As I’ve said on Cipher Mysteries numerous times, I’ve been finding that my Voynich research is getting harder and harder to publish as blog posts. There’s a long stream of reasons: for example, research into the Voynich Manuscript’s zodiac roundels drawings…
- …often overlaps existing research literature
- …often relies on a literature fragmented across different languages
- …often needs to include a literature review
- …often refers to a cluster of related previous posts
- …tends to be long form rather than short form
- …is rarely complete in and of itself
Despite all these, I’ve continued trying to publish my research in blog form: but it’s not getting easier. Yet I very often find myself held to account over details in posts as if I had published a lead article in Nature. Really, it sometimes feels as though I’ve managed to get the worst of both worlds.
And so, going forward, my plan is to trial a quite different approach. Please bear with me, as I’m still trying to work out how to make this work in practice. This post is to try to describe my basic plan, and to provide a forum for your thoughts, comments and suggestions (if you’ll be so kind).
The World of Preprint Servers
There is a large number of preprint servers out there: the most famous one by far is the arXiv.org e-Print archive, which since 1991 has specialised in making preprints of scientific papers easily available on the web. (It now has more than 1.5 million papers, just so you know.)
What is not so well known is that there is also a small (but growing) set of humanities-focused preprint servers out there. These offer a route for preprint (and, increasingly, nonprint) articles to see the light of day.
If you have at all tracked the Voynich-themed brouhaha kicked up by Gerard Cheshire and his somewhat overoptimistic polywhatever linguistic papers, then you’ll probably have noticed that he published them on LingBuzz. Unsurprisingly, this is a linguistics-focused preprint server offering linguistics researchers the opportunity to post up pretty much whatever they like.
For historical code-breaking, the Cryptology ePrint Archive (courtesy of the IACR) seems to be a splendidly super preprint server (though I don’t know much about it). And for general research preprints that perhaps don’t fit big categories comfortably, CERN’s Zenodo seems full of promise (though, again, I know very little about it).
All in all, there now seems to be a preprint server suitable for whatever research you have in mind. So, as a general thing, this route seems to be becoming an effective way of getting articles-in-progress out there.
Openly Published Staged Preprints
You might ask “…but isn’t this just the whole Cheshire thing all over again?” Actually, what I’m doing here is advocating a completely different way of using preprint servers to publish research.
What I’m suggesting here is not to pretend that an article is complete (or even destined for full print publication in a non-existent journal, because that would be just plain stupid), but rather to openly embrace and accentuate the article’s ongoing lack of completion by publishing it via preprint servers in a staged manner, and flagging it as such.
Think of this as a way of serializing publication: or even of celebrating reaching research milestones within a research microproject by publishing a state of play update that anyone can read and comment on, or even possibly collaborate with and help develop further.
For example, a reasonable initial draft on a specific Voynich zodiac roundel topic might include a lightly annotated list of handschriften (including links to those few that are available online), an outline of a literature review, together with a first draft of a research hypothesis.
Similarly, a second pre-draft might include an attempt at extracting the relevant aspects of the literature, summarizing it, including some key images, and then trying to put it all into the outlines of an argument lined to an updated (and finessed) version of the research hypothesis. And so forth.
As for me, I don’t – as long as the stages are described honestly, and the process is made transparent (e.g. by including links to earlier drafts inside the draft) – see any downside to this for the research I do. In many ways, it would be a blessed relief to be able to publish along the way, rather than – tada! – with an ornate flourish at the end, like Arnold Rimmer saluting.
At the same time, I fully understand that some researchers (particularly historical cipher researchers, it has to be said) feel very protective and closed about the research they do, as if they expect to uncover a Pearl of Great Price any day now, and that this will inevitably trigger the start of an Immense Redemption Arc for them. But I can’t speak for those people.
My own position is simply that I’d rather publish stuff as I go (which is basically why I blog). However, I don’t like updating posts endlessly: even though some bloggers do this (some even edit comments to try to make every discussion seem to favour them after the fact), I find this practice both shoddy and indicative of a disgraceful lack of online netiquette. Still, each to their own, eh?
