Gary M. Klass
Department of Political Science
Illinois State University

Michael Margolis
Department of Political Science
University of Cincinnati

The Purpose and Function of PSRT-L:

PSRT-L, The Political Science Research and Teaching list is an Internet information and discussion forum serving 1,500 political scientists in fifty countries. PSRT-L provides an opportunity for political scientists to present their ideas and ongoing research for discussion, to consider the directions in which the discipline is advancing, and to encourage the dissemination of new concepts in research and teaching. Through this list, subscribers and editors may communicate current research and research interests; discuss new articles, books, papers, approaches, methods and tools of analysis; test new ideas and share comments and tips on teaching. In addition to ongoing discussions, the list posts H-Net’s announcements of job openings in political science, new journals, grant opportunities and upcoming conferences.

Think of PSRT-L as a kind of scholarly version of a local news-and-talk radio show. Instead of lost dogs, we help our "callers" find lost citations. Professional announcements and replies to various subscriber inquiries comprise the primary content of the list, but at anytime some issue or topic elicits a flurry of discussion. Declining enrollments in Political Science, grading standards, the used textbook market, and the political use of university Internet resources, have been among the most contentious issues in recent years.

Although PSRT-L is a moderated e-mail discussion list --all messages sent to the list are forwarded to one of the editors for approval before being distributed to each of the subscribers --the editors exert minimal control over discussion, primarily by intercepting commercial "spams" and messages not intended for general distribution.

For a discipline that often sits at "separate tables", PSRT-L can provide a meeting place for scholars representing diverse subfields to exchange ideas on common professional concerns. For political scientists not strongly attached to the discipline's research networks, PSRT-L provides a connection to the discipline at large. For a profession where communication is often limited by the delays of publication and convention schedules, PSRT-L provides for a timely distribution of important announcements.

The History of PSRT-L:

PSRT-L was created in the fall of 1990 by Bill Ball, then a graduate student at the University of Missouri-Columbia on their @Mizzou.bitnet server. The list had an initial subscriber base of about 250, which grew to about 1200 in the first year. In the first month of operation , began distribution of the "Law and Politics Book Review", then edited by Herbert Jacob, which had been distributed via a dial-in BBS at that point. The Review was a mainstay of PSRT-L in its first 4 years or so, until a separate LPBR-L book review list was created. Traffic on the list was about 10-20 messages a week in its early years--a bit more about teaching than research. The character and size of the list have been remarkably stable through the present time.

In the Fall of 1995, the executive board of the Computers and Multimedia section of the American Political Science Association agreed to become the official sponsor of PSRT-L.

By the Fall of 1996, the limitations of the @Mizzou.bitnet listserver had begun to pose serious constraints on the operation of the list. The subscriber list had become cluttered with duplicate and bad addresses, the University of Missouri was due to switch their discussion lists to a new server, and we were unsure about the continuing status of Bill Ball's graduate student e-mail account (Ball had received his Ph.D. and gone on to The College of New Jersey). The subscriber list of 1650 accounts would later be shown to have had nearly 200 inactive, duplicate, or otherwise "bad" addresses. With no official connection to the University of Missouri and the server receiving only minimal support for the University computer services, the list could have crashed at any time.

In December of 1996, after six months of negotiations, PSRT-L became a of member of H-NET, concurrent with an agreement between H-Net and the APSA. H-Net provides PSRT-L a stable home, a fast server, and competent technical assistance with the management of the list. The arrangement required the creation of an editorial board, consisting initially of the members of the Computers and Multimedia section executive board.

Shortly thereafter, the Undergraduate Education section of the APSA and the computers and Multimedia section established H-Teachpol, a discussion list devoted exclusively to political science teaching, with Bill Ball and Joseph Cammarano, serving as editors. The proposal to create a separate discussion forum for political science teaching raised a number of concerns, including the overlapping mandates of PSRT-L and H-Teachpol and the prospect that a separate teaching forum might "ghettoize" teaching. On the other hand, H-Teachpol offered the opportunity for more intensive discussions of teaching than could take place on PSRT-L and the development of a book review medium for texts and instructional technology. In addition, it was hoped that the list would help invigorate the Undergraduate Education section which had been in need of members.

About H-Net

H-Net is an international consortium of scholars in the humanities and social sciences that creates and coordinates electronic networks, using a variety of media, and with a common objective of advancing humanities and social science teaching and research. H-Net was created to provide a positive, supportive, egalitarian environment for the friendly exchange of ideas and scholarly resources.

Among H-Net's most important activities is its sponsorship of free electronic, interactive newsletters ("lists") edited by some 200 scholars in North America, Europe, Africa, and the Pacific. Subscribers and editors communicate through electronic mail messages sent to their particular list. These messages can be saved, discarded, downloaded to a local computer, copied, printed out, or relayed to someone else. Otherwise, the lists are all public, and can be quoted and cited with proper attribution. The logs of all messages are permanently saved and can easily be searched.

