Publishing 2.0

Check out this interesting vote by the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Basically, the move is designed to subvert the copyright power that scholarly journals have to limit access to scholarly research only to paying customers. This move allows professors and researchers on the faculty to post much of their research online, freely available to worldwide audiences. Cool, right? Here are the concerns. First, it takes money to pay editing staff. Most of the top journals employ editors (some journals don't). To keep these editors employed the journal has to make money somehow. Also, there is some concern that academics just publishing their work online without peer review will affect the quality of the work. These are legitimate concerns.

Here is the solution (or at least one possible solution) ... electronic, peer-reviewed journals. Keep the peer-review because it really is a decent way of ensuring quality, but put it online for free. If a journal needs to make money on it, do online advertising. If your journal really is that important and well read it should generate enough online advertising revenue to pay a staff. Heck, this might even force academic journals to be more creative ... for instance, instead of just dry black and white letters on a page, how about posting a video of an interview done with the authors? There really is a whole world of media possibilities that are currently not being employed that could be possible in an online format. The point of academic research (at least from this researcher's perspective) is to make a difference in the world, however small. Usually, the best way to do that is to get as many people to read your journal as possible. Andy Carvin at Learning.Now thinks this is the shot heard round the world signaling the beginning of Publishing 2.0 in the academic world. I tend to agree with him. 

Comments

[Dave]

I don't know about "designed to subvert the copyright power that scholarly journals have"...since Harvard is one of the richest schools in the world, I imagine they realized they don't need the money, and there is other value available (directly to their brand and indirectly by encouraging research from other schools).

Electronic online journals, while interesting, would just be a change in formatting. It's like going from ink pens and carbon paper to typewriters and copy machines. It makes some things easier and cheaper, but you're fundamentally doing exactly the same thing.

The real opportunity is in making larger changes to the process: believe it or not, Wikipedia and other Web 2.0 sites, as well as the success of Google's PageRank algorithm have shown that there are strengths to letting large groups of people identify and build valuable resources. I'm not saying research publishing should be done on a wiki. I am saying that a system that allows authors to very easily connect their papers with the papers they cite, and allows visitors to comment on published papers, seems like a clear next step that no one is daring to take.