As I mentioned I had an article (The Distance from Isolation) accepted for publication in Computers and Education. It has now been 'in press' for over a year now, with no indication as to when it will actually be published. By the time it is, it will be out of date. I'm sure it's not the case but it reminds me of Chelsea FC - they buy the best players not with an intention of playing them but simply to stop other teams having them.
This is but one example of the very strange world of academic publishing. For those who don't engage in it, the deal goes something like this:
- Academics provide the content
- Academics do the reviewing
- Academics often do the editing
- Publishers print it and sell it back to academics
- Authors are often restricted from making their own work publicly available
- Authors receive no payment for the published work
Not an entirely fair system one would have thought, but because journal publication is tied up with academic esteem, promotion and the rather pernicious RAE, it is a process many of us feel compelled to go along with.
Thankfully the tide is turning and there are a number of different models for publishing now, including online journals, open content and err, blogs I guess.
In fact, publishesr can now get away without even printing anything - they just rake in the money. For example, the International Journal of Web-Based Communities, published by Inderscience, costs libraries $480 a year to access just the online version. If more than one person wants to access it as once, it costs even more, up to a maximum $3400 if 20 people want to use it at once.
So academics write the material for free, edit the material for free and correct the material for free - then Inderscience slaps it on a website and restricts access to those people / institutions who can afford it.
How fair is that?
Rebecca
Posted by: Rebecca F | 03/07/2006 at 09:41 AM