The goals of H-NET lists are to enable scholars to easily communicate current research and teaching interests; to discuss new approaches, methods and tools of analysis; to share information on electronic databases; and to test new ideas and share comments on the literature in their fields. Announcements and calls for papers can be communicated in more detailed and more timely fashion on H-Net than though other media available to most scholars. The H-Net lists feature dialogues in their disciplines. H-Net list editors commission original reviews of books, articles, software, and museum exhibits. (To get all of these reviews, subscribe to H-Net's H-REVIEW discussion list). Some post syllabi, course outlines, class handouts, bibliographies, listings of new sources, guides to online resources, and reports on new software, data sets, cd-roms and World Wide Web sites. Subscribers write in with questions, comments, and reports, and often with mini-essays of a page or two. H-net's weekly Job Guide lists jobs in the social sciences and humanities worldwide.

H-Net also integrates its electronic lists with a powerful and comprehensive site on the World Wide Web. The site offers centralized subscription information, direct mail access to the list editors, list archives, links to related resources, and a complete archive of H-Net media and book reviews all linked to a unified, searchable database. The site is also the home base of H-Net's projects on multimedia teaching and book reviewing. It is accessible through any web browser program. Visitors should point their web browsers to: http://h-net.msu.edu

PSRT-L Organizational Structure

Editors/Moderators and Editorial Board:

PSRT-L's daily activities are managed by three editors, Michael Gizzi, Gary Klass, and Michael Margolis, who act primarily as moderators. Its long-term policies are developed by the PSRT-L editorial board. Board members referee incoming articles, reviews, and teaching materials; establish basic subscription restrictions and policy; advise the editors/moderators on disputes among moderators and subscribers; monitor the list and make active contributions to discussion; and serve as the subscribers' voice in H-Net affairs. You are encouraged to contact any of the editorial board members, listed below, with ideas and concerns about PSRT- L.

Editorial Board, PSRT-L:

Bill Ball, The College of New Jersey
Robert Brookshire, James Madison University
David Donald, Glasgow Caledonian University
Steve Frantzich, U.S. Naval Academy
Michael Gizzi, Mesa State College
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University
Gary Klass, Illinois State University
Cecilia Manrique, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Anne Permaloff, Auburn University at Montgomery
Kent Portney, Tufts University
Marc Triebwasser, Central Connecticut State University
George Watson, Arizona State University

The Relationship of PSRT-L to other Lists:

As a member of H-Net, PSRT-L maintains a formal relationship with the other lists in the network. The editors serve on the H-Net board of editors which elects the H-Net executive council. The editors often re-post general announcements from various H-Net lists to PSRT-L, including the political science section of the H-Net weekly job listings.

H-net currently hosts several other lists directly related to political science, including H-POL (U.S. Political History), H-STATE (history of the welfare state), and H-Teachpol. The Law and Politics Book Review list, LPBR-L is also associated with H-Net. The H-Teachpol list, sponsored by the Computers and Multimedia and the Undergraduate Education sections of the APSA, was created in the Spring of 1997 to provide a specialized discussion forum for political science teaching.

Under the recent agreement between H-Net and the APSA, H-net has agreed to host additional political science lists and several are now being developed. H-Net also provides space and editorial assistance for APSA websites <http://www.apsanet.org/>.

Other APSA sections sponsor discussion lists not affiliated with H-Net or PSRT-L, although the editors and subscribers often cross-post messages among the lists. These sections include: State Politics, Law and Courts, Race and Ethnic Politics, and Political Methodology. For current listing of APSA section-sponsored discussion lists see: <http://www.ilstu.edu/depts/polisci/psrt-l/official.htm>. For a more comprehensive listing of discussion lists related to politics and political science see the "Political Science List of Lists," <http://www.its.ilstu.edu/gmklass/listsrch.qry>.

 

 

 

 

 

Table 1: Other Political Science discussion lists:

Job Listings.

One PSRT-L editor is assigned the responsibility of posting the political science section of the weekly H-Net job guide, a listing of new additions to the H-Net Job archive. The full text of the Job guide may be viewed on the H-Net website: <http://h-net2.msu.edu/jobs/>. The Guide lists about a dozen new political science teaching positions each week as well as a number of non-teaching positions in related fields.

The service is not associated with the formal APSA position announcement service and departments belonging to the APSA are still expected to list position openings with the APSA, nor are position announcements sent to the APSA necessarily included in the H-Net listing. Position announcements sent to PSRT-L are generally not posted directly to the list, but are forwarded to the Job guide. Announcements may be submitted directly to the Job guide through the H-net website, or by e-mail to Hjobs@H-net.msu.edu.

The Tasks of Managing a Scholarly Discussion List

PSRT-L is co-edited by Michael Gizzi, Mesa State University (mgizzi@mesastate.edu), Gary Klass, Illinois State University (gmklass@ilstu.edu), and Michael Margolis (Michael.Margolis@uc.edu), University of Cincinnati.

