More on the problem and the solution
Martin Weller, Academic publishing - a rant, The Ed Techie, June 28, 2006. (Thanks to Ray Corrigan.) Excerpt:
For those who don’t engage in [academic publishing], the deal goes something like this:
- Academics provide the content
- Academics do the reviewing
- Academics often do the editing
- Publishers print it and sell it back to academics
- Authors are often restricted from making their own work publicly available
- Authors receive no payment for the published work
Not an entirely fair system one would have thought, but because journal publication is tied up with academic esteem, promotion and the rather pernicious RAE, it is a process many of us feel compelled to go along with.
Thankfully the tide is turning and there are a number of different models for publishing now, including online journals, open content and err, blogs I guess.
PS: Right. I’d just add that the remedy, or the superior alternative, does not lie in “online” journals as such, which may be guilty of the same practices. It lies in open-access journals, which are online but also free of charge and free of the restrictions that prevent authors from sharing their work as widely as possible. Open-access archives are another part of the solution, giving authors the same benefits even if they publish in conventional, non-OA journals.
