[WSIS CS-Plenary] ITID's The World Summit in Reflection

[Zielinski, Christopher]

Mike, Lisa,

Two points:

1. Many high-impact journals are open access - in the biomedical field
this includes such journals as the British Medical Journal, the 100 or
so BioMed Central journals, and many others. So publishing for academic
prestige and publishing for open access are not mutually incompatible.

2. Although many academic journals charge for access to their online
versions, 92% of them currently allow self-archiving in open access
archives. This includes many of the leading journals in their
disciplines (e.g., PNAS). That is, you can publish in these journals and
simultaneously place your paper in an open access archive, making it
publicly accessible immediately (an excellent source of information
about this is at http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ - from which the 92%
statistic above is taken, and which contains a list of the journals
allowing various forms of self-archiving). 

Thus, even if academic recognition pressures force you to scale the
highest crags of copyright-girded, ivory-tower journals, you can still
(and definitely should) simultaneously place your work in an open access
archive so that the world at large can find it as well. 

Best,

Chris

Chris Zielinski 
STP, Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research
RPC/EIP, World Health Organization 
Avenue Appia, CH1211, Geneva, Switzerland 


-----Original Message-----
From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org] On
Behalf Of Gurstein, Michael
Sent: 07 April 2005 22:53
To: plenary at wsis-cs.org
Subject: RE: [WSIS CS-Plenary] ITID's The World Summit in Reflection

Lisa,

You are certainly correct in pointing out the (current) extraordinary
pressure on junior faculty to publish in print/copyright journals.
However, that is almost certainly transitional as the pressure on the
for profit journals is coming from numerous directions including
research funders, library budgets, open archive/open access activists,
ordinary researchers who want to see their research appear in months
rather than years and be available to the widest possible audience and
the simple inexorable transition of generations.

I suspect the point where the entire edifice of traditional academic
publishing transitions over to some form of open archive/open access
model is much closer than we think and moves like that of Lessig's are
simply meant to hasten this along... (the fact that this particular
volume of a for profit journal has chosen, it appears (and somewhat
awkwardly) to be Creative Commons accessible is a testament to this...

Best,

MG

-----Original Message-----
From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org] On
Behalf Of mclauglm at po.muohio.edu
Sent: April 7, 2005 12:41 AM
To: plenary at wsis-cs.org
Subject: RE: [WSIS CS-Plenary] ITID's The World Summit in Reflection
....

Which all leads to what I think is an important point: What Lawrence 
Lessig and Michael Gurstein are doing is sincerely admirable. But, 
respectfully, I'd suggest that publishing in Open Archive journals 
works for them because both have already achieved tenure and/or 
promotion and a status in their respective fields that expands their 
options. Michael, you are astute, and I would guess that you are 
aware that, in publishing in Open archive journals, there is less 
threat to you professionally-speaking than that which would be risked 
by junior scholars who have not yet received tenure and/or promotion. 
For the latter, the jewel in the crown is the established, 
mainstream, usually organizationally-associated journals, almost all 
of which are published  by publishers who demand that copyright be 
reassigned to them. Through mergers and acquisitions, these 
publishers are becoming an oligopoly. Open archive journals are still 
viewed with a great deal of skepticism, at least in the US, when it 
comes to having one's writing evaluated.

One reason why I mention this is that I know that not everyone on 
this list is an academic or a writer who is looking for the broadest 
audience possible and forced to conform to the notion of "legitimate" 
publishing venues. As some others have mentioned, we need to help one 
another understand things because we are a diverse lot. The other 
reason is that I believe that we should fight for the idea of 
communication as a public good in the broadest sense, and one way of 
doing so is to fight for alternative methods of publishing, such as 
Open Archive, as legitimate, regardless of the demands of the 
institutions to which we are attached and the economic needs of the 
mainstream publishing industry.

Best,

Lisa (in full disclosure: among other things, I'm editor of Feminist 
Media Studies, which is owned by one of the behemoths of for-profit 
journal publishing: Taylor and Francis Ltd; but, in my defense, I 
signed the contract before my smaller, less oligopolistic publisher 
was bought out by T&F:))



>
>
>I personally, have decided to follow Lawrence Lessig's lead and only 
>publish my academic writing in Open Archive journals which make their 
>materials freely available to all via the net.
>
>Mike Gurstein
>
>Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
>School of Management
>New Jersey Institute of Technology
>
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