The dicussions over the past few days on this list serve have been very
interesting as they have revealed not only the high cost of attending
conferences, and publication for researchers in richer countries but also
the power structures that prevent equal access to information for
researchers who work at Institutions in so called "developing" or "LDC"
countries.
Academics in such institutions are rarely able to afford to participate
in international conferences and lack institutional access to databases
and most of the more costly journals and are instead reduced to "begging"
for pdf versions from friends and associates in "developed" nations or
from other members on forums, as they they shift from "a practitioner
educator" to a "research and publish in peer reviewed journals or
perish" model.
Chris wrote
> There is a fundamental problem with open-access publishing. Although it
> is ethically very powerful - removing from publishers the opportunity to
> control access to publicly funded research - it still costs money.
Science funding organisations
> like this approach and many of them will allow these costs as part of a
> project budget. Biomed Central has a progressive policy that reduces or
> removes the cost for researchers from poor countries. However Gavin's
> experience at least illustrates that journal publishing is not a cheap
> alternative to conferences - somebody has to pay a lot for every paper
> and you don't even get lunch and a chance to meet your pals.
The International Journal of Design is another example, where the
> editor, Lin-Lin Chen and her University are investing a lot of
> resources, supported by the Taiwan National Science Council so we have a
> journal that is free to read and free for authors. Don't take this kind
> of good for granted, we owe all such ventures a huge debt. Gavin and the
> rest of us can publish in this journal and our work is freely available
> to everybody on the web and there is not cost to us at all. So our
> research is subsidised by Taiwanese academics, a Taiwanese University
> and the Taiwanese Government - is your university or your government
> doing anything as good?
it is therefore, good to see the progressive policies of associations like
AAA and scientific journals lie Biomed Central in Western nations which
offer reduced fees for researchers and instittions in poorer nations. Some
of you on this forum will recall my recent conversations offline on these
issues. I hope that there wil soon be amore partnerships out there like
the Taiwanese government's partnership with Lin-Lin Chen and her
university.
Chris Rust rasies an important question -what is your institution and
government doing with regard to open access and free publishing for the
authors, but we need to also ask what is your institution "capable of
doing", given the context of a private academic institution like mine in a
rapidly growing economy which has no access to government funding or
private funding for journal access or conference participation. I am sure
we all recognize that there is little or nothing that the government and
academics institutions are "capable of doing" in the poorer "LCD"
countries.
Perhaps we must also question here the interests of academic institutions,
design organizations and others who plan expensive conferences, as well as
the publishers in the more dominant nations where knowledge control also
gives them an edge in a knowledge/creative economy.
Uma
Uma V Chandru
Anthropologist and Faculty of Design
Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology
Bangalore, India
> Gavin Melles wrote:
>> Actually, I had a personal experience of submitting something to
>> BioMedCentral in Medical Education, with a paper I had to eventually
>> withdraw (and send elsewhere) because they wanted to charge me ~$1000
>> for the privilege of reviewing it
> There is a fundamental problem with open-access publishing. Although it
> is ethically very powerful - removing from publishers the opportunity to
> control access to publicly funded research - it still costs money.
> Biomed Central is one model that works because it serves a community of
> researchers engaged in scientific work where dissemination costs are not
> a large part of the total project budget. Science funding organisations
> like this approach and many of them will allow these costs as part of a
> project budget. Biomed Central has a progressive policy that reduces or
> removes the cost for researchers from poor countries. However Gavin's
> experience at least illustrates that journal publishing is not a cheap
> alternative to conferences - somebody has to pay a lot for every paper
> and you don't even get lunch and a chance to meet your pals.
>
> The BiomedCentral approach is unlikely to work in Design since there is
> much less research funding available and arguably a lot of our research
> does not need big bucks (although I'd like to see if we could get 100
> Billion Euros to build a Design Accelerator somewhere in Switzerland).
> The alternative model is for organisations and individuals to subsidise
> publishing. Ken has mentioned one example, DRQ is funded in a small way
> by DRS who provide the web space and web infrastructure, it's quite
> expensive to keep that going and we always struggle to build and
> maintain our website. DRQ is funded in a much bigger way by Peter
> Storkerson and the editorial group who put a great deal of time and
> effort into producing it. That costs them and their institutions real
> money since they could use the time to good effect in other ways.
>
> The International Journal of Design is another example, where the
> editor, Lin-Lin Chen and her University are investing a lot of
> resources, supported by the Taiwan National Science Council so we have a
> journal that is free to read and free for authors. Don't take this kind
> of good for granted, we owe all such ventures a huge debt. Gavin and the
> rest of us can publish in this journal and our work is freely available
> to everybody on the web and there is not cost to us at all. So our
> research is subsidised by Taiwanese academics, a Taiwanese University
> and the Taiwanese Government - is your university or your government
> doing anything as good?
>
> best wishes
> Chris
>
>
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