The results presented here are based on the author’s analyses of the collectively collected and annotated data. I am greatly indebted to my colleagues from Work Package 6 (Innovation) of the OPERAS-P Horizon 2020 project (#863420), which I had an honor to lead. The entire team contributed to creating the methodology of this study by interviewing, transcribing, coding, analyzing and interpreting the results. I am especially grateful to Marta Błaszczyńska, Anna Buchner, Iva Melinščak Zlodi, Jadranka Stojanovski, and Erzsébet Tóth-Czifra from the interview task force. This study presents just a fraction of a collaborative report that could be found here: https://0-doi-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/10.5281/zenodo.4922512. The research reported here was also partly conducted in the framework of OPERAS-PLUS, Horizon Europe project (#101079608) and partly supported from the state budget under the program implemented by the Minister of Education and Science called “National Program for the Development of the Humanities” project number NPRH/DN/SP/495736/2021/10.

Something is Coming to an End

1“Does writing have a future?” (Hat Schreiben Zukunft?); this was of concern to Vilém Flusser, a philosopher and media theorist, in his 1987 book that examined the transition in writing from media-technological contexts towards the digital age. The volume comprises a series of essays that dissect particular components of writing to assess whether other media could replace this fundamental practice:

• 1 Vilém Flusser, Does Writing Have a Future?, trans. Nancy Ann Roth, introd. Mark Poster (Minneapolis (...)

Writing, in the sense of placing letters and other marks one after another, appears to have little or no future. Information is now more effectively transmitted by codes other than those of written signs. What was once written can now be conveyed more effectively on tapes, records, films, videotapes, videodisks, or computer disks; and a great deal that could not be written until now can be noted down in these new codes.1

• 11 Ibid., 52–53.

The new signs that appear on computer or television screens are no longer traces engraved in objects; they are no longer “typographic.” The kind of thought that is producing the new information is no longer typographic, typifying kind of thought. […] It is fairly clear what will be lost in the transition from Gutenbergian to electromagnetic culture, namely everything we treasure in the Western legacy. On the other hand, we do not see what we have to gain. If we could do that, we would already have reached the first step toward the new way of thinking.11

5Something is coming to an end. We are currently in a dynamic, transitory phase, which could by no means be considered final. It could only be compared with the age of incunabula, the half-century in which the rapid development of print technology and associated practices coexisted with the most prolific period for manuscripts in history. It took some time before the characteristics of the printed codex were codified, which eventually flipped the script on the once unrivalled manuscript. To remember how rapidly things evolve and to what extent the features of current technology confine our thinking, we need to understand how the actors of those transformative times perceive the future of writing, where the inertia of established forms constantly clashes with the novelty of the emerging formats.

What is Innovation in Scholarly Communication?

12When asked to define innovation in scholarly communication, our interviewees pictured it as the activity of experimenting to find a better way of doing something: “the point of an innovative publication is that it’s not been done before, so there are no guidelines! There’s a trial and error aspect” (OP21). In other words: “innovation means trying something new, and sometimes it might not work” (OP28). In general, innovation is seen as a chance to improve the sharing of ideas with audiences thanks to novel technology, as in the case of an information studies scholar who thinks that “innovation is something that sort of unsettles the way that we have always done things” (OP10). Not only does innovation unsettle the way things have been, but it also provides much-needed room for improvement and novelty. As a Czech science studies scholar put it: “it’s much easier to share things now and so I think that innovation basically means catching up with opportunities that technology offers” (OP16).

13Interestingly, this respondent saw innovation as a means of reconnecting with the roots of scholarly communication, as current norms and traditions of scholarly communication tend to be incompatible with what is currently possible due to technology:

I think now it’s clear that we should change the norms and change the traditions to catch the original intent of scholarly communication, which I think is to publish your results and share the results of your work. (OP16)

14In a similar spirit, a French PhD student reported his turning towards innovation, namely, publishing a blog, because of dissatisfaction with how his writing was displayed on publishing platforms (OP17). Hence, he chose innovation because publishers did not support features he considered better for communication. “Innovation can be disruptive”, he concludes, “all the tools that I’m using and promoting can be very challenging to use for some people who are not used at all to that system and who see them as a threat to the efficiency of their process” (OP17).

