Martin, Unfortunately quality in academia will only get you so far... Mathias Martin Garthwaite wrote:

Danah,

You're certainly not crazy, I currently have no plans for an academic career when I finish my PhD, but I would challenge the concept of free labour. Surely publishing papers in respected journals is an investment in your career. Quality of papers not quantity I'm guessing is the goal for most?

Martin

On Feb 7, 2008 6:07 AM, danah boyd <aoir.z3z@danah.org> 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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-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mathias Klang, LL.M., Ph.D. University of Lund & University of Goteborg Phone +46 46 2227079 Mobile: +46 705 677 910 http://digital-rights.net/ http://resistancestudies.org ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Associating quality with locked down journals is the lazy way to read a journal - in essence, you are relying on the peer-review committee to vet the article instead of vetting it yourself or allowing others to vet it *with* you. There are, however, other ways to identify the quality of an article than by having an editor pre-read it, including weighted voting systems that the users of an alternative journal can engage in (weighted as in certain respected users' votes carry more weight than others), reading it carefully, judging by others' comments, citation rates, reputation, source, etc etc. And, of course, just because something is open-access does not mean there is not an editorial staff selecting what to publish. Open access journals do not have to be free-for-alls. They can be set up as grant-funded, non-profit, or ad funded, thus still employing a paid editorial staff while not charging for their publication. In other words, open access v. closed is not = quantity v. quality; you've bought into a false dichotomy between the two that closed journals exploit in order to maintain their stranglehold. I am relatively sure danah is not recommending putting *more* papers out there. She is recommending putting good papers out there in different places than they are currently going. As far as free labor....if you write a damn good article and people look at it, talk about it, and cite it, you get respect. You are receiving a payback on that investment. I am not sure how that is free. This recommendation was not for free labor. It was for wider dissemination of the fruits of your labor, and only wider dissemination. -Alexis On Thu, 7 Feb 2008, Martin Garthwaite wrote: ::Danah, :: ::You're certainly not crazy, I currently have no plans for an academic career ::when I finish my PhD, but I would challenge the concept of free labour. ::Surely publishing papers in respected journals is an investment in your ::career. Quality of papers not quantity I'm guessing is the goal for most? :: ::Martin :: ::On Feb 7, 2008 6:07 AM, danah boyd <aoir.z3z@danah.org> 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 ::> ::> Join the Association of Internet Researchers: ::> http://www.aoir.org/ ::> :: :: :: ::-- ::Martin Garthwaite :: ::+447957 764819 ::Skype id mgarthwaite1330 ::MS IM marting@gmail.com ::_______________________________________________ ::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/ :: + -------- redheadedstepchild.org ------- +

I agree with you both. It will take new PhD's like us to bind together to create some of these new type of publications. Google Adsense is a great start for online publications, along with University based publishing, and corporate/foundation funding. I think that these new type of journals could become great fundraisers too. As far a media consolidation, this is a worldwide result of de-regulation and laws like the Telecom Act of 1996 and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I used open research and publishing through blogs as part of my dissertation with agreement from my subjects who work in the field and are not afraid of the media. This is the future! -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Jimmy Wales Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 4:14 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] open-access is the future: boycott locked-down academic journals Martin Garthwaite wrote:

You're certainly not crazy, I currently have no plans for an academic career when I finish my PhD, but I would challenge the concept of free labour. Surely publishing papers in respected journals is an investment in your career. Quality of papers not quantity I'm guessing is the goal for most?

This assumes that quality and open-access are inconsistent. Academics do not generally get paid for publishing papers in respected journals. Reviewers do not generally get paid for reviewing papers for respected journals. Both do get benefits, indirect but large. The question before us is not "is it ok to get paid?" The question is: "Can we find sustainable models for the publication and distribution of academic content that are also consistent with the ideals of free distribution and open access." I think the answer is not just yes, but a resounding yes. _______________________________________________ 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/

Christian Nelson wrote:

That's A question, not the only one. As I noted before, if you build it, they will not come. Not unless you lure the big names away from the current journals, and that isn't going to happen on its own.

