Hi Everyone, I've been reading this discussion with interest. The future of publishing is an ongoing discussion in many fields. Lots of people are coming up with new models and alternative publishing arrangements. AoIR ought to consider at least officially endorsing some of the better electronic journals related to Internet Studies so that assistant profs can use that endorsement in their tenure dossiers. But ultimately, it will be organized people who change things. Publishers add value through paying for labor, and the main problem with open access for now is precisely that. Someone has to copyedit, lay out and proof materials as well as maintain the site. Once people figure out robust and sustainable funding models, this will be even more viable than it already is. Of course, for nonprofit university presses, income from journal publishing subsidizes book publishing, which in most cases is a big financial loss for the press. So those of you in book fields should be a little circumspect about celebrating the death of the journal. But Wiley and Blackwell are for-profit publishers. Their handbooks (and Oxford's) follow a business model. Publishers approach authors whom they believe to be leaders in a field (or who want to be and are up and coming) to edit the handbook. The editors are told that the handbook will be a way to bring a field forward, collect the latest and greatest scholarship and help define the field. Then, the editors generate lots of value for the press by bringing in friends and colleagues with the opportunity to be part of a field-defining conversation (or in some cases calling in favors). The collection is made, published, authors are paid a nominal fee and asked to sign away their rights with an incredibly restrictive author's agreement, and then the book is published. These publishers hope to sell to libraries first and then piece them out in electronic form for a period of years, which is probably one of the reasons for the ridiculous agreements contributors are asked to sign. This all works great for the publisher, but as of yet, the "field defining" part hasn't happened in a lot of places. the books need to be read to have their effect, and the fact that they are only available in DRMed online versions or in libraries means even in bookish fields, they appear to be having less impact than was promised. How do I know? I've been asked by publishers more than once to edit a collection like this (I declined) and have contributed to a few so I've seen both sides of it. Now, I'm not innocent here -- this discussion led me to go looking and I see Amazon is listing the hardback version of my forthcoming Sound Studies Reader at $125, but at least the softcover will be cheaper. And I'm actively working to change how I deal with this in new ventures (I wasn't as attentive to these things when Routledge and I negotiated several years ago--and I will raise the issue with them). I've written a lot about authors' rights on my blog -- see http://superbon.net/?p=1681 for example (and read Ted's article that I've linked to!) and would encourage people who care about these things to educate themselves, and make things like the contributor's contract a political issue -- which it already is. Obviously, those of us with tenure have to be the ones to do some of the heavy lifting. Best, --Jonathan -- http://sterneworks.org http://mcgill.ca/ahcs http://media.mcgill.ca
The one issue I haven't seen raised in this interesting discussion is library budgets. With cutbacks to postsecondary funding happening in many countries, why would we think that university libraries can afford these high prices for a single hardcover book? If they are purchasing at this price, that means that other books will not be purchased, ie maybe yours or mine. This business model of publishers is in danger of self destructing sooner rather than later. In terms of open access, AU Press at our university is a leader. I haven't explored this option myself (Peter Lang gets first right of refusal on my next book as per my contract for Cyberspaces of Their Own) but here is the link to their website: http://www.aupress.ca/ best Rhiannon Rhiannon Bury, PhD Associate Professor, Women's and Gender Studies Athabasca University Canada's Open University ________________________________ From: "Jonathan Sterne, Dr." <jonathan.sterne@mcgill.ca> To: "air-l@listserv.aoir.org" <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Sent: Wed, March 9, 2011 11:57:12 AM Subject: Re: [Air-L] book prices Hi Everyone, I've been reading this discussion with interest. The future of publishing is an ongoing discussion in many fields. Lots of people are coming up with new models and alternative publishing arrangements. AoIR ought to consider at least officially endorsing some of the better electronic journals related to Internet Studies so that assistant profs can use that endorsement in their tenure dossiers. But ultimately, it will be organized people who change things. Publishers add value through paying for labor, and the main problem with open access for now is precisely that. Someone has to copyedit, lay out and proof materials as well as maintain the site. Once people figure out robust and sustainable funding models, this will be even more viable than it already is. Of course, for nonprofit university presses, income from journal publishing subsidizes book publishing, which in most cases is a big financial loss for the press. So those of you in book fields should be a little circumspect about celebrating the death of the journal. But Wiley and Blackwell are for-profit publishers. Their handbooks (and Oxford's) follow a business model. Publishers approach authors whom they believe to be leaders in a field (or who want to be and are up and coming) to edit the handbook. The editors are told that the handbook will be a way to bring a field