shouting loudly

Danah Boyd: Kill the Closed Access Journal

Danah boyd has an excellent call to arms: Help kill the closed-access journal model.

This makes a lot of sense. Academics do almost all of the work for free. Surely, copy editing and webhosting can’t cost enough to justify the prices our libraries are paying.

We’ve all been far too complicit in a system in which publishers profit from reducing society’s access to knowledge. While she mentions this implicitly, I think she greatly underestimates the role of scholarly organizations. For-profit publishers pay them major cash to jump on board the closed-access model. (I’ve heard of a 6-figure offer made to a regional communication organization; imagine what NCA must get from Routledge.)

I already agreed with danah, and I hope her call to arms sticks. Let’s build a movement. Once I get tenure (or get a job in a department where I can convince them that open-access journals are the wave of the future), I’m sending my work to journals that at least allow self-publication in venues such as SSRC.