I agree but this strikes me as a pretty small part of the problem. One of the interesting things about the Internet is that for things like this, switching costs are quite low. So yes, I agree: luring big names is part of what has to be done. I just don't find that particularly daunting.

I disagree with your claim that no one gives up power willingly. I think that people do this all the time. Not all power in all contexts is taken through acts of violence. Theoretical debate aside, let's try an example close to our field. The International Journal of Communications (IJOC) was launched last fall. This journal is open-access, online-only. It uses open journal systems for structure and is archived in a wide variety of ways to meet the needs of librarians and scholars. The bandwidth and publishing costs are paid for by USC's Annenberg School. All the editors, reviewers, and authors are unpaid. The heads editors are senior scholars who, from my POV, are pretty big names: Manuel Castells and Larry Gross. The associate editors, book review editors, and advisory editors contain a pretty impressive list of senior scholars that I deeply respect (but your mileage may differ) including: Howard Becker, Yochai Benkler, Henry Jenkins, Steve Jones, and many more. (I bet a bunch of them are on this list...) I don't know if they left previous journals to do this one, but all of those people are painfully stretched thin which means that they're doing this because they believe in it. This journal is brand new, having only two issues to date. It's easy to be cynical and point out that most new journals crumble, but I think that this one has legs. It's got big-name people with huge networks (necessary for conning people to review), a major sponsor, and a sustainable infrastructure. They are staunchly committed to open-access and I can't imagine them changing their tune, especially given the intersection between their editors' work and politics. Since they are "published" by USC, they aren't at risk of being sold (unless UCLA executes a hostile take-over). Why is this destined to fail? Why shouldn't we be pushing to make this the top comm journal by submitting our best work there? The only way that I can imagine that this project would fail would be if people fail to submit quality work. Their success depends on the quality of what they publish. That is in our control. Don't we have a responsibility to embrace this endeavor and do everything in our power to help this amazing collection of senior scholars change the future of scholarship? danah PS. I know that this example is not perfect... It's English-only, comm-centric, requires network connectivity for access, etc. etc. But it's much better than the current model. On Feb 8, 2008, at 1:37 PM, Christian Nelson wrote:

We're still talking about open-source journals that would utilize some sort of reader rating system to make editorial decisions, right? Why would powerful academics leave the current set of journals, over which they have total editorial control, for journals over which they would have considerably less control, considering that journal article publication is the main source of academic capital for most scholars? No one ever gives up power willingly.

On Feb 8, 2008, at 4:25 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

...

So yes, I agree: luring big names is part of what has to be done. I just don't find that particularly daunting.

---

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- - - - - - - - d a n a h ( d o t ) o r g - - - - - - - - "i was just a girl in a room full of women licking stamps and laughing i remember the feeling of community brewing of democracy happening" (Ani DiFranco, Paradigm) musings :: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts

