[Air-L] FW: Call for Papers: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ACADEMIC JOURNAL PUBLISHING

Fri Feb 8 06:59:56 PST 2008

Prichard, Craig schrieb:
>
> Dear All,
>
> Please find below a call for papers for a special issue of the open 
> access journal /ephemera/ on the Political Economy of Academic Journal 
> Publishing (deadline November 1, 2008). If you are aware of colleagues 
> with a particular interest in this topic please could you forward this 
> call for papers to them.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Craig Prichard and Steffen Böhm
>
> ___________________________________________________________
>
> * *
>
> *The Political Economy of Academic Journal Publishing*
>
> * *
>
> *Call for Papers & Proposal for a Special Issue of /ephemera: theory & 
> politics in organization/ (www.ephemeraweb.org 
> <http://www.ephemeraweb.org/>) to be edited by*
>
> * *
>
> *Craig Prichard & Steffen Böhm *
>
> * *
>
> ‘Publish or perish’, that famous diktat, is without doubt the central, 
> pervasive and unassailable logic governing most academic work in the 
> current period. The central figure, the one around which this decree 
> currently revolves, is, of course, the academic journal article. While 
> the book and perhaps the lecture remain important in some locations, 
> the journal article has become the core currency and the very measure 
> by which academic jobs, careers, reputations and identities are made 
> and traded.
>
> Yet despite all the hours congealed into ‘the article’, and the years 
> spent perfecting the craft of writing for journal publications, many 
> of us know very little about the industry that surrounds our work and 
> to which we contribute so much. Of course, we may recall certain 
> events: Some will have noted the sale, for nearly US$1 billion, of 
> Blackwell’s 875-strong journal collection to US company Wiley in late 
> 2006. Others will be aware that they can now, if they so wish, 
> purchase their already published papers as individual downloads on 
> Amazon.com. There will be some for whom internet-based open access 
> journals (such as /ephemera/) or online repositories are now the 
> natural home of their written academic work. There may be others whom 
> have confronted the crisis that surrounds journal subscription pricing 
> and are seeing the demise of library journal collections in their 
> university libraries. And there may be a few among us who recognize 
> those journals and publishers that feature in Ted Bergstrom’s hall of 
> shame for the most expensive journals currently published 
> (http://www.journalprices.com <http://www.journalprices.com/>). But 
> for all those that recognize such events and processes there are many 
> more for whom such events have ‘taken a while to get our attention’, 
> as Ron Kirby, the University of California mathematician who led the 
> editorial revolt against Reed Elsevier’s pricing strategy at the 
> journal /Topography/, said recently.
>
> This special issue is an invitation to begin to change that. It is a 
> call for contributions that directly and critically explore the 
> dynamics, problems, tensions, and issues that surround the political 
> economy of academic journal publishing. Part of this is an invitation 
> to explore alternative ways of organizing the production of academic 
> work, particularly the theory, politics and organization of open 
> access publishing, which is, perhaps, the most promising initiative to 
> challenge corporate forms of journal publishing today. This 
> exploration of alternatives is an acknowledgement that the writer and 
> academic author could be regarded, at various moments, as agent, 
> challenger and also victim of hegemonic regimes. We invite 
> inter-disciplinary contributions from around the world and 
> particularly welcome submissions from countries of the Global South, 
> which have seen particular growth of open access publishing initiatives.
>
> Possible topics include (this is not an exhaustive list):
>
> - Political economy of open access publishing
>
> - Academic publishing and the knowledge society
>
> - How to organize an open access journal?
>
> - Political economy of corporate and university press publishing
>
> - The place of journal publishing in the overall apparatus of academic 
> publishing
>
> - Historical perspectives of academic journal publishing
>
> - The hegemony of UK/US publishing & referencing and its global economy
>
> - Issues of censorship in the process of publishing
>
> - Issues of inclusion/exclusion in journal publishing
>
> - Academic publishing in the Global South
>
> - Desires and identities connected to journal publishing
>
> - The public sphere and journal publishing: Who do we really reach?
>
> - The role of journal publishing in the setup and maintenance of 
> professions and disciplines
>
> - Cases of open access publishing
>
> - The organisation of open access repositories
>
> - Case histories of open access repositories
>
> - Copyright vs Copyleft
>
> - Publishing and language: the hegemony of English
>
> - Intellectual property and the impact on academic publishing
>
> - What is a journal’s ‘impact’ and how to measure it?
>
> - The specific role of /ephemera: theory & politics in organization 
> /in the world of journal publishing and potential ‘alternative impact 
> factor measurements’
>
> - Academic evaluation and performance measurement systems (such as the 
> RAE in the UK)
>
> - Publishing outside academia
>
> Full papers should be submitted to the special issue editors via email 
> by 1 November 2008. Papers should be between 5000 and 9000 words; 
> multimedia work is welcome. All submissions should follow /ephemera/’s 
> submission guidelines: http://www.ephemeraweb.org/ journal/submit.htm 
> <http://www.ephemeraweb.org/%20journal/submit.htm>. All relevant 
> submissions will undergo a double blind review process. The special 
> issue is scheduled to be published in late 2009.
>
> Special issue editors:
>
> Craig Prichard
>
> Tari Whakahaere Kaipakihi ,
>
> Te Kunenga Ki Purehuroa
>
> Pouaka Motuhake 11-222
>
> Papaioea, Aotearoa
>
> Department of Management 214
>
> Massey University, Private Bag 11-222
>
> Palmerston North, New Zealand
>
> Phone: +64 (0) 6 356-9099 ext. 2244
>
> Email: c.prichard at massey.ac.nz <mailto:c.prichard at massey.ac.nz>
>
> Steffen Böhm
>
> School of Accounting, Finance and Management
>
> University of Essex
>
> Wivenhoe Park
>
> Colchester CO4 3SQ UK
>
> Phone: +44 (0) 1206 87 3843
>
> Email: steffen at essex.ac.uk <mailto:steffen at essex.ac.uk>
>
> _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
>

-- 
_____________________________
Univ.Ass. Dr. Christian Fuchs
Assistant Professor for Internet and Society
ICT&S Center - Advanced Studies and Research 
in Information and Communication Technologies & Society
http://www.icts.uni-salzburg.at
University of Salzburg
Sigmund Haffner Gasse 18
5020 Salzburg
Austria
christian.fuchs at sbg.ac.at
Phone +43 662 8044 4823
Fax   +43 662 6389 4800
Information-Society-Technology:
http://fuchs.icts.sbg.ac.at
http://www.icts.uni-salzburg.at/fuchs/
Co-Editor of tripleC - peer reviewed open access
online journal for the foundations of information science:
http://triplec.uti.at
New Book: Fuchs, Christian. 2008. Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age. New York: Routledge. 408 Pages.
http://fuchs.icts.sbg.ac.at/i&s.html
http://www.routledge.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?sku=&isbn=9780415961325&pc= 

"It is the duty of the press to come forward on behalf of the oppressed in its immediate neighbourhood" (Karl Marx)

"two contradictory hypotheses: (1) that advanced (...) society is capable of containing qualitative change for the foreseeable future; (2) that forces and tendencies exist which may break this containment and explode the society" (Herbert Marcuse).