Peter,
I'm not sure what Leviathan "policy" you are talking about, but I wasn't offering anything as a model, only responding by saying that Leviathan authors do not sign away their copyrights. They do sign an "exclusive licence" with Blackwell giving Blackwell the authority to publish the piece online for essentially 12 months; however, copyright is assigned to the author. Prior to publication, authors may post their article in any electronic forum without prejudice in the peer review process, and 12 months after publication, authors may post the article online themselves, with a link to Blackwell.
My work on Leviathan may be "shortsighted," but that vision problem should be seen in the context of other issues (distinct though not entirely separate from copyright). Leviathan began as Extracts, a well regarded newsletter format serial that was distributed to the Melville Society membership and only 100 institutions. It was hand produced and supported by membership dues and, when I took over as editor, the beneficence of Hofstra University (which printed and mailed the journal and paid my salary and eventually reduced my teaching load). When Extracts morphed into a regular journal about 11 years ago, Hofstra also provided a considerable yearly subvention for production, and the journal was still "hand-produced" through a paid free-lance designer and an outside printer. At this point, Hofstra budgeted an annual subvention for Leviathan production, which allowed us to keep membership dues at a minimum. But Leviathan, like other small learned journals, seemed fated to fail if it did not have an online component, and a publisher that could take over production and market our journal. (Hofstra, a mid-sized private secular university, does not have a press.)
Leviathan's affiliation with Blackwell (based on a renewable three year contract) initiated its "American Literature Collection" of small single author society journals that Blackwell will offer to libraries as a unit at a price that is considerably below what libraries are forced to pay to bigger journal bundles. Blackwell also produces a "hard copy" version of the journal (now appearing three times a year) which is distributed to members as part of their dues. (I now longer have to worry about production and printing and can focus on editorial duties entirely.) The Blackwell project is unique in that it promotes both print and online copies of the journal (which appeals to those members who value the print book format and those who also want more immediate online access). Authors are not paid for their contributions, but I am not aware of any academic journal that pays its contributors. However, Leviathan receives a revenue stream based on royalties derived from online sales, which go back into teh Society's coffers for use in funding further publication. As I mentioned before, authors receive 50% of the reprint fees if a third party wishes to reprint their article.
As other journals (such as Fitzgerald, Twain, and Poe) enter this collection, the collection becomes more attractive to libraries, and members of those respective societies have individual access to all journals in the collection. Libraries are happy to buy small collections like this; although their budgets are strained, they can still get an impressive selection of single author journals at a low price that justifies the outlay. At the same time, small journals, which have to struggle for support from memberships, universities and colleges, and worry about production costs and values, not to mention postage, have some contractual security in getting their journals not only produced and distributed but aggressively advertized.
Leviathan and the other journals in this consortium are not "born digital," which as we know is the likely future of most journals. Our affiliation with Blackwell, however, allows a set of multi-generational scholars to enjoy a transitional period in the history of publishing in which print and online versions of the journal might exist side-by-side. Rather than exploiting scholars, I feel (actually I know) that our approach has brought us more and better submissions by people who are eager to have their work distributed widely.
I don't propose this as a model, and I certainly understand Peter's concerns and I would be happy to discuss other approaches to online publishing for small single author journals teetering on the verge of extinction. What seems at issue here is a business model for scholars seeking to publish. And what I sense Peter is looking for is a model for self-published scholarship that retains editorial validity and even promotes excellence. I don't see why such a model cannot be constructed, but once scholars begin to seek control of the means of production, they will perforce (I think, and here I am just thinking) begin to resemble publishers, and publishers are commercial ventures, and once academic publishers must vie for server space donated by the institutions that own the server, I wonder what kind of financial structure is needed to redistribute revenues to authors, which seems to be what is at stake for Peter. I would like Leviathan to be independent of Hofstra's subvention, and oddly enough the affiliation with Blackwell should in time allow that independence so that my successor will not have to go hat in hand to his/her employer for subvention. But our contractual relation to Blackwell is, of course, a kind of dependency, but at least it is contractual.
Even if academic online publishing is not what Peter is driving at, it is worth discussing.
yrs,
John
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John Bryant, English Department, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11549
>>> [log in to unmask] 06/07/08 4:29 PM >>>
James says: While I think Peter and I agree about such things, I think this only
works if scholars do so en masse.
I say: A mass begins with one person at a time. I don't see a good reason to publish scholarly work with anyone who wants more than a non-exclusive right to publish.
James says: Why pay someone to do some work, and then have to pay out even more to get the
results of that work back in the form of journal articles?
I say: Indeed, why?
James says: I would encourage any steps by other funding bodies to make similar
requirements, it is taxpayer's money after all.
I say: Yes, but why wait for funding bodies to demand what we can demand on our own right now?
James says: you need to have a system in place that would support alternative publication
methods while maintaining high quality.
I say: Indeed we do need that. We in fact already have it in the form of journals with editors and editorial boards and review systems which some shortsighted editors have sold to the publishers who now demand money a second time from the institutions which funded the research and writing. Stop doing that.
We can have our own review boards and mechanisms to insure high quality. For scholarly editions there is an existing board, supported by the MLA, in the Committee on Scholarly Editions. We do not have a comparable board for textual criticism in forms other than scholarly editions. But why not?
(And by the way, re: Leviathan's policy, I don't see the advantage of it from the scholar's point of view; only from the publisher's point of view. I've seen a lot worse [Francis and Taylor offer to sell for £3000 to the author the right to post his/her own work!], but I don't see the Leviathan policy as a good model. Sorry.)
James says: [such methods of maintaining high quality are not part of a] policy-supported infrastructure of large institutions and funding bodies.
I say: Why leave it up to them to take the lead on this?
James says: At Digital Medievalist we ask authors to license
their work to us with a creative commons license (attribution,
non-commercial, share-a-like), which we then also license the work under
for other users. The authors do not pay anything, others donate time to
peer-review the submissions, the readers do not pay anything to read or
have to ask our permission to re-use the articles, and all the (minimal)
computing resources we use are donated by a couple universities.
I say: I don't see the catch; I don't see anything wrong with this picture.
Peter