15Innovation was related to the creation of outputs and the seamlessness of using scholarly content, removing unnecessary obstacles from the vantage point of current technology. A philosophy professor valued easy access to articles online. Hence, he used Sci-Hub, a shadow library, rather than his own institutional access, so he did not have to “think about which window, where to click, which database to connect to” (OP13). Innovation is also understood to align scholarly publishing and modern communication practices, creating an environment to capture readers’ attention (OP14). Perhaps this American professor captures the general attitude most accurately:

I think that innovation comes in a number of ways. One is innovation and access, so moving beyond the model of the paywall or moving beyond the model of subscriptions to get scholarship out there […]. Two, there is innovation in terms of modes of scholarly output, incorporating images incorporating websites, etc., into scholarly output. (OP24)

16One could risk the hypothesis that what scholars consider innovative depends on the horizon of possibilities they see thanks to their experience, needs, and the types of sources they deal with in their research. Researchers more engaged with digital methods tend to consider innovation in three dimensions. Firstly, in terms of facilitating access to digital resources. Secondly, regarding form, as new technological affordances for scholarly expression. Thirdly, in reaching out to new audiences through popular formats. Let us discuss them in greater detail.

Access

17First of all, the innovation is considered in terms of providing access to more traditional types of outputs. According to interviewees, this is the most tangible form of innovation because it responds to a more basic scholarly need to access content regardless of its form or features. In the words of a Croatian professor:

I see that most innovation has been done in the area of the distribution of scholarly work and sharing scholarly work, either between people or between machines. That part is actually pretty innovative compared to previous phases or stages of scholarly communication. (OP32)

19Interestingly, this form of innovation is usually described in “negative” terms, that is as removing some of the obstacles rather than providing new value: “moving beyond the model of the paywall or moving beyond the model of subscriptions to get scholarship out there. I think that’s innovative” (OP24). The innovation lies in platforms providing seamless, non-paywalled access to scholarly content, be it ResearchGate (OP11), Sci-hub (OP13), or an institutional repository: “you can just browse the journal and look at those articles. And this is not the most visited one. So there are a couple of thousand, a few thousand visits, a few thousand readers. And this is the enormous advantage of open access online scholarly publications – that they can find readers” (OP19). Using citation metrics and usage statistics is also considered innovative, as they allow for quality assessment and the measurement impact of the scholar’s work.

20Almost all of our interviewees unreservedly supported open access to scientific publications. The researchers highlighted several benefits, including ease of finding publications, free access, savings for the institution, and improved visibility, readability, and citability. An information science professor claims that open access “should be standard nowadays. It is a commodity; we as researchers expect to have access to research publications, so I wouldn’t connect it with prestige – it’s a prerequisite” (OP32). Thus, as this French historian put it, openness is viewed as a systemic factor, “which should improve the current scholarly communication system: That everything would be accessible for free” (OP27).

21Respondent supported the changes that have occurred due to the pandemic, during which they have had significantly more open content available, but also expressed concerns about going back to the old “normal,” that is, paywalls and closed access. As one British literary scholar observed:

You know, that’s the world I dream of: [it – M. M.] is just one where there’s, you know, some piece of scholarly research and I can just get it without it being a problem, without having to encounter paywalls, without having to go through a billion and one hoops to get my university to purchase it. (OP03)

22Some respondents highlighted the vital role of scholars in changing the system of scholarly communication and the fact that only scholars have the power to influence change. Examples of institutional initiatives show how scientists, in collaboration with funders and editors, can build a modern publishing platform to avoid paying the high open access fees to large publishing houses. Still, some scholars are very conservative when it comes to prestige, which has a massive impact on publishing choices. Although researchers can shape the publishing landscape, “it is still controlled by the publishers” (OP06). Scholars’ conservative perception of prestige and reliance on it in assessing the quality of outputs still has enormous influence, but this is not what is moving publishing forward (OP04).

23Many authors will prefer a closed approach or even a printed version of their publication if they could publish with a prestigious book publisher or in a prestigious journal. Prestige paired with research assessment criteria seems to be blocking this form of innovation, which is neatly summed up by a professor in Education studies: “I would very much like if all my work was openly available, and I would very much like to be able to prefer and submit only to such journals, but there are not many in my fields that are recognized as very valuable journals” (OP30). The long operational history of a publisher is perceived as a confirmation of quality and the basis for an undeniable reputation within the scientific community, despite the often very conservative ways of publishing, which do not take advantage of digital technologies or ensure effective distribution of content. Hence, engaging with innovative access approaches is a form of a trade-off, as an English studies professor describes it:

I mean, for me personally, I think open access is absolutely crucial. But I recognize that there are scholars out there who still believe that open access publications can’t have the same prestige [...] But because of those ingrained ideas, I think for many scholars, the prestige of open access publications is still lower than that of the closed-access, traditional journal that’s been around for one hundred years. (OP04)

24So, while new publishers are emerging in scientific publishing, with modern approaches to publishing high-quality content and innovative business models that ensure low prices or free open-access publishing, such venues are often not considered prestigious enough. Even when scholars want to publish with them, they fear that this could impair their chances of employment, diminish the value of their CV, or reduce their career prospects. Open-access publications offer endless possibilities for connecting open content and taking full advantage of hypertext and web technologies.

