Forwarded from the NASSS Listserv

The Writing's on the firewall : Assessing the promise of open access journal publishing for a public sociology of sport

Below is a link to an article due for publication this summer in a Special Issue of SSJ entitled ‘Evidence, Knowledge and Research Practice’ (edited by Michael Giardina and Jason Laurendau). 

Given that the paper concerns the political economy of academic journal publishing, the promise and finitude of Open Access publishing, and the position of the Sociology of Sport therein, I thought it prudent to make this paper Open Access through my affiliated university’s institutional repository (as per Human Kinetics’ publishing agreement) and politely draw it your collective attention in advance of its formal publication. Far more than simply an opportunity to circulate the paper ‘online first,’ this is a chance to perform the (beginnings of the) politics I espouse through the manuscript and encourage productive, critical discussion around publishing as a political, professional and scholarly practice in which we are all implicated.

Here is the abstract, below it is the link to full text, and please get in touch if you have questions, suggestions, concerns or, perhaps inevitably, problems accessing the paper.

Sincerely,

Gavin Weedon
PhD Student, University of British Columbia
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The Writing's on the firewall : Assessing the promise of open access journal publishing for a public sociology of sport

The process of digitization has transformed the ways in which content is reproduced and circulated online, rupturing long held distinctions between production and consumption in the (virtual) public sphere. In accordance with these developments over the past fifteen years, proponents for open access publishing in higher education have argued that the (not yet absolute) transition from physical to digital modes of journal production opens up unprecedented opportunities for redressing the restrictive terms of ownership and access currently perpetuated within an increasingly untenable journal publishing industry. Through this article, I advocate that the sociology of sport community hastens to question, challenge and reimagine its position within this industry in anticipation of a reformed publishing landscape. The impetus for the paper is to ask not whether sociologists of sport should or should not publish open access, but rather as open access publishing inevitably comes to pass in some form, what say will the field’s associations, societies and members have in these changes, and how might they help invigorate a public sociology of sport?

https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/43889/Weedon_Gavin_Writings_on_firewall_2013.pdf?sequence=7