John Drabinski is co-editor of the Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy. In this guest post, he describes his experience in transforming the journal from print to web open access.
------
Open access publishing, it seems, is having a bit of a moment. Or at least a cluster of stories suggest it should be having a moment, as philosophers and other humanities types seem to be, rather suddenly, taking note of the uncomfortable side of journal publishing: the cost of journals and how we (sometimes) sign away all rights as temporary workers.
These articles, even in as mainstream a publication as The Atlantic (but see here for needed corrections to that piece), underscore a few things that wouldn't surprise a librarian: journals are freakishly expensive, the wall between scholars and scholarship is uneven across institutions, and, when the contract gets a bit of attention, there is real worry that publishers are moving us toward a new status: knowledge-workers in a “work for hire” relation. There is of course an end-around to all of this.
Open access publishing changes all of those terms in the best, most author-centered way. If you publish in an open access medium, then any scholar with an internet connection can read your work. And your work is your own.
About a year and a half ago, Scott Davidson and I took over as co-editors of what was then called Journal of French Philosophy. The journal was about twenty years old, with a smallish print run. A shrinking print run. When we took over, the journal's name and mission were retooled, settling on current title Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy. The idea was (and is) to widen the scope of philosophizing in the French language to include the French-speaking world as such, which allows us to draw on the very rich, complex traditions of north, west, and central Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. Changing the scope and a small bit of the focus of the journal ruffled some feathers on the editorial board. But the real feather ruffling came from the decision to go open access.
Our decision to go open access was, unsurprisingly, motivated as much by dislike of the traditional model as it was the positve aspects of OA. Did we really want to deal with the subscription hustle? Did we really want to edit a journal and spend a lot of time trying to up circulation? Some were deeper issues of survival. Could we survive as a journal on subscriptions? What happens to the visibility of the journal if subscriptions wane? And there was the most important question of all. Is it right for us to publish as a traditional journal?
This last question bothered me. I could deal with the others and I genuinely thought, perhaps with no small delusion, that we could oversee a series of issues that would make the journal important for the future of philosophy by stimulating wider discussion with the Francophone world. But, still: is it right to stay a print publication? Publishing as a conventional print journal has real consequences. It's expensive. It's exclusive. The alternative was open access. And choosing to go open access, which we did after a long series of conversations, was a real controversy.
I got the emails you'd expect: I like print, I want to read paper, I want to hold the journal in my hand, isn't that just a website and not a journal, can't some teenager upload his ramblings and call it a publication, how can the journal have standards if it is not in print, and so on. The questions were familiar in part because I'd heard them before, but also (mostly) because they were mine. Habits are real. This is how we work in academia: write, edit, submit, publish. And it all goes print. It looks beautiful and seeing that beautiful journal issue is its own kind of reward.
I answered the way I always answer: the fact is, we all access journals through websites and we all read PDFs. Project Muse, JSTOR, EBSCO - those are all websites. Journals on shelves, perused in one of those uncomfortable library chairs, taken to the photocopier for a copy, careful to not break the journal's spine, well, that's the past. Folks don't research and read that way any longer. So, going open access is just doing what we already do - access scholarship online - but without a direct charge to the end-user.
What about the quality? I kept hearing that, strangely enough, from editorial board members. "Strangely" because they are the folks in charge of the journal's quality! We draw on them for reader reports and the like, as well as any major decision about the direction of the journal. And yet open access seemed, for some vague reason, to be a threat to quality. It's not. Of course it isn't, because it's just like any other journal: submit, report, revise, submit again, get confirmed, edit proofs, publish.
Scott and I decided to go forward with open access. Two finalists for hosting were Open Humanities Press and University of Pittsburgh Press. We went with Pitt primarily because we liked their support structure: the journal is published by Pitt's University Library System, as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program.
With Pitt, university librarians run the open access project, which is great, because the real challenge in open access is dealing with metadata - the information that makes distribution efficient, clear, and connected. The journal, like nearly all open access journals, is on Open Journal System (OJS) software, which automates everything from author submission, referee assignments, report filing, accept/decline, statistics on acceptance rate, format for all elements of the journal (editorial board to table of contents), and, because it is a product of the Public Knowledge Project, it is free to any and all users. Pitt offered a whole host of design services for the site and the PDF template, as well as a print-on-demand option for anyone interested in a print subscription. Before a new issue is published, we discuss details with a press person and go over metadata questions, such as they are.
The only real shift of responsibility: we, the editors, are responsible for creating the PDFs of each article. That used to be the responsibility of the press, but now it is ours. I'm lucky enough to work at a place (Amherst College) that offers support (a student assistant), yet, truth is, the creation of PDFs is simple and quick. After all, it is 2012. Templates are slick and efficient. Copy and paste, now you have a fully formatted article. Yes, it's that easy. Sure, you find mistakes and correct them (thanks, assistant!) and that can consume some time. But, in the end, this bit of labor is off-set by the benefits: we publish without restrictions. If we have long articles, there is no constraint on word count. If an important interview goes on long, no problem, we have the space. If we want to do a long discussion forum, space restriction doesn't clip the conversation. If we want to do a special issue, we can publish it without cost consideration. The press insists on regular, scheduled publication, sure, but the flexibility for supplemental work is there and a real resource. The judgment for all of this lies with us, the editors, which is, after all, how it should be.
So why don't we already see open access everywhere, for all journals?
I think an uncomfortable truth about many scholars is that, although we may write with political urgency, we don't pay much attention to the political economy of publishing. It's a tough habit to break: print format, the important press, the aesthetic satisfaction of holding a journal in your hand with your article inside. I get all that. But, as with any withholding of politics, even the passive, unreflective move to publish in print is always a political decision. This was especially clear in the case of Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy. If we published in print, we would publish about and from a world that would never read our journal, because of limited access. That didn't seem right. That's also true of any print or pay-to-read journal, really: we publish for scholars, many of whom will not be able to read our work. The digital divide is still there, for sure, but that’s a bigger question. One we all ought to pose as human beings, really.
In the end, I think open access is the only right choice. It's right because it is good for scholarship and it is good for our colleges and universities; less money on journals, I hope, means more money for books. The question now, of course, is what to do. The standard response - which I think is true - is that tenured faculty need to start publishing in open access journals in order to confirm the mode of publication as legitimate. I think it's crazy that we have to confirm this, for many reasons, but I get it.
More importantly, however, senior scholars need to convert existing journals into open access. Break contracts. Buy out of contracts. Wait for contracts to expire, then go open access. Drop a name, get a new one, move the operation somewhere else. Because, for all the self-importance that comes with "if we publish, it will look legit," the real importance of senior scholars lies in their control of the medium. If you edit a journal, move to open access. If you are on an editorial board, agitate for the move to open access. No one and nothing actually stands in the way, except, perhaps, that old habits die hard.
When I think of those habits and how hard they are to address, much less overcome, I'm drawn back to thinking of Socrates. Sure, philosophy begins in wonder, as he says in the Theaetetus, but it also begins in self-examination and the purging of habits and opinions. If we purge habits concerning the "look" of a "real" journal and reckon with both how we actually interact with resources and the politics and economics of that interaction, then I think we are compelled to only one action: change the profession. Produce scholarship for all, commercial-free philosophy. Isn't that what we've always wanted?
Recent Comments