Subject: Submission to Perspectives of New Music From: John Greschak <john@greschak.com> Date: 12/11/04 4:39 PM To: pnm@u.washington.edu Please consider the attached article (olbachvs.pdf) for publication in Perspectives of New Music. Thank you, John Greschak Subject: Re: Submission to Perspectives of New Music From: Music Department <pnm@u.washington.edu> Date: 12/14/04 7:37 PM To: John Greschak <john@greschak.com> Dear John Greschak: We acknowledge receipt of your manuscript, "An Open Letter to JS Bach on Visual-Spatial Music." It has been forwarded to the Editors for their consideration. Thank you for submitting it to Perspectives of New Music. It will receive several readings and we will be back in touch with you. The jurying process often takes three months to complete--sometimes even a little longer. We must require that we have first right to any manuscript which we consider. If your manuscript is currently being considered by another publication, please contact us immediately. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be responsible for writing to obtain any copyright permissions required for reproduction of music examples and other material. If you have any questions do not hesitate to call our office. Best wishes, [Assistant Editor's Name] Assistant Editor Perspectives of New Music pnm@u.washington.edu (206) 543-0196 http://www.perspectivesofnewmusic.org Subject: Perspectives of New Music From: [Co-editor's name and e-mail address] Date: 8/2/05 10:22 AM To: john@greschak.com Dear John Greschak, We have read your paper, "An Open Letter to JS Bach on Visual-Spatial Music" submitted for publication in Perspectives of New Music, and I regret telling you that we have decided not to publish it. Comments from one of the readers are given below after my signature. In any case, thank you for your submission. Sincerely, [Co-editor's name] Co-editor, Perspectives of New Music [Co-editor's contact information] -------------- Reader 1: Cute, but too self-indulgent for my tastes. I'm also worried the author doesn't know much music. I don't think you should publish this. I can place all my work in the public domain, which is my preference. I did not expect to receive any response to this submission. To me, refereed journals are an obstacle to the free flow and development of ideas. My first response is usually to say that my work is published because it is on my website. In such a case, one might expect to receive an explicit rejection rather than no response...Once in a while, one of my friends or acquaintances who work in academia will make the suggestion that I get the articles I have written "published"......Granted, when Perspectives of New Music was founded over forty years ago, it served a purpose...Despite this, my expectations continued to be low; I expected I would never hear from them again......Specifically, I am not famous......It filled a gap...With this approach, there are no editors to prevent the publication of something I write that might be out of step with the status quo......After having gone through this process, I feel even more strongly that the journal Perspectives of New Music, and more generally, refereed journals, should be bypassed by authors......Being that I am open to experimentation and exploration, last winter I made an exception......I believe there are many ways (one of which might be exemplified by this essay itself) by which one could achieve the same result through direct web publication, assuming of course that the readership uses the web in their work...... Now that the World Wide Web exists and a growing number of individuals know how to utilize it, I expect that over time, more authors will experiment with direct publication of their work. They have been included here under the fair use exemption of the U.S. Copyright Law. After completing a letter titled An Open Letter to JS Bach on Visual-Spatial Music, I considered the notion of submitting it to a journal; in particular, the journal Perspectives of New Music. Second, it would be an interesting experiment. To reduce faculty workload, one could employ graduate students in the review process to the same extent they are now used for refereed journals. My work can be found easily by interested parties using a search engine. At first I thought I would leave it at that. That was the case until a few days ago when I received the following message from one of the three co-editors of the journal: [A system could be developed whereby one's works would be evaluated after publication rather than before it. At that time, there were few opportunities for composers and theoreticians to publish their ideas.] First, I felt it might be of interest to their readership. In accordance with the instructions for authors given on the homepage of the journal, I submitted the article by e-mail. With the freedom offered by this approach, writers will explore unusual styles and invent new forms of exposition and expression. (Well, by doing so one could bring a particular idea to the attention of the readership.) By that, of course, they mean I should submit my work to a journal. I suppose this is because an individual can publish almost anything they write on their website. Over the years, some interesting work has appeared in it. Since the work does not get compartmentalized under any particular academic discipline, individuals in all fields have an equal chance of discovering it. Since my work is available in a centralized location, visitors can shift their attention among related works of mine quite easily. So ended my experiment. So I decided to explore that possibility in the context of this essay. One might think this would create additional work for faculties. I had two primary reasons for doing this. But this will only happen in the case when the article is not rejected for publication. And instead, suppose they posted all their articles on their own websites. I have no