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.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/29/2006 10:25:00 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.