Form

25Apart from innovation in providing access, another kind is the innovation of form. Interviewees saw formal innovations as more than mere digital recreations of traditional genres: “an e-book is not automatically different from an ordinary book. Or the database handbook is not different from the handbook itself – content-wise” (OP23). Innovation is thus part of the general process of the slow evolution of communication forms, as one historian stressed:

Each field has its article model, and these models evolve over several decades. That is to say that today, in the humanities and social sciences, it is not quite the same texts as 50 years ago, 100 years ago, but it is an unconscious, collective, and very slow evolution that is not the subject of specific deliberation. (OP25)

26Importantly, this is viewed as an evolutionary process that does not replace older forms but opens new “niches” (OP30). So, every change needs to address the values and traditions of the field to become accepted “and [to – M. M.] show that these can still be met in this new format” (OP24). Innovation, in fact, does not need new technologies as it can be played out in traditional formats. One of the interviewees gave Punctum publications as an example of such works; these are written in conventional form and published as PDFs but retain innovative potential: “often it’s still a contained book format, but it can still be radical” (OP03). However, in most cases, our interviewees referred to the technological aspects of innovation.

28The following quote from a digital humanities professor is lengthy but vital in conveying the gradual sense of innovation in writing. It starts by linking the text and data and then suggests an even more radical mode in which the text becomes executable, allowing for dynamic interaction with its content.

But let’s say that most people regard what you see on the screen or what you read on the page as the text, you know, it’s those characters in those sentences. That’s the text. But now imagine if we can convince people that something like code, programming code, is also a text. On a philosophical level, people never have any problems with acknowledging that. Yes, that looks like a text, and it’s sort of the same thing as text. So, yes, it’s a text. [if this is agreed, can we then read a text that is code? – M. M.]. Then you get two types of people: you get the ones that say, no, that’s not a scholarly article; [it – M. M.] is simply not because it doesn’t have the form and format that we as scholars expect as the hallmark of how we do things – how this whole scholarly process works and how we report about it. So, that’s not a scholarly text. And then, on the other hand, there are the people, obviously like me, that say no; that’s an interesting innovation of how text could also be a mechanism of reporting your research. So why not accept a text that can actually execute itself as a scholarly text? And if you go in that direction, we haven’t even produced anything innovative because all the things that we produce until now are still basically those things that we just read; they are on a screen. And sometimes they are supported by some data repository or a code repository, but we don’t have anything that executes, you know, that creates itself by you executing or running the text, as it were. (OP08)

Everything that moves away from text, other media – it is innovative to consider them as a possible way to transmit a scholarly reflection. For instance, video, sound, podcast […] Everything that is moving away from traditional writing processes. (OP21)

30This multimodality may also entail the very loose understanding of scientific text as a transmedia practice for delivering content through a range of various utterances in different media. Greta Thunberg’s activities were recalled in this context:

She is innovative because she is multi-channel. And she communicates through many channels. But she wants to acknowledge the scientific truth, right? I mean, her main message is: you don’t listen to me, and you don’t listen to scientists. (OP14).

[In our team – M. M.] we are discussing exactly that: how do we publish something that is telling a story so there is a narrative, but then also include how the researchers got to the story, the analytic part, and then what dataset they used to do that? So that’s a three-way approach to the whole thing, and that’s not easy. (OP23)

32Multimodality means acknowledging that scholarly writing should allow access to the underlying content for validation, replication, or further interaction.

