I’m always surprised when i hear people attack open access publishing. There are no rational arguments as to why print based texts and journals are superior to open access texts, but there are plenty of rational reasons for open access publishing. Some seem to think that open access publications are less reputable and should count less towards tenure. Personally I think if you’re writing and speaking for tenure you might be in the wrong line of work, but that’s another matter. Such people seem to forget that Harvard went open access back in 2008. Perhaps Harvard is a second rate institution, but that seems like a difficult case to make. All that should matter is the peer review process. Are the editors qualified to peer review the material handed their way and do the directing editors only elect others to peer review articles who are qualified to do so? If so, there’s no difference or issues here. This is certainly a more rigorous process than the one involved in some of the vanity presses some academics publish their books with.
Others argue that digital print can easily be lost. This is an odd argument, as books can be burned (Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura was reduced to one copy by Christians that sought to destroy the book), and 2) most open access texts are released in both print and digital formats.
The arguments for open access publishing are obvious: open access books are ecologically friendly, reducing damage to trees and damage produced by carbon emissions due to shipping, they significantly reduce the cost of publishing, and they allow ideas to circulate freely, rather than be locked away in journals that are difficult for many to access either because they are extremely expensive or have small print runs. Opposition to open access publishing indicates both a lack of ecological awareness as well as an economic classism that approves those with little means (often graduate students, but also people outside the academy) being denied access to thought. In other words, the expensive price of print journals and articles is a material mechanism that re-produces certain class and social relations in knowledge production (those that have the means or a good library available get to participate, those that don’t don’t).
From a sales angle, however, I’ve been surprised to discover that open access publishing actually seems to increase sales. The Speculative Turn has been a wild success. It crashed Re.Press’s server the night it was released, and has hovered around the 40-60 thousand sales rank on Amazon consistently since it was released a year ago. This is extraordinary for an academic text, especially given that anyone can access it for free. Graham’s Prince of Networks has done similarly well. It’s difficult to yet say how The Democracy of Objects will do in print form, but so far the internet traffic has been very promising.
I’m very eager to see how O-Zone does once it is up and running over the next couple of years. Eileen Joy’s Postmedievalism, an open access journal, has been tremendously successful and is internationally recognized both in the field of medieval studies and outside of it. Some have griped about the advisory editors of O-Zone, expressing ire over the fact that the undergraduate Marisol Bate is on the team. First, they fail to realize that it was Marisol who first approached Kris and I with the idea of developing the journal. Second, the credentials of the editors both within the world of OOO and in academia as a whole are outstanding. All of the people involved in the journal are people who have made significant contributions to OOO in the form of publications, organizing conferences, and who have made significant contributions to “thingly” thought. In putting together the advisory board our considerations revolved around representing a number of different disciplines and practices, insuring good gender parity, and depth of accomplishment. We selected people with whom we have closely worked or whose work we are intimately familiar with.
Third, our philosophy seeks to honor a variety of different perspectives both from within academia and from a variety of different disciplines in academia, and outside of academia. In many respects, this goes back to the original disciplinary attude of Graham, me, Morton, and Bogost. Graham and I are philosophers, Morton is a lit person, and Bogost researches technology, video games, and digital humanities. All of us have worked intimately at conferences and online from a variety of disciplines and practices ranging across artists, ethnographers, architects, novelists, musicians, geographers, historians, lit people, activists, poets, etc, etc, etc. Moreover, in the blogosphere we have cultivated a space that sidelines academic rank or belonging to academia at all, and that instead engages other in terms of the quality of their thought, work, and contributions. We have sought to capture that spirit in our editorial board, including people from a variety of disciplines as well as artists and activists. Marisol, an extraordinary thinker and person, falls into this category of activism, and is someone who fights human sex trafficing (in ways that have actually caused risk to her life and damage to her person), figts on behalf of her indigineous Hawaiian people against colonial invasion, and is involved in fighting capitalist exploitation with OWS. That’s a pretty qualified person to comment, with others, on certain political and activist submissions that come our way.
As I’ve argued before, there’s a very nasty tendency among proponents of each discipline to treat their own discipline as a master-displine that is the foundation of all other disciplines and everything else. The rhetoricians cry that everything involves rhetoric and therefore rhetoric is “first philosophy”. The historians retort that everything involves history and therefore history is “first philosophy”. The philosophers claim that everything involves being and knowledge so therefore their discipline is first philosophy. And so it goes. Kris, Eileen and I are involved in trying to create something called post-disciplinarity where it is recognized that all of these disciplines are local knowledges, partial views on the world, where it is recognized that the artist, engineer, designer, and activist create knowledge and thought every bit as much as the scholar, and where a space can be opened where these divergent lenses can come to resonate with one another and generate new innovation in thought, art, design, and political engagement. We’re tired of talking with authoritarians that want their discipline or practice to be the master-science and who wish to subordinate everything else to their master narrative. Instead we want transversal forms of communication where delight and inspiration can be taken from the work, inventions, amd discoveries of others and where there’s no longer a question of foundational disciplines.