I have no reason in particular to defend the IJOC. Still, to offer some response to the questions raised by Christian (in his message directed to Danah): 1. "Does the IJOC allow reader commentary on articles?" Yes. From IJOC website: "Readers are invited to submit comments and responses to articles that appear in the International Journal of Communication. In order to submit comments you will need to be a registered subscriber to the journal. Comments and responses should be limited to discussions of particular articles or reviews and will appear as appendages to the original journal piece. Authors will be encouraged to reply to reader responses, if they wish; and discussion threads may thus be created. Reader contributions may be removed by the Editors on grounds of irrelevance and/or inappropriate tone." I objected to a piece that appeared in the first issue of IJOC, in which the author repeated a number of points/arguments made by critical scholars-in particular feminist scholars-without citing these (and I assume that the lapse had to do with "overlooking" feminist scholarship as opposed to being familiar with it and failing to cite it). I wrote to Larry Gross, and he encouraged me to submit a comment about this. I didn't do so because it seemed to me a case where part of the problem was that the article wasn't sufficiently vetted (i.e., reviewed), and I didn't think that there was a good reason to have a dialogue with the author about this. Still, to their credit, the editors of IJOC do offer the opportunity for some dialogue. 2. "Does it allow readers to rank the published articles in terms of their value, validity, etc. of the articles like books are evaluated on Amazon.com?" It's my understanding that this is not a feature of IJOC; however, this sort of populism would probably be as helpful as it is on Amazon.com. Why rank articles? Of course, it's subjective (the entire publishing process is highly subjective), but this is so subjective as to be meaningless. E.G.: each time I teach Introduction to Women's Studies, I look at Amazon.com, among other sites, to see what's currently available so far as textbooks go. Almost invariably, each Intro to WMS text has a couple of readers' comments by WMS instructors who like the book and a couple of readers' comments by undergraduates who hate the text (often because it's about feminism and/or cost too much). What do we learn about the text? Next to nothing. 3. "Does it allow for readers to peruse all articles that were cited in order to champion those that the editors wrongly relegated to the scrap heap?" It's not clear to me what is meant here precisely, but it appears as though it might be related to readers having access to those submissions that were rejected. If this interpretation is correct, it's not apparent to me that most authors would wish to have their rejected submissions available for all to read and comment upon. I should "out" myself as founding editor and co-editor of Feminist Media Studies, a Routledge journal published by the behemoth Taylor and Francis Ltd. As such, I can verify that the journal publishing world isn't a democracy, and I doubt that it is so, or would come close to being so, in the context of open access, interactive, internet-based publication. If I provide any examples to illustrate, I will have violated the trust of authors who have submitted to the journal, as well as the reviewers, etc. But, if you want what's been "relegated to the scrap heap" (an expression that's kind of insulting, actually) to be publicized so as to show up the editors, you're mostly causing harm to the authors, in my opinion. This isn't to say that there isn't a great deal of room for improvement. I'm editor of a corporate-owned journal, but I also prefer a model of sustainable open access and independent media [mostly I'm just an academic schlepping through various challenges like everyone else]. I hope that some of us who are editors of journals owned by conglomerates might try to edge the decision-makers toward positioning journals so that access is more freely available and, perhaps eventually, toward changing business-as-usual. Although the current, traditional model may eventually collapse under pressure, the consumerist, populist model isn't the answer because it can be incorporated into the prevailing model too easily and in ways that don't address digital/development divides. Regards, Lisa

Christian Nelson wrote:

We're still talking about open-source journals that would utilize some sort of reader rating system to make editorial decisions, right? Why would powerful academics leave the current set of journals, over which they have total editorial control, for journals over which they would have considerably less control, considering that journal article publication is the main source of academic capital for most scholars? No one ever gives up power willingly.

Why should we assume that successful open access journals would involve any of that? I see no reason to think that open access has anything at all do do with "reader rating systems". --Jimbo

There is an amazing precedent in the field of mathematics publishing, demonstrating that if you build it, they will come! On their own. Look at the story of Grigori Perelman, who received the Fields Medal (the highest prize in mathematics) for solving the Poincare Conjecture. He published his solution to this 100 years old problem in 3 articles over an 8-months period in 2002-2003. He specifically published the 3 articles ONLY on arXiv, the open-access repository of e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology and Statistics. (for background information on arXiv.org: http://people.ccmr.cornell.edu/~ginsparg/blurb/) His experience has transformed completely how mathematicians think about peer-reviewed publications, creating a big push for open-access. -- Gilles Frydman ACOR.org On Feb 8, 2008, at 4:23 PM, Christian Nelson wrote:

That's A question, not the only one. As I noted before, if you build it, they will not come. Not unless you lure the big names away from the current journals, and that isn't going to happen on its own.

On Feb 8, 2008, at 4:13 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

...

The question is: "Can we find sustainable models for the publication and distribution of academic content that are also consistent with the ideals of free distribution and open access."

I think the answer is not just yes, but a resounding yes.