Stuck In The Middle (With You)…
As a researcher, it’s easy to flag how different aspects of blogs, journals, social media, print media, preprint servers etc don’t quite suit your purposes, or your style of research. But at the same time, it can be devilishly difficult to steer a path between them that does gives you what you want.
Perhaps I like the idea of openly publishing staged preprints because I’m at the stage in my personal research journey where I don’t feel concerned or threatened by the notion that someone may possibly waltz in and somehow ‘steal’ my entire research from under my nose. Alternatively, perhaps it’s because I like living life in the open. I don’t know: they’re all true.
An entirely parallel benefit is that someone might well look at a staged preprint and want to pick up the baton in some way: perhaps they already have expertise in or experience of a particular aspect of the field being covered, and would be happy to help hone the argument or whatever.
It may even be that some researchers prove better (Problematique-style) at constructing effective research hypotheses than in answering or resolving them. Further, it might be that openly published staged preprints open up ways of collaborating entirely different from the ones we are used to.
For example, if you were to approach an academic with a specific question about a particular literature they know about, surely it would be a huge assistance if your email to them included a link to a staged online preprint of where your research has managed to reach without their help. Surely this level of transparency and openness would be an entirely good thing?
But what do you think?
I quite like the blog format. It allows me to write about my research of the moment (which shifts about every month) without all the hassle of real publication. At the same time, it forces me to provide some more background and depth, to present something that’s coherent. I like the freedom and the degree of (in)formality.
I am also one to publish immediately what I’m working on. It helps me structure my thoughts and research goals and I like the immediate feedback.
At the end of the day your blog is your place. You decide what you do and how you do it.
My hat is off to anyone who can produce staged papers. Given how often ideas have to be reworked and revisited I would find it a challenge. Most of what I blog about are things that I don’t feel are ready for prime-time (“paper” format).
Nick wrote: “For example, if you were to approach an academic with a specific question about a particular literature they know about, surely it would be a huge assistance if your email to them included a link to a staged online preprint of where your research has managed to reach without their help…”
I see where you are going with this. Yes, I can see that being potentially beneficial.
Nick,
I empathise with your saying,
“An entirely parallel benefit is that someone might …want to pick up the baton in some way: perhaps they already have expertise in or experience of a particular aspect of the field being covered, and would be happy to help hone the argument or whatever.”
apart from the fact that I’d think in terms of refining the analysis of an image, or supplementing/correcting the historical-critical commentary that’s exactly why I began publishing my own work online. Result.. not exactly the sort I’d expected.
I can’t see your point about editing comments made to a blog. Everyone does it; you’ve done it too. Since I can never read anything of my own, including responses to comments, until it’s all visible (not in a scrolling window), I even edit my own comments to ensure they say clearly what I wanted said.
But otherwise – try it and see, I’d say. I’ll certainly read it.
PS – it just occurred to me that the pre-print medium, not requiring enrollment in wordpress etc., might prove a way to solve the endless problem of finding and crediting precedents. Earlier Voynich writers might be willing, if invited, to add a bit of documentation. Wouldn’t that be grand!
Diane: I do indeed sometimes edit my own comments very lightly, typically because my idiot mobile phone has inserted some unintended nutty auto-correction. I also edit other people’s comments when they ask me to fix specific issues (e.g. broken links): and sometimes have to strip out objectionable sections as part of the whole moderation process.
But what I don’t do is edit pages and comments wholesale to shift and slant the original context and meaning of the page. I’ve seen bloggers do this plenty of times, and I don’t like it at all.
I don’t edit blog comments on my own blogs except to fix minor typos (and usually only if it’s within seconds or scant minutes of posting it, before it hits the blogosphere).
Unfortunately, I do make typos that I don’t see until it’s posted (I frequently mess up commas, or type a homonym, or duplicate words like “the the”, and occasionally I leave out a word that I could have sworn I typed). The new version of WordPress sometimes removes formatting (italics, links, etc.), which is extremely annoying. Sometimes I fix it, mostly I don’t.
If time has passed and there are typos, I will fix them the way I learned from looking at Nick’s blog (I didn’t do this in the beginning when I was new to blogging, but I realized after I was nudged that you can’t just edit without regard for readers, even if you are just correcting errors or trying to make it better).