October 28, 2011 at 5:19 am
Just one clarification here: postmedieval is a print and also e-journal, published by Palgrave Macmillan, that is not open access, although some content is free. As Palgrave is a corporate publisher, open access isn’t possible under their aegis, although they are looking for ways to innovate in this new world order of publishing.
October 28, 2011 at 5:21 am
I should have also said I agree with everything in this post, especially the last paragraph.
October 28, 2011 at 8:42 am
me too. esp the last para! good luck – but you don’t need it…
October 28, 2011 at 9:16 am
The academic publishing would is extremely corrupt. There’s been some interesting debate in the UK on this issue recently. See, for example:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist
‘Academic publishers make Rupert Murdoch look like a socialist’.
This is mostly to do with journals rather than books but I think many of the same points hold.
Because there is so little competition between the major publishers (each of whom own thousands upon thousands of journal titles) they more or less extort institutions who cannot afford NOT to have access to their content. Academics put enormous labour into producing this content (researching, writing, editing) and receive nothing other than the prestige that comes from whatever journal they’re writing/editing for. The publishers, meanwhile, make an absolute killing. And then we’re all told how academic departments aren’t financially viable! No wonder, they spend half their time working for free!
October 28, 2011 at 1:09 pm
“Opposition to open access publishing indicates both a lack of ecological awareness as well as an economic classism that approves those with little means (often graduate students, but also people outside the academy) being denied access to thought.”
Also, academics outside the US – particularly in the South where universities lack the funds for many journal subscriptions and access to online databases. Many of these universities have already jumped the system by turning a blind eye to what corporate publishers might call “piracy.”
October 28, 2011 at 1:48 pm
To aid your argument, it sounds like this “Marisol” person is not an 18-year-old? It might help against critics if bios of contributors were published, and in my case of not being a specialist of OOO, I only know a fraction of the names and not this one. Regardless, I have some familiarity with how this goes.
I was a managing editor of an interdisciplinary journal for two years, and we accepted articles from anyone. See the journal of Peace & Change at http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=0149-0508 . That said, rarely were articles from non-academics at the level they needed to be, since most did not know the relevant information or scholarship. You are right; academics get twitchy about it. However, I do not think that “border policing” is the only thing the those people’s minds. Too many journals become insular, including within my own specialty, and that is another pressing concern.
October 28, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Marisol is 19. As for the names on the editorial board, many of those people are some of the most celebrated thinkers in the humanites and all are tremendously accomplished. Obviously not everyone reviews all submissions and we don’t accept contributions from anyone and everyone. It’s a top notch editorial board, with some of the most accomplished people in the field. It really doesn’t get much better than this.
October 28, 2011 at 2:04 pm
That’s a good suggestion about biographies though.
October 28, 2011 at 2:49 pm
expertise/know-how is certainly not bound by academic disciplines/allegiances but surely all things are not equal in terms of relevant experience to the tasks of editing?
October 28, 2011 at 2:50 pm
The journal looks great, my guess is that the criticisms launched at it stem from a fear of losing academic territory and control from people who’ve dug in their heels with the system and not with actual inquiry like you have. Also, the stuff coming out of O-Zone is of particular interest to me as it gives new tools for historians working on metrology, which is in need of some upgrades.
October 28, 2011 at 3:41 pm
dmf,
Of course all things are not relevant in terms of the tasks of editing, but that’s not how advising boards work. Papers are distributed to reviewers based on their knowledge and expertise in the area. Advisory board members are not contacted to review every paper that comes the way of the journal. Moreover, advisory board remarks are just that, advisory. C’mon folks, everyone knows this!
October 28, 2011 at 3:54 pm
not sure at all that meritocracy is shared/obvious value in our times, many people now see it as anti-democratic/elitist so for me bears speaking up for.
if we are going to venture into new terrains/mediums/relations I don’t think that we should count anything as a given (tho of course we cannot/need-not think/question everything at once).
October 28, 2011 at 4:24 pm
Dmf,
90% of the people on that board have published multiple books, countless articles, and are full professors at elite institutions in their field. A number of them even have endowed chairs. It’s an absolutely amazing editorial board. I’m not sure what is leading you to imply that somehow we’ve just accepted anyone and everyone who happens to come along or that we have no standards.