I think the vast majority of scholarly texts in my field are still text, right; they’re still sort of paper-shaped; they come out in PDF, or they still pretend to be printed on paper even when they’re not. But I think there are more and more options and more ways in which publications and the kinds of scholarly texts that I rely on are starting to break those boundaries. (OP04)

I’d like to see more powerful and intelligent ways of connecting research findings and research claims with evidence, […] [allowing – M. M.] people to construct research artefacts, online publications that are more dynamic. (OP15)

34Such outputs may range from dynamic visualizations to the generative text envisaged earlier in this section. This type of innovation also changes the way we think about scholarly argument and its authorship. One interviewee discussed how experimentation undermines

the history of the last 50 years of [a – M. M.] kind of liberal, humanist, Western thought, which is you write a text that’s yours. […] And obviously, that’s bad for a number of reasons, that it ingrains certain ways of thinking, certain kinds of linear, rational ways of thinking [about] that kind of work against the other ways. (OP10)

35If the knowledge becomes generative and interconnected, how should we measure contribution: “if you post something online and I write something that relates to what you said but creates a new idea, how can I claim this as part of my scholarly output? I cannot connect it with other things that I produced” (OP15).

38Our interviewees, lacking more specialized terminology in this regard, often spoke about more advanced forms of linking data and text within a publication, going beyond the mere depositing discussed in the earlier section on access. This idea opens the book to be connected to other outputs like data, code, or supplemental materials. A website is the main format mentioned by our interviewees in the context of innovation due to its flexibility in handling different genres. Here is how a post-doc in biblical studies describes her involvement in a web book creation:

It was thought of as a book publication, but only for [the] Internet. It is not like an e-book, which can be both paper and e-book, and its purpose is not to imitate a printed book but only to have HTML pages. […] The idea is to keep it light and easily manageable. It can be a sub-type of a website. But the idea is still to make a book, to keep [it as – M. M.] a long text. It was our conviction that we should still be able to carry out long-term research and reflection. It’s an added value in humanities research compared to other scholarly texts. (OP21)

39Thus, a web book seems to remediate the book by preserving the long scholarly argument on the one hand and opening it to use by different media on the other. Some interviewees discussed a similar concept, which we distil here as a computational essay, an article, or a book that focuses on linking the text with underlying data:

So you’ve written some research in a programming notebook, and not only have you done that, but you provide it in a format that also leverages that functionality. So, for example, people can see that there’s a parameter in an experiment that’s been used to produce a graph, and they have a little checkbox that they can use to make the parameter vary and see the graph update. That sort of thing for me is innovative, not in terms of technology, because it’s quite old, actually […]. It’s just that publishing systems don’t use it. (OP17)

40It is important to note that it is not only about providing the data but rather linking them with the outputs in a dynamic, interactive way, allowing readers to engage with the scholarship at a deeper level. This archaeology professor compares such a publication to discovery research “in which the relationship between the claims that are made and the warrants for these claims – typically data used as evidence – would be clearer. […] Instead of just being given a diagram, I might be given a pivot table that I can sort of play with and see how they came to that conclusion” (OP15). These functionalities provide readers with new means of interacting with the content, offering new ways of understanding the data: “It is one thing for me to write a paragraph that talks about the conclusions of the data, but it’s quite another thing for the reader to actually get into the data. So I think the digital format allows that greater flexibility” (OP24).

41The computational essay also leverages the web format to establish links with external materials and sources: “delivering a text through HTML on the Web allows you to create links instead of citations, and think about the embedding of images, or charts, or of other kinds of media forms within the frame of that text. So I think that the text, the notion of the scholarly text, is starting to open up a bit” (OP04). Computational essays stem from the tension between the traditional writing genre and novel methods that demand different forms of engagement with underlying data.

Audiences

42Finally, thinking of innovation in terms of audiences bridges the aspects of form and access we discussed earlier. Innovation may improve the communication of research findings by broadening the readership and, thus, the perception of research in society.

And I do think that [...] scientific publishing should go in the direction of using more blog-like things and that we should be publishing and speaking of our research ideas, our research progress, research intermediate results, and our research failures. We should speak more frequently, timely and openly in order to speed up [and – M. M.] improve scientific work worldwide in any way. We don’t exchange enough information and not well enough, and that’s wrong. (OP30)

43Unconventional formats allow for reaching new audiences and help reconnect research and society, showing the importance of the work being done in academia and how the taxpayers’ money is spent. According to a cultural studies post-do, “the more people understand that academics are not in an ivory tower, then the more likely you are going to see funding for the humanities, funding for research is not a waste of time and money” (OP01). Thus, innovation allows us to communicate with audiences attractively, attuned to the contemporary media landscape. In other words, thanks to innovation, research speaks the same language as the public, he adds, “these are non-conventional academic texts that are being read by the public, and they’re much more accessible than your standard research paper” (OP01).

