Dear all, I'm writing to provide an update on the two publishing sessions which are scheduled during the AoIR IR 9.0 conference in Copenhagen. The two sessions to which I refer are the panel titled "Scholarly Publishing in Transition: Issues, Challenges & Initiatives" scheduled on Wednesday, October 15 at 3:15 p.m. and the roundtable titled "Closed, Open or In-between? The Politics, Economics and Pragmatics of Academic Publishing" scheduled on Friday, October 17 at 9 a.m. There have been changes in session participants, and, following wonderful efforts toward cooperation, the two sessions are now linked to one another. For example, Nick Jankowski and Steve Jones (and perhaps other journal editors) will be roundtable participants for the "Closed, Open or In-between" session to be held on Friday morning. We also expect to extend discussion points that arise on Wednesday to the Friday roundtable. Please see below for information regarding each session. Because our "negotiations" have been so last-minute, we don't have available abstracts for Steve Jones' and Nick Jankowski's remarks on Friday. We are delighted that they've agreed to participate. Regards, Lisa Scholarly Publishing in Transition: Issues, Challenges & Initiatives Panel discussion at AoIR IR 9.0, Copenhagen Wednesday, October 15th, 2008, 3:15pm - 5:00pm http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=28753618322 Traditional venues for scholarly publishing are rapidly changing: established journals are moving online, online-only open access journals are proliferating, alternatives to ISI Impact Factor metrics are emerging, titles are experimenting with multimedia components, pre- print archives are being developed, and data repositories are achieving the status of publications. These and other issues are much in flux, but the rate and degree of change varies considerably between disciplines and scholarly cultures. This panel of journal editors will reflect on these changes: the issues and challenges involved, and the relevance of these developments for new media scholarship. Towards the end, the panel will open up a plenary session to discuss the implications of these developments on AoIR and its members. This discussion may include considering ways to facilitate a set of regular AoIR-themed special issues of journals. Panel members: Elizabeth A. Buchanan, co-editor of the International Journal of Internet Research Ethics Nick Jankowski, co-editor of New Media & Society Steve Jones, co-editor of New Media & Society Brian Loader, co-editor of Information, Communication & Society Mark Lorenzen, executive editor of Industry and Innovation Lisa McLaughlin, editor of Feminist Media Studies Susana Tosca, co-editor of Game Studies Initiated by Nick Jankowski and Steve Jones, this event is hosted by the AoIR IR 9.0 Writing and Publications Workshop. The workshop itself (until 3pm) is only open to registered workshop participants. However, this panel discussion is open to all. Workshop organisers: Marcus Foth, Queensland University of Technology, Australia Mia Consalvo, Ohio University, USA Greg Hearn, Queensland University of Technology, Australia Closed, open or in-between? The politics, economics and pragmatics of academic publishing Friday, October 17th, 2008, 9:00 am - 10:15 am Recent demands for a boycott of "closed-access" journals triggered a range of responses on lists (like the AoIR list) and the academic blogosphere. This roundtable discussion will offer a range of perspectives on open and closed publishing, and will try to give more nuance to any simple "closed/open" dichotomy. By including representatives from closed and open access journals, by looking at the economics of academic publishing, the processes involved in bringing journals to publication, and the complex relationship between research communities and different publishing models, the roundtable hopes to inform this discussion that directly concerns Internet researchers - in terms of ethics, professional practice and as a fundamental debate in our expanding field of inquiry. Axel Bruns: M/C Journal (www.media-culture.org.au/) was established in 1997 as an online-only, open-access journal, and since then has been able to develop a strong track record of scholarly publishing which remains accessible to wider audiences. The journal was designed from the start to harness the (then) emerging possibilities of independent online publishing, rather than primarily as a vehicle for boosting publication counts and career prospects, and continues to pursue that aim. Based in Australia but with a thoroughly international range of contributors and readers, M/C Journal may have been better able to operate outside the cut-throat tenure systems of British and American academia than similar projects elsewhere, but today it may also serve as an example for what is possible outside the commercial mainstream of scholarly publishing. Lisa McLaughlin: Within the terms of an either/or debate pitting traditional "locked-down" journals against those which are of the open access, online type, Feminist Media Studies, the Routledge/Taylor and Francis journal of which I am co-founding-editor, falls into the former category and therefore, one might surmise, is part of a publishing regime which actively works against the democratic sharing of ideas. As I support open access journal publishing, it is not my purpose to defend Feminist Media Studies within the terms of this debate but rather to address the too-simple equation of "open access publishing" with "democracy" and "locked-down journals" with "silencing." The stark language of this debate obscures a number of important considerations that associate "open access" and "locked-down" publishing. Neither of these forms of publishing are able to overcome basic circumstances in which "access" requires literacy, English is nearly the official language of publishing, and "online access" is meaningless to most persons in "lesser developed" countries. Additionally, it is necessary to understand the complex mechanisms that distinguish journals from one another, to consider, for example, questions including whether the journal is deemed elite merely because it is aligned with a scholarly association, what is the price to be paid for maintaining independence from associations and not being considered important enough to be cited in elite indexes such as ISI (thus dissuading authors from publishing in the journal), and what are the challenges of publishing out-of-the-mainstream content-for example, feminist and queer theory-regardless of whether the publication mode is open access or more traditional in operation.