Chris raises an interesting point which is at the heart of building a
research community. (Thanks to Viveka for providing the paper too).

It is vital that research builds upon what has gone before. If
researchers cannot access what has gone before, their work may be
impoverished by not being able to pick up where someone else left off,
or they may be repeating work that others have done either
successfully or unsuccessfully. The journal (or conference
proceedings) mentioned seems to be an old and exploitative model. As
Chris suggests, DRS conferences are entirely open access. The more
people that read the papers, the better.

With the new technologies, change is coming. There are now many
dissemination models. I would certainly like to see many more people
using e-repositories. Some ventures appear to be simply new money-
making vehicles, and they have been discussed here before.

I had heard of, but not seen, the 'journal' Design Principles and
Practices. I am not especially impressed by what seems less a journal
and more a collection of papers arising from a conference, that I have
to pay for.

However, I was surprised to see that its editorial advisory board
comprises several well known contributors to this very list. Would any/
several of you like to step up to the plate and give us your thoughts
on how this particular publishing model is helpful to our community?

David
.........................................................................

David Durling FDRS PhD   http://durling.tel
.........................................................................


On 27 Apr 2009, at 9:16 am, Chris Rust wrote:

> Viveka Turnbull Hocking wrote:
>> About a year or so ago I started a thread asking about the origins of
>> 'the ecology of the artificial' which many of you help me with. This
>> culminated in a paper 'An Ecology for Design: From the Natural,
>> through the Artificial, to the Un-Natural' which is now published in
>> the Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal, Vol.3,
>> Iss.1, pp.41-54
>
> Thanks very much for this notification Viveka. It sounds like
> interesting work that I'd like to read about.
>
> However I'd like to encourage you and all colleagues on this
> discussion list to make your publications freely available on the
> web. This can be done in several ways and should not cause you
> copyright problems:
>
> First your own institution may have a research repository (such as
> eprints or dspace) where you can do this. This is an excellent route
> as it ensures that your work is found by Google Scholar and other
> academic search software.
>
> You can also place your work on the archive.org site. This is a not-
> for-profit organisation that aims to make all kinds of materials
> permanently available for future scholars.
>
> You can also have your own website. If you don't want to get into
> web technology you can do this free and easily by using a blog
> service like wordpress.com. I do this and it allows me to provide
> short introductions to each paper with a link to the full paper on
> archive.org or my institution's repository.
>
> There are at least two reasons for doing this. First your research
> is paid for by the public in various ways. They pay the taxes that
> fund universities directly and also pay research grants. They also
> pay fees to attend university. Commercial organisations also help to
> pay for some of the work of universities. So all these people pay
> our wages and they have a right to see the product of our work.
> Research in the academy is only pointful if it is freely shared.
> Incidentally virtually all the costs of reviewing and editing for
> journals and conferences are also met by academics giving up their
> time unpaid.
>
> Secondly your own career is helped enormously by making sure people
> have free and quick  access to your published research. I can't
> stress this too much, there is evidence that publications that are
> freely available online are much more likely to be cited and how can
> anybody take an interest in you and what you do if it's invisible?
>
> If you are worried about copyright, have a look at http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/
>  which tells you the policies of most academic publishers regarding
> open-access archiving. You'll see that most allow it in some form.
>
> Commonground, who publish the journal with your paper, may not be
> included as they are not one of the mainstream publishing houses.
> Actually I feel there is an even stronger case for giving away this
> paper because Commonground have an interesting publishing model but
> in practice I feel their approach is greedy and exploitative.
>
> Not only do they collect a hefty fee from authors (through the
> conference, this is basically a conference proceedings) but they
> have the cheek to charge subscriptions of $50 to anybody who wants
> to read the papers. There is a model for "author pays" publication,
> some very reputable open-access publishers in the sciences do it,
> but only on the basis that the payment ensures free access to
> everybody.
>
> Design Research Society, IASDR, and many other conference
> organisers, make proceedings freely available on the web because we
> believe that to be in the best interests of our members and the
> wider community. Unfortunately Commonground seem to be mainly
> concerned with running as many conferences and journals as they can,
> using a one size fits all approach, taking money from everybody, and
> little evidence of direction coming from the disciplines concerned.
>
> Best wishes from rainy Sheffield
> Chris
>
> ...............................................................o^o
> Professor Chris Rust FDRS
> Head of Art and Design Research Centre (nearly finished that)
> Head of Art and Design (real soon now)
> Sheffield Hallam University, S1 2NU, UK
> +44 114 225 6772
> [log in to unmask]
> http://chrisrust.wordpress.com/