Communication or Competition: Reading “Open Access: Toward the Internet of the Mind” | Share Plot

"I agree with Guédon that scholarship grows best on a foundation of cooperative communication. All the same, I’m fairly certain that more than half of the people living in the United States would rather just let the rich get richer. And, in a political climate in which accusations against the 'academic elites' stirs a large political base (e.g., from Wayne LaPierre (see Beckett)), I don’t expect to see much of an increase in public funding for a (non-profit) scholarly publishing infrastructure. On the other hand, if everyone rolls over in a fit of resignation … the world becomes a very dull place.

For my part, I’ll strive to fight the reputation economy. Particularly, reputation competitions based on proxies for quality — especially the journal impact factor. That means finding ways to help authors find more socially responsible, more humane, and more accurate ways of describing the value and importance of the work that they do. In the long run, these more humane approaches to 'metrics' will not only alleviate global inequities in scholarship, but will support the health of the humanities (see, for example, HuMetrics), the social sciences, and, of course, libraries. (Librarians, stop offering to help people find journal impact factors … you’re feeding the monopolies and killing your own job.)

I’ll also strive to build systems, workflows, and communities that value the communication in 'scholarly communication.' That means working for and on nonprofit open access projects. Not only will that be where I’ll be writing, reviewing, and editing … but that’ll be what I’m advocating for on my campus and in my communities of scholarship. I do not control a large university library budget and I’m just one small voice supporting the reallocation of funds away from for-profit publishing, but my time is valuable and I plan to spend it well."