The editors serve two-year renewable terms, with the approval of the H-Net Executive Committee and APSA, and rotate their duties. The current editor is identified in all messages coming from the list. The editors solicit postings, assist people in subscribing and setting up options, handle routine inquiries, and consolidate some postings. They also solicit and post newsletter-type information (calls for conferences, for example, or listings of sessions at conventions) and filter out extraneous messages (such as requests for subscription) and items that do not belong on PSRT-L. The editors will not intentionally alter the meaning of messages without the author's permission.

Only rarely do the editors not approve a message of substantive content posted by a political scientist. Discussion list editors learn very quickly that heavy-handed attempts to control what goes out on a list are usually counter-productive, and often result in extended and uninformative discussions about the evil of censorship and scope of individual rights under the First Amendment. In cases where an editor has a concern about the content of a particular message, a cordial request to the sender asking that the sender reconsider the message usually proves sufficient.

Ancillary services: archives and web page

The PSRT-L website <http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~psrt/> contains a complete set of instructions for subscribing to PSRT-L and modifying subscription settings, the list's "welcome" message. Links are provided to a searchable message archive maintained by H-Net. A separate archive provides links to directories of messages on some of the more interesting PSRT-L message threads:

Gary King proposal on replication and verification (9/95)

Enrollments in Political Science (5/96)

Methods courses\statistical packages (3/96 ....)

Web sites, mailing lists and Internet announcements (3/96 ...)

The Virtual University\distance education (7/96 ....)

Fiction in Political Science courses (8/96 ....)

Political Use of University Internet resources ( 8/96 ....)

Grading Standards (4/97 ....)

How to Participate

Managing your subscription: The L-soft Listserv software permits PSRT-L subscribers to modify a variety of subscription options with commands sent to the Listserv@H-net.msu.edu address. The most frequently used is the "Digest" option, by which subscribers receive an indexed compilation of each day's messages instead of individual postings. PSRT-L has not implemented the keyword subscription option that permits readers to specify the subject matter of messages. It is recommended that subscribers take advantage of their e-mail software's message filtering options to automatically sort PSRT-L to a designated mailbox. Filter on the "from:" message header, which always begins with the text: "PSRT-L Editor .

Posting Messages: "Netiquette."

The tone and content of PSRT-L depend directly on subscribers. The editors strive to encourage lively, informal, productive discussion and exchange of information. To that end, we ask that contributions be composed with some consideration for the needs of a busy audience of scholars; some subscribers' e- mail access is billed to them by the amount of incoming mail, so that long postings can become expensive at times. Please sign all mail to the list -- the editors will delay posting until authorship is confirmed.

When editors anticipate that an inquiry is likely to elicit a large number of redundant responses, we encourage the inquirer to have replies sent directly to his or her e-mail address for compilation. The inquirer can then post the compilation of responses to the list. Examples of such inquiries are requests for help in selecting readings or materials for a course to which someone has been assigned to teach on short notice.

Automatic e-mail replies to PSRT-L messages will always generate a message addressed back to the PSRT-L list or (rarely) to the PSRT-L editor (polpsrt@H-net.msu.edu). Most PSRT-L messages, however, also contain a "mailto:" link back to the e-mail address of the original sender (this is feature unique to PSRT-L). With most Windows and Macintosh e-mail programs (Eudora, Pegasus, Netscape, MS Outlook), double-clicking on the "mailto:" link will automatically generate a blank message to the address indicated.

Because of the limitations of the L-Soft Listserv software, PSRT-L configuration, and our subscriber's own e-mail resources, messages posted to PSRT-L should be in simple ASCII format. Messages containing documents, files, and images attached to or embedded in messages will not be approved by the editors. Stylized text (an option, for example, on the Eudora e-mail program) will not survive the PSRT-L software and will result in a message containing unintelligible programming code.

Prospects for the Future:

Under its agreement with the APSA, H-Net has agreed to host additional discussion lists for APSA organized sections. Other disciplinary groups or individuals not affiliated with a specific organized section might also wish to establish a list under H-NET auspices. An H-Net discussion list will require at least two editors and an editorial board. Ideally, a discussion list should also designate a book review editor and maintain a scholarly paper archive.

It is possible that changes in Internet technology could affect the PSRT-L distribution medium in the near future. As WWW applications increasingly incorporate functions similar to e-mail, the distinction between e-mail and the Web is becoming less clear. For classroom Internet discussion, Web-based discussion forums already offer many advantages over e-mail-based discussion lists. It is now possible to "subscribe" to a website, to scan lists of topics and sub topics, to select particular items to read or discard, and to post replies back to the website.

In a few years text-based mailing lists like PSRT-L may have run their course, replaced by more sophisticated websites that provide fancy fonts, hypertext links, graphics, pictures, sounds, and movement. Subscribers will employ software that sends "smart agents" to search and retrieve the information most relevant to their current interests. Until that time, however, we expect that PSRT-L will continue to provide a useful medium through which political scientists can share their ideas about teaching and research. We anticipate that H-Net will be at the forefront in developing these applications and that PSRT-L will evolve into a new medium.