Authorship, division of labour, material and digital form; thoughts on Samuel A. Moore's Publishing Beyond the Market - Martin Paul Eve

"When describing Harney and Moten, [Samuel] Moore writes that “this means accepting the liberal, individualistic, enlightenment nature of the university”. So much seems bound up with this problem. Moore advocates for enclaves that work democratically and cooperatively within those structures, but the constant wall against which liberationary projects keep butting their heads. The main source of manuscripts, authors, editors, copyeditors, reviewers, etc. is the contemporary university. I suppose the question that arises for me is: this book is about publishing, although it tackles issues of research assessment reform and notes that we can never fully separate publishing liberation from the conventions of the university. Could such enclave, commons-like structures exist in higher education itself, starting the reform there rather than in publishing? Or is there something special about academic publishing that allows for these types of experiments because they are somehow safely in an interstitial zone? As the types of project that Moore calls for “require financial support” (p 94) and the entity most likely to give it is a university, we need new structures of labour to emerge in the academy, also."