ClaireMacomson_FinalProject

Presentation

Write Up

Initially I was going to focus on academic publishing within the history field, but I could not find enough information. I was concerned that not enough was published but the problem was that I was mostly finding articles about the history of publishing or the history of publishing within other fields. It was difficult to determine the appropriate search terms to find what I was looking for. I then decided to focus on the humanities in general. However, it is still a very broad conversation involving a number of different perspectives and viewpoints. I ended up finding a couple articles about inclusion within academic publishing within humanities and the social sciences and moved from there. I ended up focusing on articles that featured diversity, equity, or inclusion in some way. Several of my articles are from the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication. The JLSC is an open access journal with a focus on library/press partnerships and DEI perspectives. I opted to look at articles written within the last 5 years in order to remain relevant and limit the scope of this project. There are, of course, many articles on the topics I did not have institutional access to or did not find in my search. This is not a comprehensive overview.

Themes that were addressed in multiple articles include:

English is the predominant language of scholarly communication which affects how non-English work is accepted on an international scale (Liu 2017). All of these articles were printed in English but several of the authors were Chinese or Polish nationals living and working in their respective countries (Liu 2017; Peters et al, 2016).

Technology (the advent of personal computers, the connectivity of the internet, and the digitalization of scholarly communication) remains to be a driving force in who and what gets published and how. (Peters et al, 2016; Zhu 2017; Maryl et al, 2020)

While academics and researchers seem to think Open Access is a good idea in theory, there are still a number of concerns related to costs, quality control, academic prestige, academic freedom, and copyright that prevent widespread adoption (Zhu 2017; Peters et al, 2016; Johnston 2017; Atiso and Kammer 2019)

More needs to be done to include otherwise excluded voices, particularly within the Global South and other countries that have less economic resources to participate in scholarly communication and academic publishing (Maryl et al, 2020; Peters et al, 2016; Atiso and Kammer 2019)

A number of our readings covered how changes in technology, primarily the invention and adoption of the internet and the digitization of media, has fundamentally changed scholarly communication. The change has been so fundamental that entire new fields of study have developed in its wake as well as the practical changes of print vs digital publishing. The advent of electronic mail has made it easier and faster to communication over distances compared to traditional letter writing. Barjak (2006) argues that this form of “informal communication is therefore already a salient feature of scientific knowledge production rather than merely a feature of the dissemination of results” (p.1352).

We also addressed in class how Open Access remains to be misunderstood and slow to adopt for the same reasons addressed in most of these articles on Open Access. Researchers do not know what Open Access is. They are concerned about the costs and how the financial burden may affect them or their ability to publish. They are concerned about how these new journals will affect how their work is received. Will their careers suffer if they publish in less prestigious journals? How will this affect their ability to do research? What exactly are the legalities? How does Open Access prevent plagiarism and protect their intellectual property? A number of the same questions in these articles are answered on Peter Suber’s webpage (Suber 2015).

While several of the articles assigned in this class covered the concept of library publishing presses, none were quite as radical as the Ghamandi article I found which advocates a complete political and economic shift in opposition of commercial publishers and current Open Access policies as they stand. It is not surprising, however, that this particular stance has been adopted given the traditional model of publishing does involve a commercial entity selling information gleaned through public funding back to the public. As Panitch and

Michalak state “the knowledge created as a public good and at public expense is essentially being held hostage” (p. 8).

The Maryl et al, 2020 article is the only article of the group that used a non-traditional peer review process as described in the Ware 2008 article. The journal that published the Maryl article uses both post-publication peer review and open peer review. In this case it was an open post-publication peer review and the comments from the reviewers were added to the article so anyone could read them. The journal indicates if an article is approved, approved with reservations, unapproved, or is waiting to be reviewed (F1000Research, n.d.). It is certainly an interesting way to complete the peer review process.

The following is an annotated bibliography of my sources.

Atiso, K., & Kammer, J. (2019). Online Safety and Academic Scholarship: Exploring Researchers’ Concerns from Ghana. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2263

This article addresses how researchers and academics in Ghana are hesitant to deposit their work in institutional repositories due to a lack of secure information and communications infrastructure within the country and the widespread cybercrime that exists due to that lack of infrastructure. These concerns are born out of previous experiences where they or other people they know have been victims of cybercrimes. They are primarily concerned with fraud, plagiarism, and other issues related to poor ICT Infrastructure.

