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On 2016/05/16 03:43 AM, DW via Marxism wrote:
...I'm saying, or asking: is there another way.
Actually in South Africa we are trying a different strategy in which for the first time this year, a decent share of state funding subsidises those who write academic books and even book chapters, not just academic articles.
(In most universities here, if you write a peer-reviewed article in an accredited journal, you get a research bonus for buying books and conference tickets and research-assistant time of around $1500 each. That was a system biased towards natural scientists - one of my UKZN colleagues wrote 41 last year - and relatitvely harder for social scientists who generate fewer of those commodities and instead, put their work into books and book chapters. So the subsidy is now available for properly peer-reviewed books and chapters, and a university that hosts a book author can get as much as $70 000 subsidy from the government for each 300 page book, which it shares usually around 10% with the author, and with the rest cross-subsidises other university research.)
Some of us are trying to advocate a system to shift publishing so as to decommodify the book form, as a result of this generous subsidy (e.g. getting the book online immediately - as one state publisher here does with some of its books: http://hsrcpress.co.za/ ... e.g. this section of their main annual SA review: http://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/downloadpdf.php?pdffile=files%2FPDF%2F2322%2FState%20of%20Nation_Part5_SA%20and%20the%20World.pdf&downloadfilename=State%20of%20the%20Nation%3A%20South%20Africa%201994-2014%20-%20Part5%20SA%20and%20the%20World )
But as a general strategy of decommodification, especially to promote work by black authors, we're finding that it's very slow going, with no immediate prospect of success. The main barrier is the academic research bureaucrat, it turns out...
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