As I mentioned in my brief review which linked to Peter Webster's article, he isn't saying humanities scholars will reject OA, but there needs to be nuance within the larger conversation. His articulation was helpful to alert us to the fact that different disciplines take differing approaches to scholarly communication. Current funding models clearly favor the sciences, which tend to be more flush with cash to cover APCs (which, as has been discussed, are being exploited to keep commercial publishers in control of the system, and their revenues).
I tend to agree with Falk, however. I appreciate the realities of disciplinary and institutional inertia, the power of tradition, and the fear of jeopardized reputations and (in the case of many scholarly societies) revenue streams. But there are now virtually no technical barriers for any community or group of scholars to start publishing a low cost OA journal before the end of day today (depending on your time zone). The tools are readily available. These journals can be designed to reduce the time period between submission and publication. Whether new or existing, what is needed is for the scholarly communities and the respected scholars within these communities to AUTHORIZE these journals with their reputations. We will sit on editorial boards of these OA journals. We will serve as reviewers for these journals. We will submit our research articles to these journals. We will validate for our institutions the quality of the research published in these journals for tenure and promotion, and for the encouragement of junior scholars who are trying to build their own reputations. We will encourage our institutions' provosts, department heads, libraries and university presses to help fund/lend expertise to these journals as they grow and require more administrative and technical support. Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openacc...@gmail.com | @OAopenaccess > Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 10:52:56 +0000 > From: "Reckling, Falk, Dr." <falk.reckl...@fwf.ac.at> > Subject: [GOAL] Re: Hat Tip: Let's not leave Humanities behind in the > dash for open access > To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" <goal@eprints.org> > Message-ID: <16331e0f-672a-45de-975e-16f583b71...@fwf.ac.at> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1250" > > > I think there is still a misunderstanding with Gold OA. Running a OA journal > does not necesserily mean to charges article fees! > > ...snip... > > What is needed is a very good editorial board and a basic funding by an > institution/society, or by a consortium of institutions or by a charity or ... > > Or why not considering a megajournal in the Humanities and apply a clever > business model as PEERJ tries it right now in the Life Science?: > http://peerj.com/ > > In the end, it is up to the community to develop models which fit their needs > ... > > Best Falk _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