Ghamandi, D. S. (2018). You Can’t Fight What You Don’t See: The Case for Replacing Neoliberalism with Library Publishing Cooperatives. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 6(2), 2223. https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2223

The article defines neoliberalism and critiques its control over academic publishing and scholarly communication. The author argues that the serials crisis and other issues within scholarly communication will worsen until the system is abandoned for a more cooperative approach. The author argues that cooperative presses must be established within academic libraries in order to prevent Open Access from continuing the same exploitation as the traditional publishing system.

Johnston, D. J. (2017). Open access policies and academic freedom: understanding and addressing conflicts. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 5(General Issue). https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2104

This article addresses how Open Access can be perceived as a threat to academic freedom and the ways that common Open Access policies cause and can be used to mitigate those concerns. The author defines academic freedom in two ways; negative (freedom from) and positive (freedom to) and acknowledges that there are reasonable limitations to how freedom can be defined in academic institutions. Johnston argues that while some common OA policies appear to challenge academic freedoms, in reality exceptions are built in to ensure that authors are not restricted by undue constraints.

Maryl, M., Błaszczyńska, M., Szulińska, A., & Rams, P. (2020). The case for an inclusive scholarly communication infrastructure for social sciences and humanities. F1000Research, 9, 1265. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.26545.1

This article outlines European scholarship and action related to building infrastructure that will support open access on a global scale. The article addresses obstacles that currently cause the uneven and limited adoption of open access in European countries. The authors believe that widespread adoption should be driven by the academic community itself in support of their colleagues in less wealthy, non-English-speaking countries who are regularly excluded from the current prestige of academic publishing.

Peters, M. A., Jandrić, P., Irwin, R., Locke, K., Devine, N., Heraud, R., Gibbons, A., Besley, T., White, J., Forster, D., Jackson, L., Grierson, E., Mika, C., Stewart, G., Tesar, M., Brighouse, S., Arndt, S., Lazaroiu, G., Mihaila, R., … Benade, L. (2016). Towards a philosophy of academic publishing. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 48(14), 1401–1425. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2016.1240987

This highly collaborative and lengthy article seeks to challenge assumptions about the current structures and nature of academic publishing on a global scale with particular criticisms of its neoliberal, capitalist nature in general. The article addresses a large number of themes related to the development and distribution of knowledge based on technologies, global economics, language/culture, and institutional power. It is difficult to sum up but the basic tenet is that the authors seek to develop a philosophical approach to academic publishing in order to create a more accessible, inclusive system.

Liu, W. (2017). The changing role of non-English papers in scholarly communication: Evidence from Web of Science’s three journal citation indexes. Learned Publishing, 30(2), 115–123. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1089

Using Web of Science’s three journal citation indexes, “this study probes the patterns and dynamics of non-English papers by year, citation index, and discipline using bibliometric analysis” (Liu 2017, Abstract). The article indicates, within these indexes, that English is the predominant language of academic publishing across disciplines and that English-language articles are more likely to be cited. Non-English articles, though few in numbers, have achieved greater prestige in the arts and humanities and to a lesser extent within applied and social sciences.

Zhu, Y. (2017). Who support open access publishing? Gender, discipline, seniority and other factors associated with academics’ OA practice. Scientometrics, 111(2), 557–579. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2316-z

This article is the results of a survey of UK academics on their thoughts and opinions on Open Access. The study suggests that researchers in the UK do not choose OA because they are not aware of it, are concerned about the impact on citations/bibliometrics, concerned about academic prestige vis-a-vis open access journals, concerned about copyright, etc. The study also suggests that older, more established, male researchers are more likely to publish Open Access.

Additional Bibliography

Suber, P. (2015). Peter Suber, Open Access Overview (definition, introduction). Retrieved December 7, 2021 at http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

Panitch, J.M., & Michalak, S. (2005) The Serials Crisis A White Paper for the UNC-Chapel Hill Scholarly Communications Convocation [White Paper]. University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. https://ils.unc.edu/courses/2021_fall/inls700_001/Readings/Panitch2005-SerialsCrisis.htm

Barjak, F. (2006). The role of the Internet in informal scholarly communication. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(10), 1350–1367. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20454

Ware, M. (2008). Peer Review: benefits, perceptions and alternatives [Summary Report]. Publishing Research Consortium. https://ils.unc.edu/courses/2021_fall/inls700_001/Readings/Ware2008-PRCPeerReview.pdf

About F1000Research | How It Works | Beyond A Research Journal. (n.d.). F1000Research. Retrieved December 8, 2021, from https://f1000research.com/about