Scientific Publishing

PhD-FLSHASE-2014-19 The Faculty of Language and Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education DISSERTATION Defense held on 17/10/2014 in Luxembourg to obtain the degree of DOCTEUR DE L’UNIVERSITÉ DU LUXEMBOURG EN SCIENCES DE L'ÉDUCATION by Philippe BLANCA Born on 22 February1970 in Châtillon sur Chalaronne (France) THE SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL MULTIMODALITY Dissertation defense committee Dr Ch. Max, Dissertation supervisor Professor, Université du Luxembourg Dr Ch. Schommer, Chairman Professor, Université du Luxembourg Dr P. Hitzler, Vice-chairman Professor, Write State University, Dayton, USA Dr G. Kress, Committee member Professor, University of London Dr P. Caire, Committee member Professor, Université du Luxembourg The Scientific Journal in the Age of Digital Multimodality Page 1 Preface It is common to compare the process of completing a PhD dissertation with a journey. This is no different in the present case. From a personal point of view, this dissertation is an attempt to put together ideas and experiences coming from various contexts I was involved in over the past 15 years. In particular, my involvement as a member of the editorial board of the French multidisciplinary journal Le Croquant founded by Prof. Michel Cornaton in 1987 is pivotal. The present work is also the result of reflections related to readings in various domains (from poetry and literature to social sciences and philosophy) and discussions in connection with the organisation of scientific conferences fully integrating artistic events, such as music concerts, painting exhibitions and plays. Finally, these pages are the result of a long process of transformation of an initial question that has arisen from lively discussions and debates with friends – each of us, according to her or his preferences, celebrating or defending the unique values of words, sounds, drawings, images or photographs etc. The substance of that initial question was formulated in the kitchen of a small apartment in Paris more than ten years ago: how is it possible to use both words and images in such a way that words are not perceived as a legend of a picture or conversely in such a way that images are not approached as a mere illustration of the textual part of a document. If that question can obviously be broadened and includes sounds, colours and other modes of communication, I would first like to emphasise one point: after spending months trying to deal with issues linked to multimodality, I came to the conclusion that, except in specialised circles, the question of the interplay of semiotic resources in a multimodal composition tends to be oversimplified due to the abundance of visual and aural distractions resulting from the daily use of social media and other multimedia tools. Multimedia, from our viewpoint, is often the tree hiding the forest of multimodality and its concrete enactment in formats that are still in an experimental stage, especially regarding scientific publishing. This work is fully original and has not been subject to other forms of publication, except a conference paper that appeared in the proceedings of the 6th international symposium on genre studies (Blanca 2011). Large parts of this Page 2 dissertation, however, have been discussed at various stages of its drafting, particularly with my supervisor Charles Max who gave me the opportunity to develop and complete this research project. It goes without saying that the former DICA research group and its members provided a disorienting but always stimulating forum of discussion: by convening people with different academic and professional backgrounds from many horizons, it has contributed to make some of the statements of that work more substantive. I do not to forget the members of my supervisory committee – Gudrun Ziegler, Pascal Hitzler and Christoph Schommer. Each of them stimulated me in their own way to make significant parts of this dissertation more explicit. A dissertation is the result of a complex network of influences that are sometimes difficult to capture precisely. The title of this work echoes the title of a previous study published in 2007: The scientific article in the age of digitization (Owen Mackenzie 2007). Long discussions with Markus Molz have had a deep impact on some of the views and arguments that I explore in this work. Natalia Duruš has expertly contributed to improve my English – though any remaining imprecision and vagueness are exclusively mine. My colleagues Ju-youn Song, Claudia Albanese and Susanne Backes have been my daily energy. At another level, colleagues from the Faculty or from other universities have provided meaningful insights, sometimes without even realizing it. A series of lectures organised in 2012 within the context of the former LCMI research unit about multilingualism and multimodality have allowed me to meet researchers in person whose work has been of direct benefit to these pages: thanks to Ingrid de Saint-Georges, they are no longer mere references in a bibliography. One of the first challenges to be met in the process of completing this research was to find appropriate candidates that corresponded - to plagiarise the title of a book – to what I was talking about when I was talking about multimodal scientific journals. Despite very busy agendas, a few editors and managing editors of the still few existing multimodal academic journals accepted to answer some of my questions, in particular Cheryl E. Ball (Kairos), Moshe Pritsker (JoVE), Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg (Southern Spaces). I consider that they belong to a handful of individual representatives who are acting as cultural change agents. Page 3 They contribute to promote multimodal scholarly publishing and to make it a tangible reality, in full respect of scientific requirements and standards, as they explained to me in detail. Finally, the University of Luxembourg with its mixture of multiculturalism and multilingualism - from the official French, English and German to the national Luxembourgish, without forgetting the Portuguese - has turned out to be a perfect place to explore the multiple modes of communication and multimodality. I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to undertake a research project in such an environment thanks also to dedicated people taking care of daily needs and allowing me to keep my feet on the ground while I was dealing with the conceptual subtleties. I will not forget that this work would not have been possible without the precious presence and support of family and friends. Page 4 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................. 8 1. MULTIMODAL SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING: AN EQUATION TO SOLVE ........................... 13 1.1. DEFINITION OF KEY TERMS AND RESEARCH PURPOSE ...................................................................... 13 1.2. SITUATING THE STUDY IN THE RESEARCH LANDSCAPE ..................................................................... 18 1.3. RESEARCH PROBLEM AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS .............................................................................. 23 1.4. METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................................................................... 29 2. THE 'DIGITAL MULTIMODALITY' TERM OF THE EQUATION ....................................... 32 2.1. DESIGNING A MULTIMEDIA ARTEFACT .................................................................................................. 32 2.1.1. The Notion of Design ......................................................................................................................... 33 2.1.2. Related Notions in Various Research Areas ............................................................................ 36 2.2. ASSEMBLING SEMIOTIC RESOURCES TOGETHER ................................................................................. 42 2.2.1. The Notion of Semiotic Resources ............................................................................................... 43 2.2.2. The Intra-, Inter- and Trans-modal Instances of Multimodality ................................... 48 2.3. A CONTINUAL PROCESS OF RESEMIOTIZATION .................................................................................... 56 2.3.1. The Notion of Resemiotization ..................................................................................................... 56 2.3.2. From the Field to the Lab and from the Lab to the Screen ............................................... 58 3. THE 'SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING' TERM OF THE EQUATION ............................................ 62 3.1. DESIGNING A SCIENTIFIC MULTIMEDIA ARTEFACT ............................................................................ 63 3.1.1. The Notion of Format and the Research Article Genre ...................................................... 64 3.1.2. The Digital Characteristics of the Scientific Research Article ......................................... 68 3.2. MAKING USE OF SEMIOTIC RESOURCES FOR SCIENTIFIC PURPOSES ............................................... 73 3.2.1. The Stability of the Scientific Research Article Genre ........................................................ 74 3.2.2. Visuals and Other Semiotic Resources in Scientific Communication ........................... 78 3.3. EVALUATING AND DISSEMINATING SCIENTIFIC MULTIMEDIA ARTEFACTS .................................... 80 3.3.1. Publicity, Trustworthiness, Accessibility

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