I'm an evil senior professor of the sort that has been denounced by some list posters. I referee, edit, have published -- and I read. Here are some thoughts: 1. Evil senior professors have more -- rather than less -- scope to publish where they want. So they don't have a vested interest in squelching journals. I don't think somewhat paranoid discussion about what evil senior professors want and do helps analysis. 2. Printing and mailing costs are not the only costs of journals. A journal that I helped start pays the equivalent of a Research Assistant's salary to the Managing Editor; it has to arrange for reduced teaching load for the editor; and there are some computer and office costs. In short, this is $30-$40K per year, and it is damn hard to find universities to cough up that money. Subscription fees might, though. I do know we are working hard to find a few qualified editors in another journal who are willing -- and whose universities will help. Unpaid volunteers work as referees and advisory editors -- I do a lot of that -- but would rarely last at the daily grind of constant submission, referee-finding, and editing. Treasure such people, and reward them, either with released time or with some salary. 3. The real problem is readers need filtering. Not eveyone wants to read everything. Journals serve as a filtering mechanism. Sometimes they make mistakes, but as a frequent editor, I am usually gladdened by the rough consensus among reviewers. As someone who has solicited pieces from all-comers and then filtered for publication, I know how much is not ready for prime time. Do you, as a reader, want to wade through this? I am not talking about genre, theory, qual vs quant, or stuff like that. I am talking about quality level. 4. Refereeing also serves a mentoring function. Not everyone was lucky enough to be mentored at a good university by a caring advisor or three. Moreover, I've had the experience of turning down a paper written by someone at a great university. "How dare you?" they basically asked. We explained why, and with luck, they learned something. One of the unsung benefits of refereeing is having some folks take a careful look at what you wrote and give you feedback 5. I was at a conference last week at which a frequent blogger was often quoted as the authority, although I think this blogger has had at most one refereed article published. "Have you checked on the validity of [this blogger's] assertions?" I asked. "Well now, we just assumed," was the answer. Is this any way to build a discipline? 6. So the real question is Open What? JCMC avoids printing and mailing, but is still a refereed journal -- of high quality. That is quite different than the anything goes model. Of course, there are variations in that. I tend to put on my web page serious conference papers and even recently, developed ppts. One of my mentors, by contrast, will only put up articles a decent interval after they have been published. "I like to know that I am right when I go public with something." 7. I'd love to see more journals and other venues. But the day a journal abandons the refereeing process, is probably the day I will stop reading it. YMMV Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________ S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Room 418 Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-7162 Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php Elvis wouldn't be singing "Return to Sender" these days _______________________________________________________________________