Designing Collaboration and Pedagogy into a Network for Digital Scholarship and Public Deliberation

Mark Fisher, Chris Long, Andre Avilez, and Kris Klotz (Penn State University), Dean Rehberger and Bill Hart-Davidson (Michigan State University)

The Public Philosophy Journal (PPJ) is designed to be an open space for community discourse, deliberation, and action that is informed by scholarly standards while also being responsive to the interests of diverse publics. Among the unique features of the PPJ is the consciously collaborative and pedagogical approach it takes to the economy of scholarly production. By recognizing the collaborative aspects of scholarly research networks, leveraging digital technologies to maintain close connections across geographical distances, and promoting the kind of openness required for effective community deliberation, the PPJ will also provide the general public and future scholars with access to methods and stages of scholarly work that often remain closed off from all but experts and advanced initiates.

Central to the success of this ambitious project will be the design and implementation of features that enable, encourage, and reward contributions that evidence collegial interaction within the community site. In order to respond to the many challenges this presents we are drawing on the resources of a team that includes programmers, designers, graduate students, faculty, and administrators, across academic departments, centers, and colleges, at Penn State and at Michigan State. In this presentation, representatives from the team will outline the aims and methods involved in producing the Collegiality Index, situate this feature within the larger project of the PPJ, and discuss the forms of collaboration involved in making progress towards facilitating digital collaborations that respond to public needs and interests in ways that model excellences in public deliberation and scholarly communication.