Transformation through Integration: The Renaissance Knowledge Network (ReKN) and a Next Wave of Scholarly Publication

Abstract

This article reflects on the first six months of funded research by the Renaissance Knowledge Network (ReKN), focusing especially on the possibilities for interoperability and metadata aggregation of diverse digital projects, including but not limited to Early English Books Online—Text Creation Partnership; the Iter Bibliography; the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory; the Advanced Research Consortium network; Editing Modernism in Canada; the INKE working groups; and several other, smaller projects. This article also considers how internetworked resources and a holistic scholarly environment should incorporate and build on existing publication and markup tools. Key to this process of facilitating new forms of scholarly production are including possibilities for middle-state publication; exporting both primary and critical content; and forming new types of technologically facilitated scholarly communities.