Nick uses color and strike-outs to show what has changed. I thought, yes! that’s a good way to do it because readers can see “before and after”.
I would never edit someone else’s comment unless they requested it and it was a reasonable request (this happens rarely, only twice in six years).
There was one time I chose not to publish a comment—the poster repeated something in nearly the same words that had been posted in two previous comments. I couldn’t see a good reason to post essentially the same thing by the same person again.
Nick,
I suppose I see your point. Nuisance if you cited a post but by the time your readers go to it, it reads differently.
As I see it, a blogger is given the options of accepting, rejecting or modifying comments – their own or others’ – and I can’t see how one could order or expect them to resign those rights.
I don’t mind changes to content so long as the blogger or website manager date-stamps them and cites sources for inserted material obtained from other peoples’ work. But that’s about ethics and honesty re precedence.
I suppose it depends whether your aim is to make a statement or to serve as an information source. I bet Britannica wishes it had the editing flexibility of wikipedia. 🙂
D.N. O’Donovan wrote: “As I see it, a blogger is given the options of accepting, rejecting or modifying comments – their own or others’ …”
I don’t feel i have the right to modify the comments of others even if it is my blog.
I can reject their comments, but modify them? No, not unless they expressly ask me to do so and they have a good reason for it. I would not even shorten another person’s comment unless they requested it, because then their comment is out of context.
If it’s not an appropriate comment, then I would probably ask the commenter to revise it or I could simply reject it. I would not modify it myself.
When changing I have the same opinion as JKP. That only gives trouble.
“I did not write that, that’s not the opinion.” The rumor: It was changed to other benefits, etc.
Or changed because you do not agree … bla bla bla.
Even leaving a comment has its pitfalls. it should always be justified.
“He does not accept my theory, he ignores me ….. bla bla bla”
A question to Nick, how much is left over if you delete that where somehow makes no sense, such as:
Book from Atlantis, aliens have created it, calls from the hereafter, or written in the language of God.
20% ???
I personally have all the comments before 2009 “C14 Analysis”
banished from my head unless it was later confirmed by the person. No matter who that was. This has to do with whether he is still confident of the new findings, or whether he has changed them.
Nick,
It’s nice to see how nice people are. I’ve certainly edited the odd comment to my blog. I delete snarky comments put on my blog as a sort of ‘trolling long distance’ against other people. I delete the third party’s name, and the snarky comment about them, leave the rest and then dd a comment of my own telling them to go directly to that person’s blog if they want to play Wowbagger.
But I reducing everything to what-you-do, what-I-do is fairly dull and the impersonal fact is that there are surely a couple of million bloggers out there who have the power and the right to exercise that power to edit. We can like, or hate it, but easiest to ignore it. Who knows how many comments sent to a web-page are never published? Total censorship in most cases. Innit?
Diane: you have clearly never (or rarely) had the experience of going back to a blog where you have left a comment to find that both the post and the comments there have been extensively edited, with the clear intention of making the text seem to support a specific slant / opinion.
Nasty. 🙁
I guess a ‘paper’ becomes the better option when something has been more or less completed or concluded, at least tentatively. This is not so often the case. Blog entries are perfectly legitimate for less conclusive (or inconclusive) discussions, like open questions or outlining problems.
Writing a paper is a great deal more effort than a blog post. At the same time, it will probably be read by a different audience. That implies also different expectations.
The problem with real ‘bona fide’ papers is to be familiar with the background knowledge of a particular subject. This is where Cheshire failed. No demonstrated linguistic knowledge, or rather: demonstrated absence of it.
With the Voynich MS, many areas do not require such background knowledge, but others do, e.g. when one wishes to publish about codicology or art history.
I have put a ‘paper’ at Academia about some book deals of Voynich. It would never occur to me to make this a published paper in a journal, simply because I lack the background and could easily make beginners’ mistakes, such as not being aware that something has already been published long ago.
However, this paper could attract comments that would be helpful.
So, yes, I think it is a good idea.