Lisa: I work in the media, and if not most (meaning more than 51% of the major academic publishers) are majority owned by the media conglomerates that we all know well. These entitities have begun bundling to raise prices. If you are looking for a sustainable model (which implies the long haul), you are encountering the same dilemma that the publishers and studios are having in the entertainment business: new technologies have taken away many of the traditional profits and large profit margins. I think audio and video based versions of publications that are coupled with a print and/or book reader could become very popular based on how well the iPod and the Kindle from Amazon is selling. Microsoft and Sony will be beefing up the Zune, the e Reader from Sony and the watchman. I also am certain that innovative researchers will find what I have found in my research on gaming and simulation: people love interactive instructional devices. I witnessed this first hand at ADL - Advanced Distributed Learning a defense-based learning organization with Pentagon connections. People will pay if the fun factor, ease of use and functionality/utility are present according to the technology adoption model (Davis, 1989).Serious gaming (Gee, 2004, 2005) is making major inroads and publishing is becoming one them. -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of McLaughlin, Lisa M. Dr. Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 4:58 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] open-access is the future: boycott locked-down academic journals I'm curious to know: 1) if/how this example presents a sustainable model; 2) if/how it may be replicable in other fields and contexts involving academic publication and distribution. I've got no hidden agenda is asking these questions (as in offering a point of disagreement). I'm interested because of my current involvement in a project centering on finding/creating sustainable (shall I say "value-added"?) models for production and distribution of independent media. Regards, Lisa On 2/8/08 4:44 PM, "Gilles Frydman" <gfrydman@acor.org> wrote: There is an amazing precedent in the field of mathematics publishing, demonstrating that if you build it, they will come! On their own. Look at the story of Grigori Perelman, who received the Fields Medal (the highest prize in mathematics) for solving the Poincare Conjecture. He published his solution to this 100 years old problem in 3 articles over an 8-months period in 2002-2003. He specifically published the 3 articles ONLY on arXiv, the open-access repository of e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology and Statistics. (for background information on arXiv.org: http://people.ccmr.cornell.edu/~ginsparg/blurb/) His experience has transformed completely how mathematicians think about peer-reviewed publications, creating a big push for open-access. -- Gilles Frydman ACOR.org On Feb 8, 2008, at 4:23 PM, Christian Nelson wrote:

That's A question, not the only one. As I noted before, if you build it, they will not come. Not unless you lure the big names away from the current journals, and that isn't going to happen on its own.

On Feb 8, 2008, at 4:13 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

...

The question is: "Can we find sustainable models for the publication

...

and distribution of academic content that are also consistent with the ideals of free distribution and open access."

I think the answer is not just yes, but a resounding yes.

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 Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

I note I just went to an open journal site. Looked at the electronic journal of probability and found a proof of random walks that are d>2 to be non returning. I was supposed to find this proof for class last year. My professor thought it was significant although most work on random walks has already been done. I sell random walk art at the same store you buy AOIR swag ay Cafe Press Here is a cite LAWLER, G., 1996. Cut Times for Simple Random Walk. Electronic Journal of Probability, 1, pp. 1-24. On 8-Feb-08, at 5:09 PM, Christian Nelson wrote:

Grigori Perelman is but one mathematician. In addition, he is a true genius whose accomplishments aren't subject to debate, not least because they are in a field where there is little room for debate about scholarly accomplishments, so he has little reason to worry about his academic stock. To top it all off, he genuinely doesn't care about his academic stock, as he demonstrated when he declined to accept the Fields medal and did not attend the congress at which it was to be given out. --Christian Nelson

On Feb 8, 2008, at 4:44 PM, Gilles Frydman wrote:

...

There is an amazing precedent in the field of mathematics publishing, demonstrating that if you build it, they will come! On their own.

