> perhaps there's something to be learnt from their experiences....
>
Indeed, there is. But it's also a different time, and the difficulty
and cost of publishing a journal has dropped dramatically. I'm
actually surprised it's taken Geography so long – the physical
sciences have been abandoning publishers in droves. There are
numerous cases of entire editorial boards resigning See here for a
taste: http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Journals/alternatives.html
Imagine in Antipode did the same thing....
There are other exciting ideas like the physics pre-print service
arXiv – which pre-publishes articles of interest for comment and
review, typically before being submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.
It's wildly popular in that community. There are already free
software tools to manage the whole process from submission through
review and to publication (e.g. Open Journal Systems http://
pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs).
I, honestly, find it quite ironic that critical and radical
geographies are still largely behind the curve on this one,
especially given the general political bent. I mean, the NIH is
starting to insist that all research they fund be open to the public,
while the AAG is signing a new contract for private publishing and
there's legislation in progress in a number of countries to make that
mandatory in government funded research.
I'm not sure what the blocks are behind this – one thing that I
suspect is that unfamiliarity with technology may play a role. But
that was an excuse when it was only technology-comfortable physics,
mathematics, and computer science journals making the transition,
but honestly the time for that excuse has expired. Maybe it's the
fear of (lack of) tenure, but at the end of the day, I think that's a
pretty sorry excuse, given the way the rest of academia is clearly
moving.
There are libraries out there (Cornell, Boston College, Stanford come
to mind) who are hosting and enabling open access journals because
it's actually in their interest to do so. It's cheaper to do that
than to continue paying the exorbitant prices that publishers are
charging.
I'd rather see Geography ahead of the curve instead of (way) behind
it. It's 2007 - the Internet is here to stay - so let's use it to
foster change instead of fearing it.
Darrell
P.S. I suppose this is where I plug the AAG 2008 panel I'm co-
organization on" Post-proprietary Geography" – I think it will be a
good one, and I hope it will push this discussion forward in a
significant manner.
P.P.S. Speaking of Internet technology, can someone fix the list
configuration so it doesn't mangle mime/multipart messages?
|