Alternative Academic Publishing?

I was invited by Prof. Janni Aragon, Director of University of Victoria’s (B.C. Canada) Technology Integrated Learning to give a presentation about my exploration of new directions in academic publishing.

My interest in this subject was motivated, in part, by my own experiences publishing my award-winning Diving For Pearls: A Thinking Journey with Hannah Arendt. What I learned in the course of this experience I wanted to share and that led me to more research being conducted on ways to wrest control over intellectual property from the commercial forces that have been been dominating the licensing and distribution process.

A variety of folks have been studying the interests dominating the field of scholarly publications and questioning why more academics (both independent scholars and university-based researchers) haven’t been pushed for changing the publishing landscape to better serve the interests of knowledge production and wider access to the results of scholarship.

I believe the tools of our liberation from a regime of commercial control over and profiteering from (often) publicly funded research are within our grasp IF we are willing to create collaborative teams willing to explore the options available through new technologies.

Many of those who attended my presentation were librarians, who are very much in the vanguard of seeking change that will better serve academic interests, broadly defined. As one of them said, “we’ve been telling faculty for years that the current citational practices of measuring the value of scholarly research are not serving faculty or wider academic interests. But not much has changed.”

There are many others investigating the ways to bring change, some of whom I cite in my presentation. New licensing methods, such as those offered by Creative Commons, and new delivery methods (including on-demand publication and internet based journals and blogs) can bring greater control over our intellectual property back into the hands of those who create it. If we are also willing to explore ways to measure “impact” and “value” differently from current practices.

I am posting a copy of my presentation here, with its Creative Commons license, encouraging you to share!



Alternative Pathways tp Academic Publishing? by Kathleen B. Jones. Ph.D. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.