forward, collect the latest and greatest scholarship and help define the field. Then, the editors generate lots of value for the press by bringing in friends and colleagues with the opportunity to be part of a field-defining conversation (or in some cases calling in favors). The collection is made, published, authors are paid a nominal fee and asked to sign away their rights with an incredibly restrictive author's agreement, and then the book is published. These publishers hope to sell to libraries first and then piece them out in electronic form for a period of years, which is probably one of the reasons for the ridiculous agreements contributors are asked to sig n. This all works great for the publisher, but as of yet, the "field defining" part hasn't happened in a lot of places. the books need to be read to have their effect, and the fact that they are only available in DRMed online versions or in libraries means even in bookish fields, they appear to be having less impact than was promised. How do I know? I've been asked by publishers more than once to edit a collection like this (I declined) and have contributed to a few so I've seen both sides of it. Now, I'm not innocent here -- this discussion led me to go looking and I see Amazon is listing the hardback version of my forthcoming Sound Studies Reader at $125, but at least the softcover will be cheaper. And I'm actively working to change how I deal with this in new ventures (I wasn't as attentive to these things when Routledge and I negotiated several years ago--and I will raise the issue with them). I've written a lot about authors' rights on my blog -- see http://superbon.net/?p=1681 for example (and read Ted's article that I've linked to!) and would encourage people who care about these things to educate themselves, and make things like the contributor's contract a political issue -- which it already is. Obviously, those of us with tenure have to be the ones to do some of the heavy lifting. Best, --Jonathan -- http://sterneworks.org http://mcgill.ca/ahcs http://media.mcgill.ca _______________________________________________ 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/
If any of the warez crews (reading this) can hack the book advertised for yesterday, we can do without this back and forth discussion now!.. /Sari On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:33 PM, Rhiannon Bury <rcbury@rogers.com> wrote:
The one issue I haven't seen raised in this interesting discussion is library budgets. With cutbacks to postsecondary funding happening in many countries, why would we think that university libraries can afford these high prices for a single hardcover book? If they are purchasing at this price, that means that other books will not be purchased, ie maybe yours or mine. This business model of publishers is in danger of self destructing sooner rather than later.
In terms of open access, AU Press at our university is a leader. I haven't explored this option myself (Peter Lang gets first right of refusal on my next book as per my contract for Cyberspaces of Their Own) but here is the link to their website:
best
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Bury, PhD Associate Professor, Women's and Gender Studies Athabasca University Canada's Open University
________________________________ From: "Jonathan Sterne, Dr." <jonathan.sterne@mcgill.ca> To: "air-l@listserv.aoir.org" <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Sent: Wed, March 9, 2011 11:57:12 AM Subject: Re: [Air-L] book prices
Hi Everyone,
I've been reading this discussion with interest. The future of publishing is an ongoing discussion in many fields. Lots of people are coming up with new models and alternative publishing arrangements. AoIR ought to consider at least officially endorsing some of the better electronic journals related to Internet Studies so that assistant profs can use that endorsement in their tenure dossiers. But ultimately, it will be organized people who change things. Publishers add value through paying for labor, and the main problem with open access for now is precisely that. Someone has to copyedit, lay out and proof materials as well as maintain the site. Once people figure out robust and sustainable funding models, this will be even more viable than it already is.
Of course, for nonprofit university presses, income from journal publishing subsidizes book publishing, which in most cases is a big financial loss for the press. So those of you in book fields should be a little circumspect about celebrating the death of the journal.
But Wiley and Blackwell are for-profit publishers. Their handbooks (and Oxford's) follow a business model. Publishers approach authors whom they believe to be leaders in a field (or who want to be and are up and coming) to edit the handbook. The editors are told that the handbook will be a way to bring a field forward, collect the latest and greatest scholarship and help define the field. Then, the editors generate lots of value for the press by bringing in friends and colleagues with the opportunity to be part of a field-defining conversation (or in some cases calling in favors). The collection is made, published, authors are paid a nominal fee and asked to sign away their rights with an incredibly restrictive author's agreement, and then the book is published. These publishers hope to sell to libraries first and then piece them out in electronic form for a period of years, which is probably one of the reasons for the ridiculous agreements contributors are asked to sig n. This all works great for the publisher, but as of yet, the "field defining" part hasn't happened in a lot of places. the books need to be read to have their effect, and the fact that they are only available in DRMed online versions or in libraries means even in bookish fields, they appear to be having less impact than was promised.
