I suggest also Stevan Harnad: http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/ Best, Nico Il giorno 07/feb/08, alle ore 16:15, Michael Zimmer ha scritto:
Peter Suber has been one of the louder voices in the open access movement, and has a great blog, newsletter, and timeline on related issues:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/hometoc.htm
----- Michael Zimmer, PhD Microsoft Fellow, Information Society Project Yale Law School e: michael.zimmer@yale.edu w: http://michaelzimmer.org
On Feb 7, 2008, at 9:48 AM, Cristina Lopez wrote:
You're definitely not crazy, and in your blog entry I like that you make more specific suggestions for people to take action. An issue that is very much related: the obscenely high cost of journal subscriptions. For librarians, the rising cost of journal subscriptions is a big concern (and I would think those very expensive journals are the least accessible to people outside the university as well as the most strictly controlled in terms of copyright and distribution). From the perspective of sheer expense and budget pressures, the high cost of "locked-down" journals has many effects on scholarship in addition to access. Faced with tremendous budget pressure, libraries can't afford to subscribe to journals with great intellectual value but perhaps have lower circulation. The high cost of journals is linked to the commodification of scholarship, which affects quality. Commodification tends to result in homogenization, whether we're talking about food or media or scholarship.
Librarians and faculty working together are already addressing the issue of the high cost of journal subscriptions, and I believe their concerns greatly overlap with yours. (I found this <http://www.library.uiuc.edu/scholcomm/journalcosts.htm> page at the University of Illinois Library Web site, for example.) Maybe you wrote your blog entry in haste, but to me your list of suggested actions implies greater focus on actions of individuals, albeit individuals who belong to particular groups. So to your list of suggested action I would add that /organizing/ interested parties across campus and across institutions is very important. For example, while I think it's admirable for untenured faculty to take a stand, tenured faculty should take on a lot of the burden. (In my view this is exactly why tenure is so valuable--tenured faculty can raise a ruckus about all kinds of things.) And librarians and other staff have a lot to bring to the table, too.
Don't mourn. Organize! :)
Cris
Cristina Lopez, Ph.D. Digital Media Center, OIT University of Minnesota 212 Walter Library 117 Pleasant St. SE Minneapolis, MN 55455 612.626.6639
Please visit our Web site: http://dmc.umn.edu
danah boyd wrote:
At AOIR this year, we heard a lot about open-access journals and the future of academic publishing. These talks were extremely well- received. At the same time, I have a sneaking suspicion that most of us came back home and continued to publish with the same respected journals that we've always published with. I've certainly seen a lot of CFPs from folks wanting to publish issues in locked-down journals.
Today, an article of mine was finally published in Sage's Convergence series. I should be excited by this, but I'm actually quite depressed. While I'm lucky to be visible enough that some folks will find out about my article and ask me for a copy, most of the articles in that issue will barely get read because they are virtually inaccessible. Additionally, while scholars will ask me for my article, most policymakers and technologists will not, even though the article is probably more relevant to them than it is to you. I believe that the locked-down nature of this publishing regime silences academics while capitalizing off of our free labor at every turn. I think that this is unfair, unacceptable, and irresponsible.
Thus, since I'm a blogger, I wrote a ranty blog entry about the topic: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2008/02/06/ openaccess_is_t.html
In said ranty blog entry, I laid out a set of steps for how to proceed to make change. For example, I think that all tenured faculty have a responsibility to stop publishing in locked-down journals and help build up the reputations of open-access ones. (I even believe that those who flout journal's restrictions by publishing their pieces on their websites are failing future generations by not pushing for change to happen.) I offer steps for scholars, libraries, universities, tenure committees, disciplinary associations, and scholars at all stages.
In short, I'd like to see a boycott of locked-down academic journals. I think that it's particularly critical in our field since we are doing work that is relevant beyond the academy. I think that we need to stand in solidarity to stop this abuse of our labor and this silencing of our voices.
Am I crazy?
danah _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http:// aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http:// listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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