As described in Abbott & Williams, an editor needs to decide whether he or she makes use of documentary (noncritical) editing or critical editing. With documentary editing, the editor can present a text through a diplomatic reprint, which preserves only the text such as the wording, punctuation, spelling, etc. but also may present notes. If the editor chooses to produce documentary editions, he or she can present the text in facsimile, which maintains the physical detail of the document, or use genetic or synoptic transcription, which refer to editions that offer numerous documentary texts of a work. Additional formats of documentary editions are literal transcription on facing pages, transcription of various states in parallel columns, and presenting various formats of documentary editions electronically in databases and digital archives. Critical editing in contrast gives the editor the choice to incorporate other readings from documentary texts or editorial emendations. In addition, an editor has to determine the authorial intention of a reading and whether or not the author’s intentions might have changed over time, so that editors may have to reconstruct multiple texts. Critical editors can construct a text based on the intentions of more than the author (copyeditors, proofreaders, etc.), and have to decide to what extent their concept of authorship can be broaden, taking into consideration the nonauthorial. 

Increasingly using electronic editing is shaping future knowledge in a field in that it will open up processes of editing to more groups of people. With more digital editions and projects in scholarly publishing, collaborative processes will allow classrooms to participate in the edition process, and enables sharing their knowledge. In one of my American studies classes last semester, we annotated a digital edition of The Negro and the Nation on the Manifold platform. By bringing our voices into the text, we were able to create a community dialogue and bring interdisciplinary perspectives into the field of American studies.

When talking about academic work, editors have to make a lot of choices that will determine how the work will be received by the public, how the text will be read, and how it will shape future knowledge in a field. The editor will gather material to go with the text for example journals, biographies, letters, etc. to complement the work. This will shape how knowledge in the field is received by giving some information and excluding other. By doing this, if the work is used for future academic work or reference, the information that has been excluded will continue to stay neglected and what has been included will gain more importance, which will shape how a field in academia is being talked about. In the past, there has been a lot of valuable information that “disappeared” because editors chose to not include it.

On Electronic Scholarly Editions by Kenneth M. Price, we learned about the benefits and drawbacks of having old academic work transferred into electronic sources to make it more available to the public. One of the drawbacks is that electronic work may be manipulated by people who are not experts on the field, which may have an impact on how that work is being treated and the accuracy of what is being transferred. This is done because the cost of the process is high and in most cases, this new electronic material will be available to the public for free. On the other hand, one of the biggest benefits of making academic work electronic will be that it can be expanded in ways that cannot be expanded by only having it as print. For example, scholars can add images, extra links, videos, etc. into the text. This will greatly impact how future knowledge is shaped in a field because the information that is given to the public will get expanded.