[Air-L] book announcement

[Alex Halavais]

I agree with Steve that it comes down to individuals to choose to make
their work available in a more equitable way, but I am also certain
that there is a role for academic associations and institutions in the
process.  I fought (successfully) to have open access works valued
more highly in the tenure process in our department, for example. And
it is all to easy to forget many academic associations support
themselves through journal publication--a fee often hidden in library
expenses. I think AoIR is moving in the right direction with an effort
to make conference papers openly available, but it seems as though we
are late to that party. I strongly believe that increasing access to
scholarly knowledge is a core mission of AoIR, and so finding ways of
encouraging this is a worthwhile endeavor.

It's all too easy to blame publishers for making profits through the
process of exclusionary access, and forget that we are complicit in
this when we choose to review for and submit to closed journals and
publishers. Yes, there are sometimes reputational advantages to those
publishers, and for that reason I couldn't quite go for the
"full-danah" pledge of only open access (
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2008/02/06/openaccess_is_t.html
) . I have, however, adhered to a half-danah pledge of making at least
half of my work openly available. That would have been harder if I had
remained pre-tenure at an R1, I'll admit, but sometimes doing the
right thing isn't the same as doing the easy thing.

I also think it's important for authors to recognize how their work
will be made available. It's not just an ethical question but a
strategic one. I published a chapter in the Handbook Jeremy edited,
and it was--as he notes--even more expensive. Although it has been
read, I am convinced that the price of that volume has kept it out of
the hands of most of its intended audience. It's not a matter of the
work being secret--in fact, I blogged a version of that chapter as I
was writing it--it's a question of how many barriers we put up around
our scholarship, and who ends up really paying for those barriers.

Alex






On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 7:56 AM, Steve Jones <sjones at uic.edu> wrote:
> Since I was mentioned in Charles' email that started this thread....
>
> I think Jeremy sums it up pretty well. I can't speak to Lang's business model, I haven't a clue about it. What I do know is that the books in Digital Formations aren't intended nor marketed to be "handbooks" or "reference books." In general those are perceived as very different from other types of books, textbooks and monographs. They usually have smaller press runs, more pages, are targeted at libraries (and other institutional buyers) and not individual buyers. Some presses publish only reference books, others publish a mix of those and other books. The business model relies on high prices to presumably at least break even with relatively few unit sales.
>
> Sylvie Noel brought up in a subsequent email that there are people who publish e-books at very low cost (and, I would add, there are probably others who provide their work for free). There are alternatives such as these and others, and I have always encouraged AoIR to consider alternatives in general, so perhaps this is something to think about and to do. However, I would (always) add that it is not something we should look to AoIR to instigate, it is something that should come from members and those on air-l, who, if they are interested in pursuing alternatives, should pursue them and seek the support of AoIR (whatever form that support might take).
>
> Similarly, I would very much like to encourage people to consider danah's recommendation in an email not part of the 'book announcement' thread of Ignite talks (and other forms of presentation) at the next AoIR. They need not even be within the structure of the program, but could take place at other points in time during the conference.
>
> Part (perhaps a big part) of what one faces when proposing and engaging in alternatives to traditional scholarly modes of presentation is the seeming recalcitrance of the academy, but in my experience it can't hurt to try, and it just might help a lot.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Steve
>
> On Mar 9, 2011, at 4:45 AM, jeremy hunsinger wrote:
>



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