Lectures are for today…Texts are Forever
We are 21 years into 21st century; an era of ‘Twee-ting’, ‘Skyping’, ‘Face-booking’, ‘You tubing’, ‘Googling ‘‘On lining’, ‘Inter netting’ and ‘Social Media’. Hitherto, is fostering 17th century literacy forms irrelevant? Yes, I believe. Why? Because illiterates rarely use 21st century literacies. It is only those who have developed 17th century kind of literacy that can master 21st century savvies and literary forms. Hence, it goes without saying that earlier era literacy methods and literacy forms are not outdated, but only updated… Consequently, we in the Meliora team, believe that Meliora, A Journal of Interdisciplinary Perspectives, is as much pertinent, relevant and appropriate as it could have been in any time of history.
Meliora,…is an academic journal, a form of publication dating back to 1665. Surprisingly, academic journals have not evolved greatly since it was invented 355 years ago. The first issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, a brainchild of Henry Oldenburg and Robert Hooke, was published in 1665. Since then, journals have digitised and now offer greater opportunities for research communication. This is precisely because the role of journals remains more or less the same. Faraday Michael after analysing the earlier journals has stated that the style, format, and content of the present journals vastly resemble that of the first- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society- of 1665. It is because the basic functions of the journals remain the same: Registration, Certification, Dissemination and Archiving.
Registration of the author’s claim to the work: authors want recognition that they got there first[
Certification, usually by peer review, that the research was conducted properly: readers need to trust what they are reading and authors want their claims accepted;
Dissemination: authors want to reach the right audience and readers want access to the material;
Archiving: both the author and reader want a permanent public record of the work that can be found and cited.
Present-day journals offer more than a publishing platform and invite researchers to become more engaged with the published research. Journal publishing provides services for authors and readers, often built around access to journals: to social networks and file-sharing services for scientists, post-publication evaluation, data sharing, text and data mining, and mobile access and application. Thus, journal publishing is well on way to updating without being outdated.
As an academic institution, SFS College, Aalo, situated in remote India, and we in the Meliora team are cognizant of the importance of journals in academic life. Journals have become deeply embedded in academic infrastructure. They provide a means of communication and a permanent record. They are central to career paths, including both funding and appointments. Journal articles are the final output of most research, and a researcher’s performance and productivity are judged largely on the number of publications and where they appear. Author surveys have confirmed that ‘furthering the career’ and ‘future funding’ are important motivations in publishing their work in journals.
The academic journal is still perceived as an important and robust method of publishing despite innovations in communication (blogs, monographs and other creative ways of communicating in the 21st century). There are an estimated publication of 29,000 active scholarly peer reviewed journals and about 2 million articles a year. The number of articles published each year and the number of journals have both grown steadily for more than two centuries, by about 3% and 3.5% per year respectively.
Authors may publish for a variety of reasons and the type of article can vary substantially. A journal is often perceived to comprise research articles but there are a wide variety of articles that serve the purpose of communication and provide valuable information to the community. News, editorials, letters, reviews, commentaries, images, audio clips, and other forms of ‘article’ can be equally valuable to researchers, and can also be found in journals.
Hence Meliora, A Journal of Interdisciplinary Perspectives to join in this stream of sharing knowledge among the researchers, academicians, authors and writers. The team behind this effort is convinced that we are updating ourselves so as never to be outdated.
On behalf of the team, the Chief Editor wishes everyone success and reminds researchers to take the pain of penning their knowledge. Writing is tougher than speaking, but remember writings are perpetual, while speaking is provisional.
Spoken Words are Transient… Written Words are Permanent
The Chief Editor,
Dr Fr Jose Karipadathu M.A; B.Ed