Jennifer L. Holberg and Marcy Taylor, Getting the Profession We Want, or A Few Thoughts on the Crisis in Scholarly Publishing, Pedagogy 4(1), 1-7 (2004). (Access restricted to subscribers.) The editors of Pedagogy explore the economics of the scholarly monograph, a condition of tenure for many academic departments. As library book budgets are increasingly constrained by the rising costs of books and especially journals, university presses and would-be authors have suffered. Holberg and Taylor review much of the discussion around this issue, highlighting suggestions that academics focus on the scholarly article rather than the monograph. One of the problems, they point out, is "it is naive to see the journals market as more secure than the book market....Electronic publication is not, as many seem to believe, free or even cheaper than traditional publication. In fact, it is just as expensive as print publication ...since by far the largest costs in producing a journal are editorial." They remark also that institutions are cancelling journals at a rapid rate, or purchasing them through aggregators who pay less to the university presses. The authors do not mention open access publishing; rather, they speculate on potential solutions such as changing the standards for tenure, more emphasis on teaching and development of educational materials and increased valuation of scholarly editing and reviewing. (Source: Chronicle of Higher Education Daily Update)
Posted by
Garrett at 4/27/2004 10:19:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
