Open Access?

[rising_star]

Okay, so there have been discussions about the various pushes throughout 2012 for increased open access. Lately, editorial staff of prominent journals have been publishing their own reasons why there needs to be more open access, though they're doing this in subscription-only journals. The current editor-in-chief of American Anthropologist, Tom Boellstorff, published an editorial on this in the most recent issue of the journal. In it, he calls for "gold open access" for American Anthropologist once its current contract with Wiley-Blackwell ends. He summarizes his entire argument, in brief, at the beginning so, just read that if you've got the time. I've pulled out one quote that I find particularly interesting.

He writes,

A fundamental issue is that, in my view, it is wrong for any academic journal to be based on a model where the unremunerated labor of scholars supports corporate profits. For instance, under the current system WB pays none of my salary; I am paid by my students and California taxpayers. Their dollars support WB profits, and they pay WB a second time for the same content when my university library pays subscription fees.

Now, although I am opposed to any profit-based model for scholarly publishing, as a thought experiment I would actually prefer a consistently corporate model where WB published AAA journals but editors received, say, $20,000 a year for their labor, reviewers $50 for each review they provided, and even authors were paid for their content. In other words, what I find particularly ethically problematic is that WB's current business model is predicated on the unpaid labor of reviewers, authors, and editors, as well as significant cash and in-kind subventions from the universities and other not-for-profit institutions in which editors of AAA journals work.

This, I think, gets to the heart of some of the economic practices people find unsettling. Do you think his potential model involving payment is viable? Why or why not?

Here's the reference info so you can access the full article:

Boellstorff, T. (2012), Why the AAA Needs Gold Open Access. American Anthropologist, 114: 389–393. doi: 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2012.01440.x

[Dal PhDer]

I am sorry I can't add more to the discuss as I don't know a lot about this topic, but I do agree with this model.

Personally, I can't understand why there should be printing cost associated with journals any more. Money, environment, waste- this could all be reduced by going completely electronic. The cost would then be a website to host it and personal (which would be far less than the current paper and electronic hosting).

I do agree with the above statement that the majority of research is funded by tax payers in either direct or indirect ways, and therefore should be accessible to everyone. The essence of research is to explore, generate new knowledge, and on some level- better individuals, the society, etc. I think denying that knowledge to the public (in the form of a fee for access) kind of goes against a lot of the fundamentals of research (mind you, I am coming from a social science/health background...the perspective from other disciplines may be different).

I guess in the end, without knowing the cogs and wheels of how publication works- I believe that all (or most) publications should be open access- and I think most of the people who do the research don't do it to make money, but to add to the intellectual development of society.