Rene: my point is really that we’re caught between the blog and the paper, to the degree that people like Stephen Bax can misleadingly claim that ‘nothing is known about the Voynich Manuscript’ and we have almost no genuinely worthwhile papers to point to as counterbalance.
What I’m trying to do now is write my bigger blog posts as a series of staged preprints, so that the work I do can be usefully visible along the way, not just when it is finished.
Nick, when you say
“you have clearly never (or rarely) had the experience of going back to a blog where you have left a comment to find that both the post and the comments there have been extensively edited, with the clear intention of making the text seem to support a specific slant / opinion”
you are absolutely right, I haven’t.
What I have found and am flummoxed by, is the magical disappearance of comments made to a blog of mine, without my removing them. My responses then look as if spoken to some ‘little green person’ invisible to any but me.
I’ve no idea how it can happen. Any insight on that.
And just by the way, a lot of what Rene says above as if it were a series of facts is naturally, his experience but it certainly doesn’t accord with my own. A jaw-dropping number of things passing as ‘Voynich papers’ and even ‘Voynich books’ hardly deserve to be in print, whereas some blogposts (Notably here and at Koen’s site, or what Ponzi and Worley posted to Stephen Bax’s blog are the material of jolly decent papers and surely involved that amount and quality of research.
Information is as good as it is. So whether, Nick, you decide on one medium or another, your readers will be happy to read – or so it seems to me.
Diane: it sounds as though the database holding your blog content may have got slightly corrupted. I notice this sometimes with letters missing or odd characters, particularly in older posts. There’s not much you can do about it, except keep backups on a regular basis to guard against worse corruption happening. 🙁
Good, well-researched, well-argued blog content is all very well, but there is no list of good Voynich blog posts. Personally, I link to other people’s sites all the time, but I know from my site logs that (a) almost nobody links to Cipher Mysteries, and (b) almost nobody reaches the site via external links.
So, by what mechanism can the vast bulk of non-specialists determine what a good Voynich paper would look like? At the moment, we have a situation where even the most cack-handed Voynich paper with only the superficial patina of academic affiliation and pretence of publication can get significant attention.
And don’t get me started on Janick and Tucker. 🙁
Nick,
You say no-one links to your posts, but online scarcely anyone links to much but sound-bite stuffL like wiki articles or pinterest or lol cata, or a pic from one manuscript of choice and even if keen 1500 is the longest post that’ll be read, they say.
I’m not saying it’s good thing but I think it’ll be a long term fad. Next revolution: Luddites forever!
PS – if anyone is going to compile a list of good Voynich blogposts, please god let it not be a Voynichero! At least not until the study has matured to the point that a discussion of methodology is welcomed, and not reacted to as some sort of threat or (as really happened ) banned as ‘inappropriate’.
D.
Nick, I always pay attention when you are trying to solve a problem, because you have thoughtful and pragmatic ideas about these things, so I looked into some of the preprint servers.
I was thinking that the slant of an article (e.g., computational attacks versus plant identifications) would partly determine the most appropriate (and most effective) venue.
A researcher considering preprint might need a short list of servers (rather than just one) to cover the different angles from which the VMS is approached.
J.K. Petersen: I mentioned three different preprint servers for that very reason, and there are indeed many others to choose from.
Voynich plant identification has long been a bit of a grey area for me, simply because the basic codicological spadework (i.e. reconstructing the original page order) has yet to be done, which I believe would give a level of context and sequence that is missing from the discussion. If you don’t know what plants were originally grouped together, you can’t try to discern the themes and sequences that bind them.
As an aside, I argued (in Curse) that Herbal-A and Herbal-B seemed to be categorically different, and indeed floated the notion that the Herbal-B pages might in fact contain encrypted drawings of machines. This idea has been something that various other researchers have long ridiculed, but I think there are more reasons to suspect this is true than to think that Herbal-B is just simply a load of plants.
My most recent thought on Herbal-A is that because it contains almost exactly the same number of plants as the alchemical herbals, I wonder whether it might somehow be a variant of that tradition. But again, the crucial piece of information missing is the original page ordering. 🙁
Nick,
do you really believe that plants were originally grouped, and therefore thematically bound together? This would be more than unusual for an early 15th century ms based on former (alphabetical/latin) herbals.
