OPEN ACCESS IN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL SCIENCE: Innovative moves to enhance
access, inclusion and impact in scholarly communication

Chris Armbruster
http://ssrn.com/author=434782

In the WWW Galaxy Open Access publishing is the superior model. The physical
and life sciences have moved first to innovate their scholarly communication
and publishing through Open Access, enhancing accessibility for scientists,
students and the interested public. Among the social and cultural sciences,
only economists have matched these efforts. Open Access e-publishing is
technologically feasible and economically efficient. Despite resistance from
corporate publishers who seek to maximise their rents, OA publishing is
unstoppable unless the OA coalition commits major strategic blunders. Open
Access has become vital to secure the continued advancement of knowledge
claims. Historians, legal scholars, political scientists, cultural scholars
and sociologists would do well to understand OA publishing and participate
in it.  The rise of comparative and trans-national research requires OA.
Moreover, public and philanthropic funding will flow in the future only if
public visibility and academic impact of the research results can be
demonstrated. This article systematically compares innovative moves in
Science, Technology and Medicine (STM) and Social and Cultural Science (SCS)
to show that the innovative logic of the situation is the same while the
publishing solutions vary.

Keywords

Social Science, Cultural Studies, Scholarly Communication, Copyright, Open
Access, Electronic Publishing, Comparative Research, Knowledge Society

Table of Contents


1. OPEN ACCESS IS FEASIBLE AND LIKELY 
Comparative advantage, functional innovation and structural improvements
Copyright and authors’ rights: Economics and ethics


2. Looking back: THE COMMERCIALISATION OF SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION AND THE
RISE OF THE WWW GALAXY
The journal article: Recovering cost or maximising rent?
The rise of the WWW Galaxy: De-commodification of scholarly publication?


3. INNOVATIVE MOVES IN SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION TO INCREASE ACCESS AND
ENHANCE IMPACT
Disciplinary repository and electronic distribution: ArXiv in physics and
computing and the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) in economics and law
Online literature awareness tools: Living Reviews in physics and political
science and Faculty of 1000 in biology and medicine
Peer review as inclusive scholarly communication: Athmospheric Chemistry and
Physics (ACP) and the Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME)
Reducing barriers and costs while accelerating and increasing publication
rates: The Public Library of Science (PLoS) in biology and medicine and
Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress) in economics and law 
New modes of scholarly publishing: BioMed Central as a platform for open
access journals and JSTOR as an electronic journal archive for the social
and cultural sciences
From Open Access to Open Digital Libraries: Research Papers in Economics
(RePEc) and Dspace@MIT with OpenCourseWare


4. Into the future: A ROBUST STRATEGY TO MEETING THE CONCERNS OF READERS AND
AUTHORS 
Literature awareness tools
Reducing and defraying costs
Enhanced registration of knowledge claims


URLs of surveyed innovative moves and cited OA sites

Bibliography


http://ssrn.com/author=434782


Chris Armbruster

Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
European University Institute
Via delle Fontanelle 20, I – 50016 San Domenico