hypertextuality built in.

Ben Zvi’s article deserves a wide reading. In the following, I make a few pointed observations to get the ball the rolling.

JHS, it must be admitted, has been disappointing in some respects. Too often - not always! - it looks as if scholars publish things there they know they couldn’t get past the peer review of a standard dead-tree journal. I know that’s a mean thing to say, but it is, I’m afraid, close to the truth.

Secondly, a number of articles published in JHS seem not to have been carefully proofed. In my own case, that is one reason I have not submitted anything to JHS. No matter how careful I am, typographical errors and worse creep in to the work I do. In this I am not alone. JHS needs to have higher copyediting and proofing standards.

A page of the JHS website includes the following disclaimer: “Authors are SOLELY responsible for the contents of their articles.” Of course they are, and any journal worth its salt is JOINTLY responsible with the authors it publishes for the elimination of obvious material errors in published text and for adherence to a variety of other scholarly standards.

Now that I’ve gone out of my way to be put on Ben Zvi’s s-list, I might as well heap some praise on the direction JHS is taking.

The link system in the beta-versions provided is very promising. For this reason alone, JHS now stands head and shoulders above comparable e-journals in the field.

Ben Zvi welcomes comments, and it will be interesting to see if and in what context he responds to the ones I will now provide.

(1) Names in social scientific style citations are hyperlinked to BIBIL and RBL. This works well enough with currently publishing scholars, not so well with scholars of a previous generation. The links to BIBIL are not specific enough. If the reference is to a work of the great Wilhelm Rudolph, in BIBIL one is given a list of articles and such that relate to all biblical scholars with the last name of Rudolph who have published in the last decade or so. Not very helpful.

(2) It would be helpful, in the case of scholar’s names, to link to BBKL (an excellent resource for the grand old names of Bibelwissenschaft past) and one or more databases of cur vitae. It is of course pathetic that an adequate database of cur vitae of published biblical scholars does not yet exist. You would think the construction of such a database would be just the kind of project that Pew Charitable Trusts would generously fund.

(3) It would also be helpful, in the case of scholar’s names in social scientific style citations, to hyperlink to the full reference in the article’s own bibliography.

(4) In the case of biblical citations, the hyperlinks offered are excellent. Three obvious hyperlinks to add to the mix are those available through the superb Deinde: the Web search, the Journal search, and the Biblioblog search.

I could easily offer other friendly suggestions, but I’ll wait and see what response these elicit first of all.

Comments

[Danny Zacharias]

Thanks for the compliment! It is encouraging to know that people are finding the searches useful.

[Ehud Ben Zvi]

Thank you, John, for your kind words about my article, and for your suggestions for further work. I am very glad that you found the beta-versions to bear an “exciting degree of hypertextuality.”

I am also glad to inform you that we plan to have the same system of hypertexts in the reviews too. Reviews are a flourishing section of JHS and we plan to develop it further in the future.

May I draw your attention to three issues that arise from your note:

(a) Your observation about the presence of typographical errors in JHS is absolutely correct. No doubt, there are such errors and I apologize for them. But at the end of the day, the issue is that when you offer a journal for free, you do not have much money for professional or thorough copy-editing. It is one of the trade-offs we have to face. If the journal had the support of a generous benefactor, things might be different. Given the number of people who use the journal in the so-called developing world, it is vitally important that the journal remain both accessible and free. All in all, I think JHS made the right trade-off.

(b) JHS would like very much to increase and improve the system of hypertext links. You made very good suggestions and I personally welcome all of them. I would like you to be aware that at time, things we would like very much to have end up being difficult to implement. For instance, I raised the issue of more in depth linkage to BiBIL, among a few others, to the computing experts working on our side, and the response I got is that they will be hard to implement. I would be glad to re-visit the issue and get another opinion. In addition, keep in mind that we can link only to databases that are willing to link with JHS, contact our technical people (at this moment, Karl Anvik is the lead technical person), and build together this system, without asking for any fees, directly or indirectly.

(c) I am sure that JHS has published *some* articles that were rejected, in earlier forms, by other journals, just as I know that *some* articles that were rejected by JHS were eventually published in revised versions in "standard dead-tree journals." This simply reflects a very common and positive practice: If an author submits an article to a journal and is not accepted, s/he takes a good look at the comments, revises the essay and then submits it somewhere else. Scholarship is the big winner in this process. And, of course, different evaluations of academic arguments among scholarly authors, reviewers, and readers are always going to be with us, and this is very good, indeed.

I would also appreciate if you yourself, or readers of your blog, would take up your suggestion concerning an application to the Pew Charitable Trusts to build appropriate databases of scholars or of other relevant databases that once set up may be accessed freely and linked to JHS.

Finally, and on the personal level, I can assure you that you are not in any s-list. Although I do disagree with some of your comments, everyone is entitled to her/his opinion of particular articles in the journal. I have heard enough differences of opinions about established, printed journals and monograph series to take any comment such as yours as personal.

[JohnFH]

Thank you, Ehud, for a persuasive reply to my post.

I would love to see to it that JHS and other on-line initiatives have the necessary financial resources to do what needs to be done to realize some of the immense potential online scholarship arguably has from a variety of points of view. I don't currently have the right contacts to be of much help, but I imagine the issue will continue to be raised and a satisfactory solution found in the not-too-distant future.

[Tim]

I have (finally) got around to writing my own post in response to Ehud's article (as you suggested, John!). It is at http://www.bigbible.org/blog/2007/10/ehud-ben-zvi-and-futire-of-scholarly.htm.

Maybe it will initiate another round of comment...