Dear Ken,
Your reply is substantial as usual. I'm afraid, however, that you've read too much into my idea, which is more a side-connection (or, perhaps, a wish) rather than a concrete feasible proposal for the short term. I am aware that most journals aren't organized as coops, collectives, or DisCOs. I am saying, instead, that I'm attracted by the idea of an organization where some tasks are pro-bono, some tasks are paid, and there's an accurate accounting that tracks all this and compensates for social inequality. This makes the idea of unpaid, voluntary labor more fair IMO.
But that's just a dot on the horizon to aim for (perhaps), not something that everyone should be doing tomorrow
Cheers
G:
Gabriele Ferri, Ph.D.
Head of program, Master Digital Design
Senior researcher, Civic Interaction Design
Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
www.gabrieleferri.com<https://www.gabrieleferri.com>
________________________________
From: PhD-Design <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2021 19:05
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Give our journals the support they deserve
Dear Gabriele,
How would the DISCO cooperative model offer any help to academic publishing? None of the current journals is published by a cooperative. Cooperative organisations work on a different model than the model used by any academic publishing firm.
To create a publishing cooperative would require capital investments from the coop members to function. And it would need a revenue stream if it were to pay anyone.
Generating a revenue stream would require sales outside the cooperative. This is the how farmer¡¯s cooperatives generate income. That¡¯s how food cooperatives work, buying food from producers and wholesalers, then selling it to customers including coop members. Utility cooperatives, banking cooperatives, and others generate revenue in some way to reduce the cost of services, pay employees, and function in an ethical manner. To create a cooperative academic publishing firm would likely require sales revenue. To pay anyone would require a revenue stream ¡ª this, in turn, means creating a journal that could compete effectively with current journals.
Compare this with such successful new publishing models as Open Humanities Press. They succeed because they are all volunteer operations. Open Book Publishers offers a slightly different model, with a combination of funding sources, but only for books, not journals.
Another model requires fees from members. This is the case in housing cooperatives, where members buy a unit and then pay annual fees to support the costs of financing and managing the cooperative. To apply this to journal publishing would mean that many members of the cooperative would actually pay to work on the journal, rather than simply volunteering.
There may be new ways to undertake academic publishing, but it requires careful thought and planning. I can¡¯t see how the DISCO model offers a way forward.
The organisations that publish excellent journals today are not cooperatives, and they are not likely to change their business model. For-profit journal publishers such as Taylor and Francis (Design and Culture) aren¡¯t going to shift to not-for-profit coops, and non-profit publishers such as The MIT Press (Design Issues) or the University of Cincinnati (Visible Language) aren¡¯t going to hand their journals over to a coop when the journals already work perfectly well.
My point in posting yesterday is that there are excellent journals at work today. They¡¯ve survived and managed to succeed. The best journals in our field have established an extraordinary record of long-term accomplishment.
If we wish these journals to continue, we¡¯ve got to respect the fact that they function now ¡ª they all depend on unpaid, volunteer labor, and this is not likely to change.
If someone can create a new model for academic publishing that pays the people who work now as volunteers, it will be worth considering. Until such a model exists, I repeat my earlier comment:
If we want journals, we must give our journals the support they deserve. If we want excellent journals such as Design and Culture to flourish, we¡¯ve all got to pitch in. Remuneration is not the point. Building the field is the point.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | Éè¼Æ She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.journals.elsevier.com%2Fshe-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cg.ferri%40HVA.NL%7Cc4522fa623794c4eb4a908d8f20c5d44%7C0907bb1e21fc476f884302d09ceb59a7%7C1%7C0%7C637525482217714777%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=NzTYtLQCExzFMF1YrMwkperv32vBFv7duejCjkDhQNg%3D&reserved=0
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Visiting Professor | Faculty of Engineering | Lund University ||| Email [log in to unmask] | Academia https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftongji.academia.edu%2FKenFriedman&data=04%7C01%7Cg.ferri%40HVA.NL%7Cc4522fa623794c4eb4a908d8f20c5d44%7C0907bb1e21fc476f884302d09ceb59a7%7C1%7C0%7C637525482217724773%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=51fn%2Fu3sOFaVYNSpDcrHqcbAkS4BcGjdnw19Mv4wcPM%3D&reserved=0 | D&I https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftjdi.tongji.edu.cn%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cg.ferri%40HVA.NL%7Cc4522fa623794c4eb4a908d8f20c5d44%7C0907bb1e21fc476f884302d09ceb59a7%7C1%7C0%7C637525482217724773%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=YUbLFYVkq4rW7e0fdBBS9sUmv6%2F7%2FpxDelBx4r3eo2I%3D&reserved=0
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