[Air-L] open-access is the future: boycott locked-down academic journals

[Christian Nelson]

Hi danah,
Thanks for your empirical example of the IJOC. But let's be sure  
we're comparing apples to apples here. My argument was that  
successful scholars won't jump ship to publish in journals where they  
and their chums or disciples do not maintain editorial control--i.e.,  
journals in which editorial decisions are "open source" as well. Does  
the IJOC allow reader commentary on articles? Does it allow readers  
to rank the published articles in terms of their value, validity,  
etc. of the articles like books are evaluated on Amazon.com? Does it  
allow for readers to peruse all articles that were cited in order to  
champion those that the editors wrongly relegated to the scrap heap?  
If it doesn't do any of these things, its just an online version of  
the old journals, and there's nothing special about such a journal  
from an intellectual perspective. Sure, they are special in terms of  
their economic model, but that's it, and that shouldn't be enough for  
folks who are really interested in the open exchange and evaluation  
of ideas.
Christian Nelson