How do I know? I've been asked by publishers more than once to edit a collection like this (I declined) and have contributed to a few so I've seen both sides of it. Now, I'm not innocent here -- this discussion led me to go looking and I see Amazon is listing the hardback version of my forthcoming Sound Studies Reader at $125, but at least the softcover will be cheaper. And I'm actively working to change how I deal with this in new ventures (I wasn't as attentive to these things when Routledge and I negotiated several years ago--and I will raise the issue with them).
I've written a lot about authors' rights on my blog -- see http://superbon.net/?p=1681 for example (and read Ted's article that I've linked to!) and would encourage people who care about these things to educate themselves, and make things like the contributor's contract a political issue -- which it already is. Obviously, those of us with tenure have to be the ones to do some of the heavy lifting.
Best, --Jonathan
-- http://sterneworks.org http://mcgill.ca/ahcs http://media.mcgill.ca
_______________________________________________ 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/ _______________________________________________ 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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Think this a great discussion. This may be useful, about paper vs. ebook costs: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/business/media/01ebooks.html?_r=1 And about the future of public libraries: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/digital-underclass-what-happens-when-the-li... Personally, I´m worried about the prohibitive prices of North America´s books, wich makes another cultural barrier for the spreading of knowledge. Best, Alejandro Tortolini Scitech journalist - Teacher Buenos Aires - Argentina
Hello colleagues, This is a very interesting discussion about academic publishing. Thanks to Charles for having inflamed it. I think there is a contradiction between democratic access to academic knowledge and the stratified character of the academic system with two colliding poles. 1) The empire of capitalist academia: The academic publishing market is highly concentrated, the book and journal market is controlled by a few companies. These companies have huge personnel and monetary resources and acceptance in the academic community. Therefore they act as gatekeepers of academic reputation. It is telling that an academic reputation generation mechanism like Social Sciences Citation Index is itself owned by a capitalist company. What is the share of open access journals in SSCI? Very low. What is the number of citations of open access journals in comparison to corporate journals? Etc. The ranking, classification, assessment, impact factor-culture of the academia is an expression of the instrumental logic of accumulation, so acaademia itself is a capitalist system in a specific sense as being a system of accumulation. Academia is dominated by technological rationality - no surprise in a capitalist society. The generation of academic capital is largely shaped by capitalist publishing houses that control mechanisms for generating academic capital. And if one wants to work as an academic, then it is very difficult or maybe even impossible to avoid being complicit in the capitalism of academia because you are forced to attain tenure, gain reputation, etc if you want to survive and live as an academic. 2) The multitude of academic knowledge commons: The reaction to these stratified structures is dissatisfaction of scholars, the insight that the capitalist academic empire creates inequality (for scholars in developing countries, in countries where neoliberalism strikes universities, libraries and employmnet conditions of academics especially hard, etc) and as a result: the demand for academic knowledge commons and a democratic academia. This demand is channeled into academic open access/content projects (journals, publishing houses, etc). But one should not be idealistic: open access within a capitalist economy is difficult to organize, free within capitalism always ends up as serving capitalist interests. Academic publishing work needs to be organized, and in capitalism this is most efficiently be done in the form of the exploitation of wage labour. Keeping open access democratic and free requires non-profit strategies. There simply is no academic knowledge to sell if you base a project on the insight that for democratic reasons knowledge should be freely accessible. So non-commodification must be the rule. But then it is difficult to organize the organizational work, it can mainly be done a) based on voluntary labour, b) based on donations. In any case, running a non-profit academic open-access publishing project is hard work (I know what I am talking about) and you are facing tough competition. Nonetheless, the vision of going beyond the empire of capitalist academia is important and something to struggle for. Non-profit open access publishing is academic class struggle. But there are unequal conditions for this struggle. One should not idealize open access: it can easily be transformed into a profitable business, see for example the accumulation strategy of Bentham, which created hundreds of open access journals that are based on very high author fees. Author fees create a new stratification mechanism, etc. => The contradiction between the empire of capitalist academia and the multitude of academic knowledge commons => 3) The contradiction between these two poles creates a dilemma for the single scholar: Supporting the publishing strategies of academic monopoly capital is at the same time the ideological reproduction of and complicity in maintaining the inequality of the empire of capitalist academia. Supporting only open access publishing strategies risks marginalization of reputation, cutting of department funding, lack of citations, etc and in the end unemployment. At the same time these projects are the only way to create cracks, fissures and holes in the empire and the chance to overcome it and to establish a democratic academy. This is a vicious cycle and difficult terrain to navigate. 