Here Be Monsters: A Punctum Publishing Primer – punctum books

"So, to begin: Divest Yourself from Academic Publishing-as-Usual. However you can. Publish with university-based presses who are willing to take risks with unconventional subject matter and the creative forms and styles of writing that attain to such and in ways that are economically accessible if not free (University of Minnesota Press comes to mind, but there are others), and who don’t partner with questionable corporate entities whose only interest in academic publishing are the (obscene) profits to be gained thereby. In short, ask better questions of the press directors and editors with whom you publish. Do not publish with commercial-conglomerate academic publishers (such as Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Routledge, and the like); in other words, stop being the douchebag who publishes an article, for example, on 'Living the Neo-liberal University,' that is published by Wiley and can only be downloaded with institutional log-in credentials or for $38 (this is also called being a stooge). Or, if you are ineluctably enmeshed with these entities (as I myself am, as confessed above), start building an escape hatch. Publish with open-access venues that do not charge authors (and their departments and colleges) to publish with them (that includes punctum, but also presses such as Open Humanities Press, Open Book Publishers, and Open Library of Humanities, not to mention the many OA journals that are out there and emerging all of the time). Convert an existing (paywalled) journal that you edit or manage in some way to Open Access. Start a new, open-access press to foster a book series within your discipline, or bring a book series / imprint proposal to an existing open-access press. If you are in a position to evaluate others who are coming up within the institutional system for review, promotion, and the like, work with your colleagues and administrators to revise your policies and procedures to ensure that what matters most about anyone’s scholarship is its content and not its 'place of publication' or 'impact factors' (and while we’re at it: stop scaring graduate students and junior colleagues into believing that if they don’t publish their first book with certain agreed-upon, approved-in-advance 'prestige' publishers, they will destroy any chances they have at a secure career). Perhaps even help to put policies into place that would encourage and reward publication in more open and experimental publishing platforms as a Public Service for the Greater Good. Help existing open-access publishers and platforms to thrive by working on their behalf as editors, reviewers, advisers, and authors, and wherever possible, by directly supporting their work with whatever small (or larger) coins you have at hand. Spend more time talking to librarians, and ask them how you can assist them in their efforts to reinvigorate the library’s holdings against their takeover by obscenely rapacious commercial-comglomerate publishers. Write your political representatives to urge them to pay better attention to the corporate takeover of academic research (which intellectual property should be held 'in trust' between the government and the public that helps to fund that research) and to draft legislation that would mandate and fund open-access publication of university research (as they have done in the UK and in Europe, and are starting to do in some places in the US, such as at the University of California).

In short, take more risks, ask better questions, do not write or edit for anti-public (profit-driven) publishers, become a more involved citizen with regard to the institutional cultures around the evaluation of scholarship (a treasure we hold 'in common' with each other), provide some service to an existing open-access press, perhaps even become a publisher yourself, or barring any of that (or in addition), become a supporting patron of an existing open-access press, however you can. And always spend more time talking to librarians, as for a long time now, they have served on the front lines against the corporate takeover of the Public University and its 'holdings.' And talk to legislators (civic responsibility). The more we work to