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At 08:45 AM 25/11/2002 +0000, Joanne Roberts wrote:
>CALL FOR PAPERS
><snip>



>Printing and Processing Cost for all countries; will be charged in shape
>of Demand Draft payable to Journal of Information Technology (after
>vetting of the article (s) by the worthy referee if accepted) US$ 80/-
>(US$ Eighty only).

>Printing and Processing Cost only for Pakistan; will be charged in shape
>of Demand Draft payable to Journal of Information Technology (after
>vetting of the article (s) by the worthy referee if accepted) Rs. 1200/-
>(Rs. One thousand and two hundred only).
>
>One copy of the published JIT and 10 reprints will be provided to the
>Principal author/Corresponding author. Sixty Rupee per extra reprint (if
>required) Minimum 25 reprints request will be entertained.

In the course of convening a conference here this July, I was shocked
during a discussion with one participant who was concerned about putting a
paper into the conference proceedings for publication. I was not so
surprised she was concerned that including a paper in the proceedings would
disqualify her--in perpetuity--from publishing a more polished version of
the paper, or anything faintly resembling the material presented in the
conference proceedings, in a particular journal she was targeting. I have
heard of, indeed been subjected to, practices like that before.

What really shocked me was that the journal was charging her a $US200
reader's fee for reviewing the article and, if she was successful in
getting past that financial and (one supposes) scientific hurdle, she would
be charged $US100 per page to publish in the journal. The article ran to
some 18 pages or so.

Previously, journals have had "free" academic labour from their
contributors, their reviewers, and (in many cases) their editorial boards.
In return for their publishing labour, academics get to exchange ideas in a
particular discipline or community (or whatever) and, of course, the ethic
of "publish or perish" continues to prevail in many universities and so a
publication is generally a good thing for an academic's career. Of course,
numerous other benefits may accrue to people who publish successfully: it
is a form of capital that translates into many other forms. The "free
lunch" had by publishers from (often) publicly funded academics in the form
of journal articles can be very profitable (or not, I imagine) once the
lunch is privatised by the publisher for a time and onsold to the author's
colleagues after a good bollocking (or not) from reviewers (I must say here
that I have had many wonderful experiences and plenty of excellent, helpful
criticism from reviewers, colleagues, etc).

Meanwhile the prices of journals go up and up and up ... publishers merge
and merge again ... the price of entry for the academic is now beginning to
be a paying concern, and not just in time (practically nobody I know can
actually work at work and so, like me, they sit up all night at home and
write). It seems that there is a trend in academic publishing towards
pay-to-play, cashwise.

If so, it is prohibitive and privileges those who can afford "the dime as
well as the time". What about grad students? What about someone low on the
academic rung in a "developing" country with a seriously devalued currency
(like a New Zealand associate lecturer, for instance --- that was bad
humour -- sorry -- put it down to trans-Tasman rivalry or a really rotten
sense of humour -- of course I know there are billions of people worse of
than Kiwi lecturers). The Australian dollar is worth a little over half a
US dollar. The person I mentioned above would have to pay almost $4000 to
publish her article in a journal with one of the highest circulation rates
in the world. That is extremely prohibitive.

I suppose academics must face it: they (we) are just common cultural
labourers, like musicians or PR hacks or newspaper journalists, no more or
less influential or well regarded, generally speaking. It's something I
have known, or at least suspected, throughout my stint in academia. But the
pay-to-play syndrome in academic journals, if it really is a trend, which
became one of malaises that finally drove me out of the music industry,
highlights the fact in a very pointed way for me.

Unless a journal can demonstrate that they need cash as well as free labour
from authors to do their work, I propose that they be boycotted by authors.

If this collection of digital media we are in is to be of any emancipatory
value whatsoever, there needs to be some sort of effort to make the free
labour of academics "count" in terms of "performance indicators" (eg in
repsect of "publish or perish") in order that new ideas and research be
made generally available rather than subject to the monopoly IP grasp of
certain print publishers etc--the gatekeepers of academic prestige and
legitimate knowledge. The same goes for other forms of cultural labour,
although the PR hacks seem to be doing pretty well out of the web. Of
course, I'm absolutely stumped as to how to do any of this, and that such
an exhortation is neither new nor (as a consequence) especially interesting
or contentious.

I suppose my main proposal -- to boycott journals that charge people to
publish in them-- is what I wanted to put forward in this post. I'd also
like to know how prevalent "pay-to-play" is becoming in other areas of
academic publishing.

Anybody?

Best regards,
Phil

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Opinions expressed in this email are my own unless otherwise stated.
If you have received this in error, please ignore and delete it.
Phil Graham
Senior Lecturer
UQ Business School
www.philgraham.net
www.cds-web.net
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