4) The problem is that there is no easy solution, acting within systemic contradictions is What is the solution? To be aware of the the contradictions and to work within the sytem against the system in order to explode it. That's the political economy of academic publishing today. It's time to question capitalism and its effects on academia and our lives (and that is what is happening in Maddison, WI, Egypt, etc NOW). Best, Christian -- Prof. Christian Fuchs Chair in Media and Communication Studies Department of Informatics and Media Uppsala University Kyrkogårdsgatan 10 Box 513 751 20 Uppsala Sweden christian.fuchs@im.uu.se Tel +46 (0) 18 471 1019 http://fuchs.uti.at http://www.im.uu.se NetPolitics Blog: http://fuchs.uti.at/blog Editor of tripleC: Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society http://www.triple-c.at Book "Internet and Society" (Paperback, Routledge 2010) Am 3/9/11 10:46 PM, schrieb Alejandro Tortolini:
Think this a great discussion. This may be useful, about paper vs. ebook costs:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/business/media/01ebooks.html?_r=1
And about the future of public libraries: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/digital-underclass-what-happens-when-the-li...
Personally, I´m worried about the prohibitive prices of North America´s books, wich makes another cultural barrier for the spreading of knowledge. Best,
Alejandro Tortolini Scitech journalist - Teacher Buenos Aires - Argentina _______________________________________________ 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/
This is an interesting issue. I have not seen any mention of the struggle of the universities of the developing world to keep up to stocking their libraries. The cost of books is so high some of the libraries strain themselves to choose what they buy. Sukai Bojang PhD Student De Montfort University Leicester ENGLAND On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 9:46 PM, Alejandro Tortolini <alemtor@gmail.com>wrote:
Think this a great discussion. This may be useful, about paper vs. ebook costs:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/business/media/01ebooks.html?_r=1
And about the future of public libraries:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/digital-underclass-what-happens-when-the-li...
Personally, I´m worried about the prohibitive prices of North America´s books, wich makes another cultural barrier for the spreading of knowledge. Best,
Alejandro Tortolini Scitech journalist - Teacher Buenos Aires - Argentina _______________________________________________ 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/
interesting discussion, and yes, I know... if I say that ALL TOGETHER we can make a difference or "lobby" to start negotiating a bit more final prices with editors all over the world , it would sound utopian - at least for some... But I like experimenting, as Steve Jones suggested, perhaps because I come from the Leonardo, Galileo and Armani's land :-) I am sure I can speak for many when I say that access to education and knowledge is a fundamental and universal right and value that we have achieved in many centuries. But we are still struggling... Here a little experiment that has transformed principles into actions. Following Barry's invitation to mention our last publication, for example, I published my last book - (Dec, 2010). Digital Literacy: Introduction to social media, in Italian - with an editor who shares with me the UNESCO's policy and vision about access to higher education. I have given up my royalties, avoid to be logorroic, reduced pages (made students happier ). Average price of comparable books is 12-21 Euros. My book: 7 euros. The editor is making his profit because my students can afford it and avoid to photocopy it - a plague in several countries that reduces editors' profits. If I hadn't partnership with my editor to cut the final price, it would have never happened. A win-win situation. - Ask your editor how prices can be lowered on your next publication is an experiment worthed to try. A little gesture could mean a lot for disadvantaged scholars. Why not? Imagine the global picture... - Aoir Exec folks , here a proposal for you :-) Why not discussing a statement in the Aoir bylaw that sustains and endorses the UNESCO policy on access to education for Internet Research publications? Aoir's could cite it and bring to their editors, and partner together to make it happen. Asking is lecit and free, answering is courtesy! Monica ------------- Monica Murero , Ph.D. AoIR Exec, 2003-2009; AoIR Treasurer, 2005-2009 AoIR Lifetime Member Director E-Life International Institute Associate Professor in Politics of e-Government and in Sociology of New Technology University Federico II, Italy Consultant, World Health Organization LinkedIN: http://it.linkedin.com/pub/monica-murero-ph-d/16/52/606 Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/monica_murero or @monica_murero Facebook: murero monica