loyalty to any member of the staff. As part of a peer review process, reviewers could examine all of one's publications, giving each item equal consideration, including those that were published directly (rather than in a refereed journal). I fail to see the danger in that. It was an outlet for some new thoughts about music. As I understand it, in determining whether a given faculty member should be promoted, institutions give substantially more attention to and credit for publications that have appeared in a refereed journal rather than on one's own website. Thus I believe it is unnecessary to submit one's work to a journal for this purpose. That is, I haven't done so for over twenty years, since completing my PhD. For authors who work in academia the journals continue to be relevant. And so on. For example they might contain more errors. To me, the term publish just means make available to the public. On the other hand, I believe those works that appear to be, or indeed turn out to be significant would be scrutinized, as needed. I believe the importance of refereed journals in academia will decline naturally over time. My expectations were less than that because on many occasions I have received no response to an e-mail message or letter sent to an individual in academia or an academic institution associated with music. Imagine what might happen if all faculty members stopped submitting their work to such journals henceforth. However, even if it were rejected, I was fairly certain that through the review process many individuals (e.g. editors, reviewers and students) would read it who might not discover it too quickly on the web. While the content, style and length of the article might make it more well-suited to publication in such a journal than most of my other creations, it is still relatively unusual. Isn't it relatively inconsequential if an inconsequential work is flawed? The role these journals play for evaluation in academia could be replaced by some other mechanism that does not filter ideas. And since the work is in the public domain, it would not be possible to assign the copyright to the journal, which as I understand is normally required. It is reasonable to believe that if more emphasis is placed on direct publication, some authors might publish more articles than they would have submitted to journals under the old system that stressed journal publications. Simultaneously, I published the article on my website, and placed it in the public domain. Academia would be forced to develop alternative ways to evaluate the quality of one's work. With web publication, works such as my annotated bibliographies can be updated frequently. For example, a faculty member's publications could be examined at the time at which one is up for contract renewal, promotion or tenure. Further, I believed they would be unwilling to take a risk with an article such as this because the journal and its staff would get nothing in return from me for publishing it. Here is a copy of my message: I believe that most of what is published, be it in refereed journals or not, has been and will continue to be of little consequence to the development of thought. But these days, why would anyone submit their work to a journal such as this when an author can publish all that he writes on his own website, as a direct publication? The article I submitted to Perspectives of New Music can be found at: An Open Letter to JS Bach on Visual-Spatial Music. Still, given the advantages of direct web publication, I ask, Is there any need to value journal publications more than direct publications? Certainly it is possible that without referees, the average quality of articles would go down. So that is what I have done. In such cases, the workload could be reduced to a manageable size by requiring that the particular author specify some abbreviated list of their articles to be used for review purposes. Ultimately, I believe this change will lead to a more unlimited flow of ideas that are presented in an interesting way. I can publish a given work immediately after I have completed it. But in the days that followed, I began to think perhaps something more might come from this project. I was curious to see what would happen if I submitted this work to a journal. It is my understanding that the two e-mail messages sent to me by Perspectives of New Music are copyrighted material, for which the copyright holder is Perspectives of New Music. I don't submit my work to journals. Errors in such works would be catalogued and published. There is at least one other reason why one would submit work to a journal. I believe this is unwise because with this approach, articles and ideas that might otherwise be made available to the public can be denied publication by a small group of editors and readers. There are several reasons for this. If I happen to be in a particular mood that day, I might go on to say: Many writers continue to use such journals as the sole mechanism to disseminate their ideas. For reasons I shall discuss shortly, I did not expect it to be accepted for publication in the journal. My expectations were low. And corrected versions would be published subsequently. The works never go "out of print". Instead, in most cases I believe it would only shift the current work faculty members do as reviewers to a different point in the process; from before a work is published to after it is published (and at the time when an individual is being evaluated). It was analogous to the scientific journals of the day. I believe it is inevitable that refereed journals will become less significant. Shortly thereafter, I received the following message to confirm that my submission had been received: But perhaps steps could be taken to accelerate the process a bit. Many more people have access to my work on the web than would in a printed journal. Thus I felt it would be a stretch for the editors to accept it.