The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0286 Tuesday, 13 May 2008
From: Gabriel Egan <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Saturday, 10 May 2008 13:37:59 +0100
Subject: 19.0280 A Problem of Access
Comment: Re: SHK 19.0280 A Problem of Access
Larry Weiss is right that there are fewer Open Access (OA) journals than
reader-pays journals. The Directory of Open Access Journals at
www.doaj.org lists 3352 titles across all disciplines. Of those 16 are
in Performing Arts, 106 in History and 125 in Languages and Literature,
including of course Early Modern Literary Studies about which SHAKSPER
readers are regularly informed.
Larry is also right that the two journals I help to edit are not Open
Access. Would that they were. As I said in my original post, OA is the
ideal solution to Jack Heller's problem of access, and I concede that
this ideal is a long way off. I don't propose we all stop what we are
doing and wait for it.
What can those involved in journal publishing do right now? One useful
step is to persuade publishers to cease demanding that journal
contributors sign over their copy-right to the publisher, and instead
have the contributor give the publisher the exclusive right to publish.
(Later, we can lobby for this being a non-exclusive right.) I'm pleased
to report that at the journal _Shakespeare_ we convinced Taylor and
Francis of this, and no contributor is asked to give away her copy-right.
Larry writes:
>But to my mind, people who pay to attend a lecture
>would probably rather be edified than used as unpaid
>research assistants.
I gave the example of conference paper dissemination not to suggest that
one's audience should be exploited, but to indicate that even publishers
accept that some forms of pre-publication circulation are good for a
paper. Increasingly, this circulation includes self-archiving of a
pre-print version on a website, which is another route to OA.
Gabriel Egan
_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook,
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net>
DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the
opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the
editor assumes no responsibility for them.
|