44However, finding a suitable language accessible to various audience types is challenging. A history scholar working on the innovative dissemination of her project results through an interactive website describes the issue of navigating between the level of scholarly detail and accessibility for wider audiences. Hence, the aim “is to speak in a general way that the public can understand, but also [in a way that – M. M.] academic people will be interested in it. But it’s not too dumbed down for the academics, but not too, kind, of highbrow for the general audience” (OP28).

45Reaching new audiences means making scholarly content available to countries and communities in which traditional forms of scholarly communication, which are closely bound to the market, are inaccessible for economic reasons.

When you start to take the book out of the marketplace or take scholarship out of the marketplace, then you realize that the audience can be whoever you want it to be. And that’s simply because you’re no longer writing for [a – M. M.] financial kind of gain, or for the publishers to gain financially, or for the book to look like it [is – M. M.], sort of, a commodity. (OP10)

46Hence, new modes of publishing may increase the readership and societal impact of scholarly outputs.

I also like very much reading blog posts and not so much from my narrow field of research but from other fields that are not too familiar to me, which explain things to me in a bit more [of a – M. M.] popular way; so for me to see if it works for me or not, or what directions I should go to find some connection with my research and so on. (OP18)

48In this context, blogs serve as popular abstracts of more complicated works. As a psychology postdoc put it plainly:

That’s why you have things like blogs and portals and scientific outlets […] They take the scientific [paper – M. M.], which has twenty pages of tables and graphs and data and stuff like that, and they boil it down to two. (OP29)

49Apart from making research more accessible, blogs may serve as a place to communicate early thoughts and to work on ideas. A postdoc in information studies, interestingly, treated his blog as a humanities equivalent of an open notebook: “I keep this kind of open notebook, in which I’m just sort of sharing my thoughts regularly about my research and eventually the book that I’m writing will be based on all of these different snippets. But none of the actual blog posts will be in the book – I quite like just releasing my thoughts as I have them” (OP10).

50Audio and audiovisual materials perform a similar function. They are also treated as lighter versions of traditional scholarship but require a particular talent and competence, as indicated by a sociology professor:

I look with interest at such forms as short podcasts and short video forms, which are terribly difficult for scientists. Because scientists generally don’t know how to express themselves in such an engaging, relatively light way – that is a rare talent. […] This alone would also require investment on the part of the institutions, and not just on the shoulders of the scientists themselves – as usual – to learn these different speaking techniques, just as politicians can be taught. (OP12)

51Videos were also mentioned as providing a supplement to one’s work. For instance, a PhD candidate in digital humanities produced a documentary based on her research (OP06). A professor of information processing mentioned, in this context, short talks on one’s own research that may serve as TED-talk-like trailers: “twenty or thirty seconds video, like a commercial, as a marketing tool, explaining to you what you could find in this paper, maybe something to be considered. […] a real person can make you interested in a paper much more than abstract” (OP30).

52Podcasts are generally thought to serve a similar role, as this sociology professor remarked: “presenting it in such a concise way, a cool way, if it’s just for a short podcast, but a really short one, a quarter of an hour at the most. In fact it’s probably five minutes, as a teaser [...]” (OP12). The production of scholarly podcasts may have intensified during the pandemic. As a French PhD student in information science noted, many of his colleagues had “started to record not only lectures but sometimes a review of an article or a book. One of my colleagues started – it was just, like, a side project. And he’s actually in his 12th or 13th episode” (OP17). This format is described as particularly engaging because listening does not seem to require one’s full attention or much screen time and allows for other activities in the meantime: “I probably would also use podcasts, just listening and not even looking at the picture, but just listening to the voice” (OP18).

53Finally, the use of social media was reported in the context of audience outreach. Scholars inform others about their work on social media and often use it to communicate their talks, which they later turn into blogs or articles. So, we see an interesting communication loop here, in which the thought is discussed and elaborated continuously with peers and a wider audience. A postdoc in linguistics described her use of these channels, pointing out that they often allowed her to reach different audiences:

I’m trying to make blog posts out of my Twitter threads. Sometimes referring to the tweet, but [...] I feel like a lot of content gets lost, and I really like Twitter. And I also know that people who actually follow me on Twitter and read my stuff don’t go on my blog so they don’t read my blog. (OP02)

54A specific innovation on the intersection regarding engagement with audiences is the living book, which allows for the fluidity of the text and versioning on the one hand and user interaction on the other. As this postdoc in biblical studies pointed out:

The idea is that we keep track of variations and make this information visible. As for the difference between a book and a web book [WB – M. M.], the idea is to keep a regular publication rhythm. I publish as soon as I have written a chapter. The peer review will come at the end of the process after the WB is published online. And the WB will be modified following the peer-review comments, and thanks to the versioning, the modifications will be visible. (OP21)

55Living books change the approach to publication from something finished and closed to an output that makes the changes transparent and accessible to readers. Living books spark community discussion, allowing for comments and replies.

