Responding to Armin¹s post about public access to papers published in closed
academic journals like Leonardo.
I am entirely sympathetic with his reasons for not wishing to publish. I
also seek to avoid publishing in subscription only journals, and similar
venues, although I have not always succeeded in this abstinence. In this
time of collaborative working you are not always in control of how the
knowledge you are involved in producing will be used, nor where. This is
another way of interpreting the saying ³knowledge is free² - in that it is
Œfree¹ of its author(s) control. In many ways this is a good thing.
I believe Armin is completing a PhD at the moment (is that right, at
Goldsmiths?). An implication of that is that you will be expected to
participate in and contribute to the academic community around related
knowledge domain(s). This could very well oblige you to publish in a closed
journal. To seek to control how what you produce is used could very well
compromise the value of that knowledge. The conference that Paul and Sean
are putting on in Melbourne is a good case in point. It highlights the
ethical problems. To not contribute to the sharing and building of
knowledge, when you are able, is ethically questionable: but so is
publishing in closed journals. Which is ethically worse? How can you satisfy
the reasonable demands of one whilst denying the downside of the other.
I imagine that you could refuse to have your conference contribution
published. This would allow you to participate and contribute without
compromising your ideals. But the question remains.
Longer term, if things develop as some UK government policy units wish, we
could see a situation where all publicly funded research must be published
online, with free access. This could eventually role out across the EU. This
would go a long way to addressing the underlying problem that is bothering
Armin.
Open source is not easy...
Regards
Simon
Simon Biggs
Research Professor
edinburgh college of art
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www.eca.ac.uk
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www.littlepig.org.uk
AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk
From: Armin Medosch <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Armin Medosch <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:28:28 +0100
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] Media art history 09 re:live - first CFP
Hi list
the problem is, I can never submit a paper to anything done by Leonardo
because they adhere to the old copyright regime. I have made a decision,
that everything i write is published freely and should be available on
the internet without charge. now has this anything to do with FOSS?
regards
Armin
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