Hi Chas,
All the journals I know of who charge authors are in the sciences. I am
not objecting to people being paid for their work, rather I am
suggesting that journals are not just trying to cover their costs, but
are trying to make a profit while doing so. The recent financial woes of
the world are one reason to stop and think about whether everything
needs to make a profit and/or grow relentlessly. Surely academic
journals are one of those things that should only charge as much as is
necessary to cover their costs in order to get the information out?
Surely to do this they don't need to assume the author's copyright
completely? The more sources information is distributed through, the
more people will get to know it. What use is information published in a
journal if no one, or only a few, can afford to subscribe to it? Uni's
have to juggle their budget's and drop journals for lack of same. IMHO
All uni's should be able to access all journals. Otherwise we are making
learning contingent on income.

>> Therefore it is in their interests to allow free
>> dissemination of ideas and it is in their interests to only accept
>> papers that many peers will agree with.

I meant to say that "it is not in their interests to allow free
dissemination of ideas". By this I mean that journals who assume the
author's copyright might be more interested in collecting their
royalties than in seeing information be freely disseminated.

>>...and it is in their interests to only accept
>> papers that many peers will agree with.

Here I am referring to the difficulty that has been known to occur when
publishing papers that contain ideas that are far divergent from what is
generally believed. The result being that they can't get published. I am
not getting all conspiracy theory here, just saying that journals might
not wish to take the risk of publishing papers with such ideas for fear
of loosing subscribers. Someone has to publish these ideas because they
often turn out to be right. The example I gave was Malaria, but I should
have checked, as it was really Yellow Fever I was thinking of. It was
twenty years between the discovery that this disease was transmitted by
mosquitoes and this knowledge being applied. This happened because it
was so well 'known' that the disease 'must' be transmitted by human to
human contact that no one would listen to Finlay or Reed, despite their
experiments proving this.

> Yes, and all it takes is one person to "squat" on an entry
> and engage in endless "revert wars" to pollute the entry for everyone.

As a regular contributor to wikipedia I know exactly what  you are
talking about here. However there is a process for dealing with such
things. Just like many academic processes, is may be a tedious and time
consuming one. However if the rules of wikipedia are followed, and the
established procedures applied, the result will come out on the side of
he who can provide sources. For example, the rules say that if there
have been three instances of revert and restore in any twenty four hour
period, arbitration must be sought. I contribute to wikipedia as it is
so ubiquitous, so many sites suck info from it, that I feel it is better
to make an effort and help it to be as accurate as possible. I encounter
a LOT of bias against the kooky esoteric articles I regularly edit. And
many times I have wondered at the relentless blindness of people and
their general unwillingness to accept things that contradict their
particular religious views. But I have persevered through the
arbitration process, and every time this process has come out on the
side of who can provide sources.

Regards,

Morgan Leigh
PhD Candidate
School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics
University of Queensland
religionbazaar.blogspot.com

Chas S. Clifton wrote:
> 
> On Nov 6, 2008, at 4:14 AM, Morgan Leigh wrote:
>>
>> Regarding the profit motive of journals, I honestly feel they are taking
>> two bites of the cherry. Yes it costs to make a journal, but they charge
>> authors to submit and they charge subscribers for access.
> 
> Which journals charge authors to submit? I have not encountered
> such a thing in the field of religious studies.
> 
>> And they want
>> the copyright so they can try to make more money later. The process of
>> ranking journals as a means to assess academics for employment is thus
>> flawed. The journals are not in it for the good of the academy. They are
>> in it to make profit.
> 
> Yes, because I as editor and (sometimes) designer and production
> editor do expect to be paid! And the printer expects to be paid.
> And so on. 
> 
>> Therefore it is in their interests to allow free
>> dissemination of ideas and it is in their interests to only accept
>> papers that many peers will agree with. 
> 
> That sentence makes no sense to me. We allow the 
> dissemination of ideas -- but only ones that pass peer review --
> is that what you are saying?
>> \
>> As far as I am concerned this is a feature. One great advance of the
>> web, and of things like wikipedia in particular, is that people are
>> aware from the get go that information is contested.\
> 
> Yes, and all it takes is one person to "squat" on an entry
> and engage in endless "revert wars" to pollute the entry for everyone.
> See, for example, this comment from a writer who lives adjacent
> to the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana:
> http://prairiemary.blogspot.com/2008/11/trust-wikipedia-hahahaha.html
> 
> Waiting for enlightenment,
> 
> Chas S. Clifton, editor
> 
> The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies
> http://www.equinoxjournals.com/ojs/index.php/POM
> alternate email: [log in to unmask]
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> 
> 

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