open-access is the future: boycott locked-down academic journals
I've wanted to join in this debate for a while, but I've been busy going through the papers for an open-access journal I'm editing, called Media-Culture. I'm working on it with the evil defender of locked-down academic publishing, Jason Wilson, and let me tell you, it's hard. He's all like, let's lock this mofo down and charge access, because only the cool kids deserve to read our awesome articles. MOO HOO HA HAA HAA HA AND WE WILL BE EVIL SENIOR PROFESSORS MOO HOO HA HA HAHA. Ahem. I'm all for open-access. I got into academia via Indymedia. All my work is published on Eprints and/or my blogs, under a CC licence where possible. I do think open-access journals are the way of the future, but we aren't there yet. As Barry Wellman pointed out, running a journal costs money, and sometimes access fees are the only way to get that funding. The example of community media and citizen media is quite illustrative - many publications start out by charging for access to ensure their survival until they can move to a sustainable funding model. Boycotting them will only kill the publication - not a particularly good move for an emerging field. Community media is also illustrative for what happens when the commitment to open-access overtakes everything else - those people who work on the publication are no longer paid, and the people who take over are usually comfortable middle class people who can spare the time to help out. That can mean the difference between a hard hitting, class conscious publication and middle-class pabulum. I'm not so sure that open-editing, which appears to have been suggested here, will work for academic publishing. Wikipedia works, for the most part, because articles there take a neutral point of view. Using wikis for argument, by and large, doesn't work. Wikipedia is for documentation, not argumentation. Open-access argument is Indymedia or sometimes Metafilter. Sometimes interesting, sometimes garbage, rarely above pedestrian. It's also worth noting that doubleblind peer review WORKS. It is one of the few mechanisms available that redresses the gender bias in academic writing. Any open-editing system for academic publications would have to take that into account. http://blogs.nature.com/peer-to-peer/2008/01/doubleblind_peer_review_reveal.... Lastly, if this is the level of academic discussion and argumentation that an open, internet-mediated journal would have.... Hoo boy. I've had more elucidating discussions on Digg. -- Barry Saunders ---- http://investigativeblog.net http://gatewatching.org http://d-notice.net ---- PhD Candidate // researcher http://creativeindustries.qut.edu.au http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Saunders,_Barry.html skype: barry_saunders CRICOS No. 00213J On 10/2/08 2:14 PM, "Christian Nelson" <xianknelson@mac.com> wrote: On Feb 9, 2008, at 10:37 PM, Jason Wilson wrote:
a decision to immediately boycott all closed-source journals could only be premised on a reductive analysis of how academic publishing works, and by ignoring what the people within this system are trying to achieve, and more importantly, what they've done already.
Oh, how nobly they do strive for us! We should all be ashamed of having suggested otherwise.
On Feb 10, 2008, at 12:58 AM, Barry Saunders wrote:
It's also worth noting that doubleblind peer review WORKS. It is one of the few mechanisms available that redresses the gender bias in academic writing.
Your example of how the standard editorial process WORKS is unfortunate. I recall a case involving one of the flagship journals in the communication field in which the reviewers rejected a paper based on the presumed gender of the authors. In any event, the notion that articles undergo double-blind peer review or that this matters is naive. I have reviewed plenty of papers for editors who told me who the paper's author was or failed to take the author's name off the paper. In addition, blind review hardly matters given that editors can and do send papers to particular reviewers knowing how those reviewers will react to the paper. Care to provide another proof that the current system WORKS?
Considering that all you can provide to challenge academic studies are personal anecdotes, I don't really think I need to. -- Barry Saunders ---- http://investigativeblog.net http://gatewatching.org http://d-notice.net ---- PhD Candidate // researcher http://creativeindustries.qut.edu.au http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Saunders,_Barry.html ph: +617 3138 0155 skype: barry_saunders CRICOS No. 00213J On 10/2/08 4:17 PM, "Christian Nelson" <xianknelson@mac.com> wrote: On Feb 10, 2008, at 12:58 AM, Barry Saunders wrote:
It's also worth noting that doubleblind peer review WORKS. It is one of the few mechanisms available that redresses the gender bias in academic writing.
Your example of how the standard editorial process WORKS is unfortunate. I recall a case involving one of the flagship journals in the communication field in which the reviewers rejected a paper based on the presumed gender of the authors. In any event, the notion that articles undergo double-blind peer review or that this matters is naive. I have reviewed plenty of papers for editors who told me who the paper's author was or failed to take the author's name off the paper. In addition, blind review hardly matters given that editors can and do send papers to particular reviewers knowing how those reviewers will react to the paper. Care to provide another proof that the current system WORKS? _______________________________________________ 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 Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
On Feb 10, 2008, at 1:24 AM, Barry Saunders wrote:
Considering that all you can provide to challenge academic studies are personal anecdotes, I don't really think I need to.
Uh, when did I challenge academic studies? I'm challenging the current system of peer review, which naturally leads to the stifling of different voices and the voices of folks outside of the editorial class in academia. Sure some of my challenges are anecdotal, but those in the editorial class or who are disciples of scholars in that class know these anecdotes are not isolated. Further, its hard to collect anything but anecdotes because journals don't keep numbers on things like the percentage of men and women who submit articles and they don't require authors and editors to identify their academic relationships to each other. And for good reason. Nevertheless, I have pointed to much more than personal anecdote. The case of gender bias I cited isn't a personal anecdote--it was a cause celebre and the victim authors eventually wrote up a journal article about the whole affair. In addition, the study I cited earlier, which shows a distinct correlation between prestige of author's institution and likelihood of positive review, was a variable analytic analysis. I also cited the writings of Bourdieu, Mulkay, Merton, etc. which are hardly filled with anecdote alone. C'mon, Aren't my detractors on this list capable of attacking anything more than a straw man bastardization of my arguments?