Another point: if the plants were grouped in themes, let’s say for certain medical use, these groups should also show up in the so called pharmacedutical section and the recipes. Do they? I can’t see there any thematical separation.
Charlotte: certainly, I think that the plants on the Herbal-A pages are different from the plants on the Herbal-B pages (yet we don’t know why), so I think there is at least one kind of thematic grouping going on, even if we don’t know why that is.
My experience with the other sections of the Voynich manuscript is that where we are able to reconstruct the original page ordering, we see many more symmetries and logical groupings than are visible from the final page order, so I think there is an excellent chance that this would hold true for the Herbal section(s).
Nick,
yes, it would of course be very interesting to reveal some logical groupings. Up to now I didn’t pay so much attention to that point, i.e. the page ordering, because I possibly see the whole ms from another angle than you do.
To me it is a personal notebook, encoded due to historical circumstances, and more or less hastily clobbeb together in some parts. Whenever I look at it I get that strange feeling of time running out for the srcibe(s) as well as for the painter(s). They startet with their professional skills, tried to do their best and then had to finish it in a hurry. We don’t even know whether it’s really finished or not. The colophon or explicit tells us nothing comprehensible, at least is there no evidence for a finish.
If it comes to the original page ordering I’m not very optimistic that it could ever be reconstructed without decoding the full text. We don’t have an obvious table of contents, we don’t have a similar ms to compare with, and we don’t know when, where and under what cirumstances it was bound in the first place. It may not have been bound at all for a long time, unfinished folios may have been removed to use the parchment otherwise, others were damaged or lost – we just don’t know. To see what is missing or in the wrong order we simply must perfectly understand what we have before us. We don’t know that either.
As I said before, I don’t care so much about page ordering, but I really understand the desire of finally having a convincing (or should I say a com-Pelling?) new approach in hands that takes us a step forward.
Charlotte: I think that there is an excellent chance that we can reconstruct much of the original nesting arrangement by comparing DNA between the bifolios – the normal way of making a vellum gathering was to fold a single piece of vellum into the right size and then trim it down, so there must surely be a good chance that we can reconstruct at least some of the construction phases. With that in place, we might have to look for pre-Heavy-Painter contact transfers (there are a few, I mentioned some in Curse) to work out the more fine-grained nesting, but that would surely be a fun job to be doing, right? 🙂
Nick, I’m afraid that Beneicke wouln’t spend enough money for you to have such a lot of fun!
Surely the only reason to use a preprint server would be to “prove” to third parties that the original source material had not been modified after original publication?
In which case your blog + archive.org would do the job just as well. Unless you need the additional security of the domain name (which you, Nick, don’t- your blog is more than well enough established).
An alternative (self promotion ahead) is to use the peer review process on http://www.voynich.ninja
Sorry for the typos! I better go to bed now.
I thought Nick made a good point when he mentioned that some preprint servers assign a DOI. Here’s a short def of the DOI:
“Digital Object Identifier is a unique number assigned to scholarly articles to ensure their International Standardization and for easier identification of published articles even if the metadata URL is changed. “
That might be valuable to some researchers who seek continuity together with visibility.
One of the most relevant points I have seen in this discussion is the term ‘slant’ from JKP. For publications, it makes a world of difference if one is writing in an area where there is little existing literature, or where there is a large amount of it.
This defines which options one has, and how likely the work is to be well received.
For blog posts this is almost no issue.
For the general question about publishing via pre-print servers, I would just say: why not? Go ahead. Many people are already doing it.
What I am not too sure of is if there are actually acceptance criteria.
Nick – Peter –
Is the ‘peer review’ at voynich.ninja, like the blogosphere listings, going to be open to everyone?
If not, then surely what Nick envisaged – an open invitation to specialists in various relevant fields, and the general population, would be impossible.
Not to be unkind, but members of a Voynich forum can’t be more than 0.00001% of the population (not excluding the Chinese).
hi ants…it is certainly all very nice. But it takes more time , of course. And then surely the scientist, academician and doctor will be successful. It also wants to work more and then it will also good. So far, it’s a great misery.