Comments on: Tim Ingold on the Future of Academic Publishing

By: simon Batterbury

simon Batterbury — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 06:08:40 +0000

To back up my point, here is my listing of bona fide social science journals that cost readers nothing, are produced by academics not companies (with a couple of exceptions) and charge nothing to authors or if there is a charge, less than $500. You will notice some anthropology ones that are in Scopus and Web of Science. https://simonbatterbury.wordpress.com/2015/10/25/list-of-oa-journals-in-my-field-geography-political-ecology/

By: smak

smak — Tue, 05 Aug 2014 20:44:53 +0000

Excellent piece! The question is how do we remain relevant beyond academia? This question takes us to the heart of the problem that befuddles academia and universities. And much of this also lies in our inability to move beyond the strictly followed 8000 word heavily footnoted article. I am afraid open access is only part of that answer. Though, making it sustainable is crucial in a profession where everyone assumes that voluntary free work is not bad, and expecting to be remunerated means little consideration for what you do. Not generating revenue or not being asked to does not solve the problem we have at hand. There has to be a model (like that of cross-subsidisation) that benefits academics and pays for labour. Funding is not the answer.

By: Brett Dwyer

Brett Dwyer — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 06:15:07 +0000

Re Tim’s comment: “I agree with you, too, that in seeking alternatives to “standard” genres of academic production, we have too easy and ready resort to digital media. For these, too, impose their own forms of standardization and homogenization”.

Thanks for this conversation Tim and Antonio

I think by ‘digital media’ you mean the Internet and in that case I wonder how we would not resort to the Internet 100% of the time. Is it indeed possible not to? I know you come the UK and Scotland (Tim) – a very small country with lots of money and little centers for this and that all in hours commuting of each other, but for those of us in relatively remote places with less money like Northern Australia, if its not on the Internet, it doesn’t readily exist. for us. Indeed I think it should be mandatory for scholars/conferences to be online and publish open access and then if they feel there needs to some type organization beyond that, then let them put the case for it. For instance, there is a case for certain types of Aboriginal knowledge to be sequestered from the Internet etc.. Also while I am at it, the standardisation you refer to – or the lack of inspiration Antonio refers to, bothers me less in that I think much of what social and cultural anthropologists produce is fairly pedestrian, as it should be. I mean there is so much pedestrian work to do and I don’t think the discipline as it is organised today will get much of that work done.

By: Manosh Chowdhury

Manosh Chowdhury — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 12:09:23 +0000

This is so encouraging to find this issue to get attention, and then is critically engaged by someone like Tim Ingold. As a Southern academic, I could easily be provoked to raise the ‘linguistic’ capability issues, which themselves are significant, on a ‘global’ [English dominated] level. But the fact that the English speaking/writing academic community is not on a level playing field either is even more annoying for me to look at. The ways the universities in the North are hiring their professors [publication to even capacity of fund raising contact-making] are crucial in subverting, if at all, the entire interface. But with a general comprehension of the scenario, some of the high profile professors [without further complication of getting hired] from ‘English’ background or with ‘English’ skill and a statue of already-proved ‘publication’ should come forward to initiate a ‘pop-writing’ wave. I think, the rejection of the publication industry [so of academic industry] from the ‘proper’ people can actually lead the alternation of this situation. I owe to Prof. Ingold enormously for finding him addressing to something I, a very local [insignificant too] anthropologist, have long been questioning with some sarcastic kind of defiance.

By: Simon Batterbury

Simon Batterbury — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 01:01:15 +0000

Tim is wrong about the financial implications of a move towards Open Access. There are plenty of anthropological journals, not least http://www.haujournal.org/ and the one I run, the Journal of Political Ecology (http://jpe.library.arizona.edu) that do not charge authors or readers. What we need is greater recognition, greater input from senior anthropologists for editing, reviewing and writing in these journals, and greater support for junior or tenuously employed scholars to write in such journals (rather than the pricey and status-ridden mainstream). Costs in our case are negligible, not large as he suggests; they really boil down to time and voluntary labour. If the discipline took publishing into its own hands in this way, it would be far better off and far more widely disseminated. We also offer more freedom in formats (outside the 8,000 word box) and language.
As for scholarly societies deriving income from a journal; we are linked ot PESO of the SfAA in the USA, and we ahve not been asked to generate any revenue, nor have we. Simon Batterbury, coeditor, J of Political Ecology.