Look at the story of Grigori Perelman, who received the Fields Medal (the highest prize in mathematics) for solving the Poincare Conjecture. He published his solution to this 100 years old problem in 3 articles over an 8-months period in 2002-2003. He specifically published the 3 articles ONLY on arXiv, the open-access repository of e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology and Statistics. (for background information on arXiv.org: http://people.ccmr.cornell.edu/~ginsparg/blurb/)

---

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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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I wish that publishing became open-access. Unfortunately, it won't any time soon. At least, it won't until renowned scholars switch from publishing in locked-down journals to publishing in open-access journals, because untenured folks have to publish in the places where their most reputable colleagues do, and successful scholars have much to lose by publishing via open-access journals. No longer could they control the editing process as fully as they do now. As plenty of researchers in the sociology of the sciences have observed, the most successful scholars in any discipline form a group who all know each others' work, monopolize editorial board positions, and tend to inflate the value of eachother's work and that of eachother's students such that papers by those outside the group are denied publication much more than consideration of quality warrant. If the current group of gatekeeping scholars advocated open-source publishing they would lose their current publishing advantage and everything that comes with that--an easier time of promoting the careers of their supportive friends and students, an easier time padding out their vitas so that they can get grants, etc. In other words, they would threaten their enjoyment of what famed sociologist Robert Merton called the Matthew effect. Why would they ever do that? --Christian Nelson

On Feb 7, 2008, at 7:33 PM, Heidelberg, Chris wrote:

There are many great research projects that are not seeing the light of day because of the media monolopoly and it is time for the dispossed to create their own online journals.

Publishers have no reason to squelch great research. Their only interest is in increasing their revenue, which would actually be improved if the journals they published had a wider representation of thought. But they're hamstrung by the dynamics of academia I mentioned earlier. This is clear, because they're more than happy to create new journals that represent new theoretical or methodological viewpoints when the readership for those viewpoints becomes big enough to sustain a journal.

I have worked in the media for 20 years and I arrived at that conclusion long ago, and so must academic otherwise it is engaging in self-censorship rather than spreading knowledge which we are all required to do.

Academia is not a sentient being that can perform intentional actions. But individual academics are such beings and can perform such actions. Further, whether consciously or not they follow what they perceive are their self-interests, which logically lead to the current situation, as I indicated before. The only way to change the situation is to change academics' self-interests and their perception of how those self-interests must or can be fulfilled. Anyone got any ideas? Christian Nelson

Yes, replying to my own post, but I should have checked my RSS feed this morning: http://savageminds.org/2008/02/07/anthropology-news-special-safety-valve-edi... http://dev.aaanet.org/publications/articles.cfm Best. Casey On Feb 7, 2008 10:13 AM, Casey O'Donnell <odonnc@rpi.edu> wrote:

There has been a fair amount of talk related to this by anthropologists. I think your article also falls into what Chris Kelty wrote about as "Recursive Public Irony," about access to articles about access can be quite limited:

http://savageminds.org/2005/05/24/recursive-public-irony/ http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/?p=43

-- Casey O'Donnell RPI STS Department - PhD Candidate http://homepage.mac.com/codonnell/

