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

[Christian Fuchs]

I have been following the debate and try to summarize the positions 
(maybe I am wrong):

Concerning the future role of open-access publishing:

P1: Open access online journals are important and should be supported 
because they give a public character to academic knowledge. Locked down 
journals should be boycotted.

P2: Non-profit open access online journals should be supported  because 
the for-profit ones charge unacceptable author-rates.

P3: High-quality academic publishing is in need of a high amount of 
resources (money, time, persons, etc.), which can be best managed by the 
established corporate models of publishing.

PN: Any combination of other elements.

The debate then shifted towards the role of peer-reviewing and the 
question of there should be open rating instead of anonymous peer-review:

S1: Academic publishing is stratified by reputation that is accumulated 
and controlled through the peer-review system. The alternative is a 
public review system, all or most works submitted get published, 
everyone can comment and make ratings.

S2: The peer-review procedure works well as it is now, it is a high 
quality standard in science. Open access and public reviewing/commenting 
might undercut these quality standards.

SN: Some middle-ground.

Personal positions and experiences seem to be guiding in such debates,  
so it might be best, as suggested by Charles, to pause for a moment and 
resume the discourse in some days, with less emotions and in a less 
heated way.

Christian

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