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Principles of Online Publication
Richard A. Koenigsberg
online publishing
  • Scholarship is not separate from the flux of reality. Scholarship is contained within reality. Scholarship participates in the fluidity of reality.
  • Online writing does not allow for knowledge of an ending. Like real life, things are constantly moving and changing. Conclusions are tentative. Once an idea is published, it produces change in the mind of the reader, generating new ideas leading to new conclusions.
  • Granularity is the central concept of online publication: smaller bits or bites of information. One cannot say everything at once. One says a little bit with each publication, allowing for the transformation of consciousness. Each bite of information builds upon the previous bite. Publication is a flow of information, not separate from existence.
  • A platform is the place on the web where publications are presented. Platform allows one to be heard. It is the locus of visibility.
  • It's an attention economy. Without attention, a writer is nothing: creating an audience for an author's work is the essence of publishing. An author's work must be known before anything else can happen.
  • Library of Social Science is a discourse community: bringing together the world's finest scholars.
  • The essence of publishing is to get people to read what an author has written. The purpose of writing is to produce psychic change in a reader. The purpose of reading is to generate psychic change within oneself.
  • A publication is not simply an (aesthetically pleasing) object. Publications are designed to impact upon human beings and to transform consciousness and the psyche. Ideas need to be re-iterated. They can't be presented just once. Important ideas need to be presented again and again and again—until they penetrate into the mind of a reader and find a resting place there.
  • One technique of online publication is to produce short bites—that eventually become part of a series of messages. Short bites bring people from one psychic place to another.