I believe Charles was referring to individually-directed comments rather than comments of substance. That said, I know that while I have a continuing interest in the evolution of scholarly publishing, I didn't understand Rasputin's initial post. I assumed it didn't refer to AIR: Like many social science conferences, AIR doesn't publish proceedings, but we do provide the opportunity for authors to distribute their conference papers through our website. As for the field more generally: there does seem to be some irony that many of our top journals remain "closed." It would be wrong to say that they don't publish electronically: I can't think of one that does not provide internet access to their articles. However, I think the social sciences have been slower to embrace open access than some of the sciences (particularly math and physics), and a bit faster to embrace open publishing than many of the humanities. That's a broad--probably overbroad--generalization, and I can think of a number of interesting humanities and arts-based open access publishing experiments dating to the early popularity of the net. But it is vexing that some of our top journals remain behind a pay wall. Of course, there are a number of open access journals in our field, including JCMC, which I think continues to have a very solid reputation, especially for so young a journal. And, while some see it as a bit "too" open, First Monday continues to be an interesting source of open access material. There are several others as well. And I should note that I think one of the most promising ways of encouraging the continuation of open access is to--a la Nike--"Just do it!" I think it is imperative that as scholars we self-archive our papers. I think Barry Wellman serves as a great model for this, and I think a fairly large number of AIR members also provide versions of their work online. Unfortunately, I think that a lot of scholars continue to feel that on-paper publication carries more weight (so to speak) than internet publications. Part of this, no doubt, has to do with potential for confusion. On the web, nobody knows if your dog is peer reviewed. The web is replete with bad scholarship, and since most websurfers, I suspect, are not well equipped to differentiate between, say, a peer reviewed journal like JCMC and a site set up by a quack or an interested corporation to look like it is an academic site. This makes some scholars shy away in favor of more established, traditional publication outlets. I suspect that the move to open access journals could largely be completed in a single stroke: the requirement by NSF that grantees publish in open access journals. - Alex -- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais // Social Architect // http://alex.halavais.net //