Challenges

56The disruptive potential of innovation opens up new possibilities but also appears challenging on many levels. The actual uptake of novel communication forms is impeded by various factors, among which quality assessment, prestige, competencies, and the lack of established standards for referencing novel forms are critical.

58The lack of recognition of innovative forms as scholarly texts impedes innovation. “If you’re doing something so new and different, there is, by definition, no audience to say: ‘yes, this is a good thing to do,’ or ‘no, this is not a good thing to do’” (OP24). So, the question boils down to assessing whether a publication is scholarly or not. As one interviewee put it:

The barrier comes with the question: what is recognized as scholarly writing in academia, and lets you obtain a position? Until recently (but maybe it is changing) the digital, and especially what is not peer-reviewed, does not count as scholarly writing, at least not for career advancement. (OP22)

60The prestige attached to traditional forms tends to have a cooling effect on innovation, as this postdoc puts it: “our reward structures are so embedded in us that I have to write a book that looks like a book” (OP10). A professor of English studies adds: “many scholars tend to be conservative in going where they see prestige, and, so, that reliance on prestige is still of enormous influence” (OP04). This prestige economy leads to a peculiar situation in which the format of the work influences the assessment of the quality of its content. One interviewee observes that “it could be cutting edge work with amazing results, amazing data, and it’s completely relevant. But they might not be cited because it’s just a thesis” (OP06). That, in turn, creates a vicious circle in which scholars are afraid to experiment because they want to publish in prestigious venues, resulting in fewer innovative works and low prestige. There is also the issue of competencies required to engage with such formats, which many scholars may not possess (OP12) or even be reluctant to invest the time in gaining such competencies: “I don’t think of myself as a particularly digitally literate person. And I think I know, and I am familiar, and I work with things that are probably already quite established” (OP19). On the other hand, researchers invested in innovation cannot understand why some scholars refuse to use innovations that could facilitate their work: “despite my presentation of Zotero, despite it becoming pretty much universal and students using it, many of my colleagues don’t. They do things by hand […]” (OP30). Competencies are closely linked to the need for infrastructure, as a lack of relevant technology may block innovation.

61Finally, researchers grapple with the need for established standards for referencing novel sources like tweets, blog posts, and YouTube videos in scholarly work (OP03, OP06). Generally speaking, the issue of how novel sources should be included in an academic text is one of the challenges of twenty-first-century scholarly writing. While citing novel forms as primary sources, for example datasets does not raise many concerns, the academic acceptance for referencing scholarly arguments in such formats seems lower (OP18, OP29). While blog posts resembling academic papers are generally accepted as citable, social media posts are viewed with more skepticism (OP18). The need for referencing software and tools arises to ensure proper credit for scholarly code developers while also recognizing the contribution of research infrastructure (OP16, OP24).

62The challenges of novel forms push scholars toward some stopgap practices that allow researchers to have their cake and eat it, too; that is, to take advantage of innovation while retaining some signs of prestige. We call these practices double referencing and double publication, that is using a traditional format instead of an innovative one to retain the prestige of the conventional form. These can be considered harmful for innovation or, more positively, as supporting the transition – as stopgap practices during the transformation phase. Double referencing means that one feels pressure to find and use traditional forms of publication for referencing, even if they consulted the innovative version for their research: “If you cite something innovative (a video, a recording of a talk), we still feel that we have to cite another traditional publication” (OP21). The same interviewee prepared a digital edition of their thesis, which had to be presented in a traditional form (OP21). One advantage of double publication is that authors have the best of both worlds – the prestige of the publication but also faster delivery and the content better.

63To conclude, Flusser, quoted in the introduction to this paper, viewed innovation as “faster and faster quills,” that is improved tools for better communication of thought and ideas. In this paper, I tried to sketch how scholars understand innovation, referring to seamless access, formal features, and new means of contacting audiences. All this innovation is not happening in vain, as it needs both infrastructural support and systemic recognition in academia, which seems to be the critical obstacle slowing down our quills.