Sunday 12 May 2013

The nature of academic publishing

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Building up towards my reflective assignment, I thought it might help to draft this in sections, according to particular areas of interest throughout the module. First stop is publishing...

One of the assumptions that I am interested in challenging is the area of academic publishing. We tend to regard the world of academic journals as ‘an open and public forum’ (Colquhoon, 2006) that is created for the common good, but a growing number of people are beginning to question if this holds true, especially in the age of open web content. Wheeler (2011a, b, c) has written a number of blog posts criticising the traditional system of academic publishing, noting that:

It’s a hierarchy that rarely changes.

Furthermore, the hierarchical nature of the publishing world is often self-defeating in terms of securing the widest possible audience:

‘...many of the top, elite journals we are expected to publish in are in fact read by a very small percentage of the community the research is intended to reach.

From considering my own worldview, I have noted the restrictions that hierarchical institutions place on the education system, particularly when combined with the solutions offered by market organisations (Hobson, 2012; Ronfeldt, 2012b). Potential disruptive alternatives may yet be found in the emerging network sector predicted by Ronfeldt (2012a), or the peer-to-peer ideology (Bauwens, 2009), although sustainable business models are yet to emerge. It should be noted that there are dangers inherent in the misuse of data for either solution. Newby (2010) warns of ‘intellectual imperialism’ when researchers are able to claim sole ownership of research data, discounting the rights of those involved in the study. At the other extreme of open web publishing, Lanier (2006a, b; 2012) warns of the dangers of ‘digital Maoism’, whereby all ownership and authorship of published data is lost, and transferred to control of the crowd.

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