I have worked in the media business (commercial, government, non-profit, and industrials) for twenty years, and as a recent PhD who researched publishing as part of my dissertation on Edutainment & Convergence I know that open access models can work, and are working successfully already. As a person that has to work with the media conglomerates who own most of what we see, read, hear and yes think it is imperative that we switch to an open access model if we really want to educate citizenry and not avoid propaganda and cyber dictatorships. The Pentagon freely admits that the Internet has to be treated as an enemy technology (a recent Washington Post article I believe). Now let's mention some of the successful publishing models that can easily be adapted to academia that most of us are familiar with presently: Google, iTunes, YouTube, Amazon, Microsoft (pick several), Learn Out Loud and Audible which is now owned by Amazon. The over-reliance on the printed materials is the issue. I don' have read anymore studies on this (because I've read too many) because I actually cost out print, video, audio, and web costs as part of my job as Producer/Director and now Internet/Emerging Tech Exp because of convergence. I am not necessarily in favor of totally killing the printed book. I think folks who are digital immigrants by nature should have that option; however, I think that like others with expensive tastes like fine wine: they will have to pay for it. Here is the bottom line: with some very notable exceptions most people do not make money in the publishing business as it is presently constructed by the media companies. The media conglomerates either outright own or have large interests in many if not most academic publishing (Bagdikian, 2000, 2005). The current system is just like Las Vegas, Monte Carlo, or Atlantic City: the house almost always wins because they set the rules. However, when new rules take hold, a whole new set of winners emerge. If you read Lessig (2001,2002, 2004) and others like Bagdikian (2000, 2005) companies and institutions generally fight innovation that is threatening to the established order even it will help everyone. The VCR is a great of this, and it set up the DRM fight that began with Betamax vcr Every university should set up a digital publishing operation, and utilize student, faculty, and alumni experts to assist them. You will need some graphic artists to layout everything (even though templates exist) and everything can be shared via free wikis of the type that Google offers for free through gmail. The students need the real time experience; the faculty members desperately need real world time to keep their skills up to speed (trust me on that one), the administration is utilizing dollars that it is already putting out to assist in its institutional mission of spreading knowledge and its creating a viable publishing program for students who will have experience, a portfolio and alumni and industry contacts. Oh, did I mention that the university can also use this a fundraising tool for the endowment. At the end of the day digital publishing has already begun the democratization of knowledge where little known people with great research can publish their results worldwide instantly without being impeded or scorned by the highly traditional and cliquish academic community (Willinsky, 2006). The free and advertiser-based model is clearly the most successful model for digital publishing (Apple, 2008;Disney, 2008; Facebook, 2008;Google, 2008; Microsoft, 2008; MySpace, 2008;NBC Universal, 2008;NewsCorp, 2008;Viacom, 2007;Yahoo, 2008; YouTube, 2008) and each of the companies cited also has a serious research and/or publishing entity. The open-access model actually is heralding the return of museums and libraries to their rightful places as the holders of digital information, digital knowledge, and meaningful discussion on such matters in the digital age. I guarantee you that there will be some smaller and elite universities that will become renown for adopting this approach and then everyone else when adopt digital publishing. The key will be matching ads that do have a conflict of interest, but match the research. This looks like a job for Google. -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Ingbert Floyd Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 12:05 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] open-access is the future: boycott locked-down academicjournals In general, I completely agree with danah boyd on this one, but convincing scholars to adopt open access models is but one of the challenges in moving to an open-access model of publishing. Thus, I thought I'd bring up some of the complications, given that I'm from library and information science. If we, as academics who care, are going to solve this, I think it would be productive to consider the barriers that currently exist. I wish I could write more, but I have some deadlines I need to meet today. 