p.s. if we believe that access to education is a crucial right and an extraordinary value worthed to sustain, the change should start from ourselves. If we wait for editors to lower prices of our pubblications or do not ask to partnership with them to make costs of books lower, can we exepct that things change? Experiment and do partnership with your editor , could be fun :-) Monica
-------------
Monica Murero , Ph.D. AoIR Exec, 2003-2009; AoIR Treasurer, 2005-2009 AoIR Lifetime Member
Director E-Life International Institute Associate Professor in Politics of e-Government and in Sociology of New Technology University Federico II, Italy Consultant, World Health Organization LinkedIN: http://it.linkedin.com/pub/monica-murero-ph-d/16/52/606 Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/monica_murero or @monica_murero Facebook: murero monica
Il giorno 10/mar/11, alle ore 14:36, Monica Murero ha scritto:
interesting discussion, and yes, I know... if I say that ALL TOGETHER we can make a difference or "lobby" to start negotiating a bit more final prices with editors all over the world , it would sound utopian - at least for some... But I like experimenting, as Steve Jones suggested, perhaps because I come from the Leonardo, Galileo and Armani's land :-) I am sure I can speak for many when I say that access to education and knowledge is a fundamental and universal right and value that we have achieved in many centuries. But we are still struggling...
Here a little experiment that has transformed principles into actions.
Following Barry's invitation to mention our last publication, for example, I published my last book - (Dec, 2010). Digital Literacy: Introduction to social media, in Italian - with an editor who shares with me the UNESCO's policy and vision about access to higher education. I have given up my royalties, avoid to be logorroic, reduced pages (made students happier ). Average price of comparable books is 12-21 Euros. My book: 7 euros. The editor is making his profit because my students can afford it and avoid to photocopy it - a plague in several countries that reduces editors' profits. If I hadn't partnership with my editor to cut the final price, it would have never happened. A win-win situation.
- Ask your editor how prices can be lowered on your next publication is an experiment worthed to try. A little gesture could mean a lot for disadvantaged scholars. Why not? Imagine the global picture...
- Aoir Exec folks , here a proposal for you :-) Why not discussing a statement in the Aoir bylaw that sustains and endorses the UNESCO policy on access to education for Internet Research publications? Aoir's could cite it and bring to their editors, and partner together to make it happen.
Asking is lecit and free, answering is courtesy!
Monica
-------------
Monica Murero , Ph.D. AoIR Exec, 2003-2009; AoIR Treasurer, 2005-2009 AoIR Lifetime Member
Director E-Life International Institute Associate Professor in Politics of e-Government and in Sociology of New Technology University Federico II, Italy Consultant, World Health Organization LinkedIN: http://it.linkedin.com/pub/monica-murero-ph-d/16/52/606 Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/monica_murero or @monica_murero Facebook: murero monica
On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 1:57 PM, Jonathan Sterne, Dr. < jonathan.sterne@mcgill.ca> wrote:
Hi Everyone,
Of course, for nonprofit university presses, income from journal publishing subsidizes book publishing, which in most cases is a big financial loss for the press. So those of you in book fields should be a little circumspect about celebrating the death of the journal.
I was in a professional development seminar last year with David Blakesley, a professor at Clemson who moonlights as head of Parlor Press, an independent scholarly press. If I recall correctly a number of times in the seminar the point was made that for whatever reasons (status?), top-notch academic presses have often been reluctant to engage in one profitable part of scholarly publishing: textbook publishing, which might be able to subsidize the production of monogaphs. Thick and expensive first-year composition handbooks, for example, have been lucrative for commercial publishers. With that in mind, Parlor has begun to publish peer-reviewed essays for use as texts in first-year composition classes. The essays have all been released under creative commons licenses, and composition instructors have the option of creating their own anthologies from the various essays and ordering print-on-demand copies, which is how Parlor hopes to subsidize monograph production. I may not have everything totally right here, and I don't know how it has been working or how long it will take to start generating funding, but it seemed an intriguing model. Tim Tim Laquintano Assistant Professor of English Lafayette College Easton, PA
participants (9)
-
Alejandro Tortolini -
Christian Fuchs -
Jonathan Sterne, Dr. -
Monica Murero -
Rhiannon Bury -
Sari -
Steve Cavrak -
Sukai Bojang -
Tim Laquintano