Is it time to boycott non-open journals?

John Moravec — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 22:27:54 +0000

Danah Boyd joined the call for reforming how academics publish their work by calling for a boycott of non-open-access journals …and, provided a list of suggestions on what needs to be done now:

Tenured Faculty and Industry Scholars: Publish only in open-access journals.
Disciplinary associations: Help open-access journals gain traction.
Tenure committees: Recognize alternate venues and help the universities follow.
Young punk scholars: Publish only in open-access journals in protest, especially if you’re in a new field.
More conservative young scholars: publish what you need to get tenure and then stop publishing in closed venues immediately upon acquiring tenure.
All scholars: Go out of your way to cite articles from open-access journals.
All scholars: Start reviewing for open-access journals.
Libraries: Begin subscribing to open-access journals and adding them to your catalogue.
Universities: Support your faculty in creating open-access journals on your domains.
Academic publishers: Wake up or get out.

(The above list is abstracted from her original post.)

I probably fall under the “young punk” category in her list, and publish in both traditional and new media as an attempt to compromise and appeal to both conservative and cutting-edge scholars. How can we move away from a culture of appeasement of 20th century academic culture and refocus our knowledge diffusion toward media formats that are more appealing to younger and more tech-savvy academics –such as blogs, and the spaces where open access journals and other, new, open media interface? How long until the academy will finally accept highly commented and linked blog posts as legitimate, peer-reviewed articles in a tenure review?

Integrating Open Source models into education

John Moravec — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 00:56:07 +0000

In Spring 2004, Laurie Taylor and Brendan Riley published an article in Computers and Composition on introducing the Open Source model into education to transform the nature of academic research and pedagogy. In regard to research, the authors argue that adoption of the model among authors would shift the ownership of academia’s intellectual property from publishers to academic authors. Today, the number of published works are limited by the high cost of publishing them. Adoption of an Open Source model, will expand primary publishing to electronic media and allow market demands and acclaim for each work to determine the extent of distribution. Faced with a future where continuous new knowledge production will be critical to ensure the success of individuals and organizations, integration of an Open Source-based model into academia could help ensure that knowledge production among academic professionals increases and is made available.

Adoption of an Open Source-based philosophy in the classroom that is centered on collaborative production, review, and continuous revision could support an exchange system worthy of sustaining continuous new knowledge production. In a potential classroom model, students will collaborate on a project where the continuous input knowledge contributes to the structure of the finished product. Taylor and Riley believe that by connecting with a greater community for review and evaluation of the project further enhances students project planning, design and communication skills.

Education Futures » publishing

Is it time to boycott non-open journals?

Integrating Open Source models into education