Calm down. We have witnessed patronising in the old print world and trolling in the new Internet world. I am not suggesting that we have the problems here in this list, but it upsets me if it turned out to be so. Should we cool it off for a few days and re-continue with what's valuable and possible, without draining the most precious resources we invest into this list: attention and willing to respond? Christian Nelson wrote:
C'mon, Aren't my detractors on this list capable of attacking anything more than a straw man bastardization of my arguments?
On Feb 10, 2008, at 1:24 AM, Barry Saunders wrote:
Considering that all you can provide to challenge academic studies are personal anecdotes, I don't really think I need to.
Calm down. We have witnessed patronising in the old print world and trolling in the new Internet world. I am not suggesting that we have the problems here in this list, but it upsets me if it turned out to be so.
Should we cool it off for a few days and re-continue with what's valuable and possible, without draining the most precious resources we invest into this list: attention and willing to respond?
Wise advice. Along those lines, may I gently remind us of the policies defining list use and participation: [....] Diverse opinions are welcome. The readership of air-l includes people from a wide variety of professional, disciplinary, methodological, and national traditions. List participants are expected to respect these differences. We ask that you maintain a tone of civility and use good judgment in your posts: disagreements are to be expected, but blatant rudeness, personal attacks, lack of respect, and monopolization of air-l to further one's own agenda are not expected nor will they be tolerated. [....] Keep in mind that anything you send to air-l automatically goes to all subscribers please keep posts on-topic for the list. Also remember when posting to the list that air-l is a public forum and that your words will be available to everyone subscribed to the list and placed in a public archive. Messages sent via email can easily be reproduced and circulated beyond their originally intended audience, and neither the list manager, the association's officers, nor the server¹s host are responsible for consequences arising from list messages being re-distributed. Cordially, - charles ess Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Center <http://www.drury.edu/gp21> Drury University Springfield, MO 65802 USA President, Association of Internet Researchers <www.aoir.org> Co-Editor, International Journal of Internet Research Ethics http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/SOIS/cipr/ijire.html Co-chair, CATaC conferences <www.catacconference.org> Professor II, Globalization and Applied Ethics Programmes <http://www.anvendtetikk.ntnu.no/pres/bridgingcultures.php> Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23
I have been following the debate and try to summarize the positions (maybe I am wrong): Concerning the future role of open-access publishing: P1: Open access online journals are important and should be supported because they give a public character to academic knowledge. Locked down journals should be boycotted. P2: Non-profit open access online journals should be supported because the for-profit ones charge unacceptable author-rates. P3: High-quality academic publishing is in need of a high amount of resources (money, time, persons, etc.), which can be best managed by the established corporate models of publishing. PN: Any combination of other elements. The debate then shifted towards the role of peer-reviewing and the question of there should be open rating instead of anonymous peer-review: S1: Academic publishing is stratified by reputation that is accumulated and controlled through the peer-review system. The alternative is a public review system, all or most works submitted get published, everyone can comment and make ratings. S2: The peer-review procedure works well as it is now, it is a high quality standard in science. Open access and public reviewing/commenting might undercut these quality standards. SN: Some middle-ground. Personal positions and experiences seem to be guiding in such debates, so it might be best, as suggested by Charles, to pause for a moment and resume the discourse in some days, with less emotions and in a less heated way. Christian --
A meta issue has not been addressed in this discussion. The primary purpose of publication, other than "or perish," is to increase our understandings. Scholarly review adds value to what is published. Expensive requirements for access reduces access. Charles Balch -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Christian Fuchs Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2008 8:44 AM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Possible Foreign Spam: Re: [Air-L] summary of the debate: open-access is the future: boycott locked-down academic journals I have been following the debate and try to summarize the positions (maybe I am wrong): Concerning the future role of open-access publishing: P1: Open access online journals are important and should be supported because they give a public character to academic knowledge. Locked down journals should be boycotted. P2: Non-profit open access online journals should be supported because the for-profit ones charge unacceptable author-rates. P3: High-quality academic publishing is in need of a high amount of resources (money, time, persons, etc.), which can be best managed by the established corporate models of publishing. PN: Any combination of other elements. The debate then shifted towards the role of peer-reviewing and the question of there should be open rating instead of anonymous peer-review: S1: Academic publishing is stratified by reputation that is accumulated and controlled through the peer-review system. The alternative is a public review system, all or most works submitted get published, everyone can comment and make ratings. S2: The peer-review procedure works well as it is now, it is a high quality standard in science. Open access and public reviewing/commenting might undercut these quality standards. SN: Some middle-ground. Personal positions and experiences seem to be guiding in such debates, so it might be best, as suggested by Charles, to pause for a moment and resume the discourse in some days, with less emotions and in a less heated way. Christian -- _______________________________________________ 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 Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
participants (6)
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Barry Saunders -
Charles Ess -
Charlie Balch -
Christian Fuchs -
Christian Nelson -
Han-Teng Liao (OII)