[Air-L] open-access is the future: no, it is not! only if it is non-corporate: the capitalist political economy of academic journals and open access

[aforte]

Well said, Ingbert.

"Academic publishing" is not one monolithic regime. It's not even two
regimes (ie open and not). Publishing experiences of an
interdisciplinary researcher of online communities are different from
those of a mathematician, a biomedical researcher or a communications
researcher (for example) in at least a few ways that seem significant here.

One of the more critical differences when comparing disciplines: review
criteria. In interdisciplinary fields that draw from a variety of
literatures and epistemological traditions, review is a more strenuous
burden on the community than in fields with an accepted canon and
methodological repertoire. The cost of participation is higher.

Another critical difference: Some disciplines are currently more
dependent than others on for-profit organizations. It's actually not all
large, profit-hungry corporations eating our intellectual progeny for
dinner. A great deal of the literature I read coming out of computer
science and/or engineering is produced by non-profit professional
associations. Individuals invest heavily in sustaining these
organizations for the good of their academic communities (and, yes, to
establish themselves within those communities).

There are already a number of alternate models out there for academic
publication. Viva open access for sure, but defining responsible/good/
positive/humanitarian/effective/insert-value-laden-adjective-here
publishing using the line between "free" and "not-free" is perhaps too
coarse a distinction.

Andrea