1) Journals are as much a service as a product. Thus, publishers advertise, distribute, index, abstract, pay for the costs of reviewing, etc. I'm not from the publishing world, but I've seen some statistics on the costs. How will these costs be paid for? (I know Carole Palmer http://people.lis.uiuc.edu/~clpalmer/ has done some research on this, but I can't quickly find a representative publication.) 2) One of the biggest problems facing the open access movement is finding economic models which work. After a bit of web research, my impression is that all open-access publishers which are free for both authors and readers, are supported by foundations, or in rare cases, by universities. Thus, their economic models are *not* self-sustaining. If everybody who wants to start a journal needs to depend on a foundation to get started, it will be very difficult to start a journal, as competition for foundation funding will be very tight (and likely biased in the same direction that grant money is currently biased). Furthermore, there are individuals who are wary of this model, because they do not want foundations to be the gatekeepers of academic research. They feel that academics should be the gatekeepers of academic research, like they are now. The one good thing is that under the reader-pays models, a group of scientists can start their own journal, even their own publishing company, and thus short-circuit any price, content, or other controls that they are being subject to by their current publisher. There are in fact examples of this in the academic publishing world. 3) Remember that a common alternative to the reader-pays model, is the author pays model. This is a very common "open access" model. But do we really want to force researchers to have grants, so that they can afford to pay for their articles to be published? There have been several attempts at creating fully automatic journals, where, theoretically, the only costs would be to pay for the bandwidth, the hosting, and some maintenance of the code. But these have all failed. Why? I don't know. Issues of indexing and browsing might be relevant. 4) There is a *huge* difference between for-profit and non-profit publishers. Research indicates that the costs of journal publishing are about the same, but the access fees for-profit publishers charge are often many times more expensive than the fees of non-profits. (Check out Cristina Lopez's link for some stats on journal costs: http://www.library.uiuc.edu/scholcomm/journalcosts.htm ) 5) The Institutional Repositories movement is in no small measure an attempt by libraries to reduce journal costs, by providing faculty with an alternative means of publication. The problem, is that no faculty member makes the time to submit their publications, so the adoption rates of the repositories are dismal, thus limiting the funds libraries can secure for their operation. People who are leading the movement, are trying to figure out ways of providing alternative publication venues. But, of course, that means that such venues are often limited to members of the university, due to university policy. Academics who do not work in universities, or academics from poor universities are at a disadvantage if this model is the major publishing model. 6) People these days often hype the digital born journal, as addressing some of these concerns. The truth is, that the fixed costs of digital journals and print journals are about the same. And, if things are digital born-and-bred, what are the preservation mechanisms in place to make sure these articles exist 10-100 years from now? Currently, libraries, not publishers, take on this role by physically storing and maintaining print runs of journals. But if print runs disappear, what then? Libraries often *cannot* store digital versions (publisher rules, formats that are not preservation-friendly, etc.), unless they have control over the format of the document--another reason for the Institutional Repository movement. And publishers don't seem to be actively (or at least intentionally) taking on this role. So, any ideas for addressing these problems? In particular, I would love to see a self-sustainable economic model, that is not directly subject to foundation whims or University budget cuts. Until solutions to this and other problems are found, however, I like the ACM model, where access to the ACM digital library is pay-only, and thus libraries, companies, and some individuals subscribe (and keep it alive), but all authors are free to publish their own work either on their website, or on an institutional website (such as an Institutional Repository), as long as they establish clearly that the article was originally published in the ACM. Thus, if you, the author, is motivated, you can make your work free to access by everybody, drop it in an institutional repository so that it gets preserved even if you can't preserve it yourself. And doing so boosts citation rates too! This solution is not systematic enough for preserving our academic heritage over the long-term, but it is a start. Ingbert On Feb 7, 2008 9:15 AM, Casey O'Donnell <odonnc@rpi.edu> wrote:

Yes, replying to my own post, but I should have checked my RSS feed this morning:

http://savageminds.org/2008/02/07/anthropology-news-special-safety-val ve-edition/ http://dev.aaanet.org/publications/articles.cfm

Best. Casey

On Feb 7, 2008 10:13 AM, Casey O'Donnell <odonnc@rpi.edu> wrote:

...

There has been a fair amount of talk related to this by anthropologists. I think your article also falls into what Chris Kelty wrote about as "Recursive Public Irony," about access to articles about access can be quite limited:

http://savageminds.org/2005/05/24/recursive-public-irony/ http://blog.openaccessanthropology.org/?p=43

-- Casey O'Donnell RPI STS Department - PhD Candidate

http://homepage.mac.com/codonnell/ _______________________________________________ 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/

-- ========================================== Ingbert Floyd PhD Student Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign http://ingbert.org/ || skype: spacesoon Check out the unofficial GSLIS Wiki: http://www.gslis.org/ "Dream in a pragmatic way." -Aldous Huxley _______________________________________________ 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/

My vision is the availability of all academic knowledge on the Internet for free, no author-charges and no reader-charges. This is the idea of a global Internet "brain" of academic knowledge. Knowledge as such is historic, dynamic, co-operatively produced, applying a Hegelian dialectical logic this means that openness and free availability is the Essence and Truth of academic knowledge. Corporate publishing negates and hinders and alienates the freedom of academic knowledge. But most academic knowledge today exists as private property owned by publishing houses and sold as commodities. Corporate publishing is a hindrance to the vision of free academic knowledge. Paper authors produce surplus value and hundreds and thousands of hours of unpaid labour time (Tiziana Terranova speaks of "free labour") that is exploited by publishing houses, and sold as commodities back to the scientific community in order to transform the surplus value into profit. Capital here functions as a medium of an academic communication process that could in principle be organized without corporate mediation. Is open access-publishing a good alternative? In its current form, not really, because many open access journals charge authors. So e.g. there has been a recent offensive in open access journals by Bentham, they charge authors up to 800US$ per paper! This is the model of corporate open access journals (coaj). Coaj could result in economic pressures being put by publishers on editors, which could result in a lack of quality because journals are driven by economic interests to accept many papers, because in the coaj-model more papers means more profit (this is not necessarily the case in traditional corporate academic publishing). Neither the private property- nor the coaj model are truthful. The alternative in order to try to realize a vision of free access are non-profit open access journals (npoaj). There are already many such journals around, see http://www.doaj.org But in this context, a large problem is that careers and reputation depend in many disciplines on getting your papers published in journals that are included in the Science Citation Indexes. Currently only about 1% of the journals covered by the ISI Web of Knowledge are open access: see http://scientific.thomson.com/media/presentrep/essayspdf/openaccesscitations... . ISI Thomson is a private profit-oriented corporation, hence its business and its inclusion/selection practices tend to reflect the dominant interests of the publishing industry, which has an interest in marginalizing and keeping the visibility of non-profit alternatives low. ISI Thomson argues that articles from open access journals are less frequently cited in other journals, and hence are less included: http://scientific.thomson.com/media/presentrep/acropdf/impact-oa-journals.pd... . But if you marginalize certain journals due to corporate interests, then of course they will be less cited because they have unequal chances of being visible. I don't share at all the argument made by Ingbert Floyd that journals are commodities and hence business models for open access have to be created. This is a typical Thatcherite affirmative TINA (there is no alternative) argument. The alternative is to create and support the alternatives! So I think, danah, that not all open-access journals are real alternatives, but only a certain portion of it, non-profit open access journals. Hence my suggestions concerning what to do are: * Scholars could increasingly submit their articles to non-profit open access journals (npoaj): see http://www.doaj.org and could support such journals by joining their edititorial boards, making reviews, recommending these journals to others, etc... * For most, it won't be possible to stop publishing in corporate journals because these are unfortunately still the journals that control the academic world and will help you advance your career. Hence the suggestion is to submit a certain share of ones papers to npoaj, as much as one considers reasonable. For people with tenure, this is an easy choice. * In order to increase reputation, scholars could read and cite more articles from npoaj in their papers. * Selected npoaj could be suggested in systematic organized massive waves for inclusion in SCI, SSCI, etc to Thomson (also to Scopus etc): http://scientific.thomson.com/forms/isi/journalrec/ http://scientific.thomson.com/forms/isi/journalsubmission/ Academic publishing is a capitalist political economy, its economic interests alienate general academic interests and knowledge, it colonizes science with the logic of money capital. The alternative is non-corporate publishing and the creation of a non-corporate world. Christian -- _____________________________ Univ.Ass. Dr. Christian Fuchs Assistant Professor for Internet and Society ICT&S Center - Advanced Studies and Research in Information and Communication Technologies & Society http://www.icts.uni-salzburg.at University of Salzburg Sigmund Haffner Gasse 18 5020 Salzburg Austria christian.fuchs@sbg.ac.at Phone +43 662 8044 4823 Fax +43 662 6389 4800 Information-Society-Technology: http://fuchs.icts.sbg.ac.at http://www.icts.uni-salzburg.at/fuchs/ Co-Editor of tripleC - peer reviewed open access online journal for the foundations of information science: http://triplec.uti.at New Book: Fuchs, Christian. 2008. Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age. New York: Routledge. 408 Pages. http://fuchs.icts.sbg.ac.at/i&s.html http://www.routledge.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?sku=&isbn... "It is the duty of the press to come forward on behalf of the oppressed in its immediate neighbourhood" (Karl Marx) "two contradictory hypotheses: (1) that advanced (...) society is capable of containing qualitative change for the foreseeable future; (2) that forces and tendencies exist which may break this containment and explode the society" (Herbert Marcuse).