October 28, 2011 at 5:42 pm
While I’m giving unsolicited advice,
my journal posted 75-word bios of the contributors in the back. Something to consider if you’re doing an inter-disciplinary journal since you cannot assume that everyone will know everyone else in the various fields.
October 28, 2011 at 6:12 pm
Hey Jason,
I do think this is a good idea, though on the website there are links to everyone if you scroll over their names. I do think someone kinda has to be living under a rock in the humanities not to have heard of Kate Hayles, Elizabeth Grosz, Joan Copjec, or Cary Wolfe. Many of the other names are, of course, familiar from the SR blogosphere. If anything the advisory board is a bit too distinguished! Most of these folks are rock stars in their fields. We’re extremely fortunate they’ve taken an interest in our project and that they’ve agreed to lend their time.
October 28, 2011 at 6:31 pm
you’re reading an awful lot into my comments, would think that part of a new philosophical venture would be to actively consider the foundations/standards/means, to make such decisions explicit and perhaps even to welcome feedback. If you do something radical/different surely this invites questions?
October 28, 2011 at 8:59 pm
[…] on pedagogy, the structure of knowledge circulation, and post-disciplinary practices from Bryant in THIS recent post. Bryant defines post-disciplinarity thusly: And so it goes. Kris, Eileen and I are […]
October 28, 2011 at 10:04 pm
It just occurred to me that one result from an open press model is maybe more books? I mean that, while academic publishing has never been a money-making venture, there has had to be a cost analysis somewhere, right? So, work would (at least hypothetically) have to appeal to an audience of a certain size in order for the cost of production to be defensible to/for the sponsoring institution. And a cheaper process would mean less risk – at least financially – to the press/distributor and more niche work might find its way out. I remember that one aspect of my old book proposal was an argument for audience and use (what courses it might be used in, etc.). Are these still (or will they still be) criteria for judging the release-ability of a book?
October 29, 2011 at 2:12 am
Hey – we’re discussing just such things at http://archivingcultures.org/category/mot
get involved! Sas.
October 29, 2011 at 8:18 am
“Instead we want transversal forms of communication….”
Well, so long as we accept that communication and rhetoric is actually behind everything when it comes to calls for post-trans-multi-cross-interdisciplinarity in academic publishing, you’ll have no quarrel from me!
I jest, but only sort of.
October 31, 2011 at 7:53 pm
I have been occupied with commenting Dreyfus and Kelly’s book ALL THINGS SHINING on my blog because I can only interpret the slogan “all things shining”, taken from Terrence Malik’s film THE THIN RED LINE as a cry for immanence. This is why I read the book, listened to the podcasted lectures, and read and contributed to the blog:
http://allthingsshiningbook.wordpress.com/
My feeling is that we need more light, more immanence. ALL THINGS SHINING means we live and love and think on a plane of immanence. No transcendent god-figure or supreme value can command our assent or appropriate the commons as its own possession. Heidegger and Deleuze contribute to the same vision:
“all shining and fading depend on the saying that shows … The saying is a gathering [ in Deleuzian language , an assembling] … The showing, for its part is multiple. [the regime of visiblity is historical and multiple]” (Basic Writings, Ch X: The Way to Language, p414. )
My project is as always to find passages and translations between various related but incommensurable idioms in philosophy and beyond, in the hope of creating a new provisional common idiom, a language of the intellectual commons..
One of the strong points of ALL THINGS SHINING is its way of “de-jargonizing” and transposing Heidegger as a means of bringing his thought out of the academic ghettos and into the intellectual commons. Dreyfus and Kelly’s way of reading Heidegger is deterritorialising, but only partly so, and I would like to push the deterritorialisation even further. Deleuze and Guattari each deterritorialised the other, and we can see the result not only in the books they wrote in common. I don’t think Deleuze could have written the two cinema books as they stand without having passed through the deterritorialising influence of writing with Guattari. Somehow, Badiou and Zizek don’t manage to do it. The absolute rock of lacanian psychoanalysis stands in the way of their deterritorialising processes. This is why I am sympathetic to Manuel Delanda’s attempts to reformulate Deleuzian philosophy while subtracting its one-sided elements. This is why I admire Levi Bryant’s way of creating a deterritorialised conceptual field where all these thinkers and others can coexist and interact. This is why I created a blog and am in favour of podcasts (Dreyfus and Kelly have been exemplary in this regard) and open-access publication (cf Levi Bryant, whose practice is coherent with his theory).