academia

The publishers of research journals don’t get much attention because their products are not very exciting.  Mentions of Science or Nature do not exactly quicken the pulse.  But that doesn’t mean that the publishers of academic journals aren’t as predatory and profiteering as any Fortune 500 bank or oil company. 

It now appears that the major universities that generate so much of the world’s research (only to buy it back from publishers at huge mark-ups) could be getting ready to fight back.  Harvard University is publicly urging its faculty members to avoid publishing in journals that require paid access, and to publish instead in open access journals.  Open access literature can be defined as works that are digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.

As the Guardian (UK) reports, the Harvard Faculty Advisory Council has sent a memo to 2,100 professors and researchers informing them that “major periodical subscriptions, especially to electronic journals published by historically key providers, cannot be sustained: continuing these subscriptions on their current footing is financially untenable. Doing so would seriously erode collection efforts in many other areas, already compromised.”

It’s no secret that digital technologies and networks are becoming tremendously disruptive to academia by introducing new ways of doing research, publishing, teaching and collaborating with peers.  But few universities have shown much gusto for tackling this very difficult topic, let alone trying to devise some working solutions.  So USC deserves some credit for a serious and sophisticated one-day symposium on the topic in January 2011. 

Hosted by the USC Office of Research and the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, the event convened a highly interdisciplinary set of participants – from engineering, social sciences, medical fields and the humanities.  The ideas was to explore some of the innovative ways that academic research is now occurring and what university administrations should do in response.  Among the questions posed at the symposium: 

• How do you get credit toward tenure or promotion if your work as an academic is part of a vast online collaboration? 
• How should peer review be done now that online platforms make it easy to invite talented outsiders from other disciplines, and even non-academics, to review work?   
• With everyone staring into the computer screens, how should research institutions design real-world spaces so that people can actually have serendipitous in-person encounters and collaborations?

I served as rapporteur for that event, and now the final report has been published.  You can download a pdf copy of Creativity & Collaboration:  Technology and the Future of Research in the Academy here. 

I delivered the following remarks -- "The Marginalization of the Commons and What To Do About It" -- at the 13th Biennial conferece of the International Association for the Study of the Commons, in Hyderabad, India, on January 12, 2011.

The commons is of keen interest to me because of its great potential to transform how we talk about economics, politics, governance and culture.  Or more to the point, it can be an active, creative force for positive change in people’s lives.    

The focus of the conference today is the structural forces that are marginalizing the commons and disempowering commoners.  Why is it that the commons is so often excluded from official policy discussions about how to manage resources and improve people’s lives?  Why are the State and the Market seen as the only two serious realms of action – while the commons is often patronized or dismissed as inconsequential, if it is considered at all?