[Journal of Journal Performance Studies by Nicholas Knouf] [nettime] Some More Nuanced Thoughts on Publishing, Editing, Reading, Using by Gary Hall:

Keith was asking for references to research on academic journals. In addition to those already mentioned, one piece I’ve found helpful is Ted Striphas’s (2010) ‘Acknowledged Goods: Cultural Studies and the Politics of Academic Journal Publishing’, Communication and Cultural/ Critical Studies, 7 (1), 3-25. There’s an ‘open’ pre-print version here.

I’m singling this piece out in this context because it’s particularly interesting with regard to some Taylor & Francis/ Informa’s geo-political connections. For instance, writing in 2008, Striphas details how:

‘One of Informa’s subsidiaries, Adam Smith Conferences, which is indeed named for the patron saint of economic liberalism, specializes in organizing events designed to open the former Soviet republics to private investment. Other divisions of the company provide information, consulting, training, and strategic planning services to major international agricultural, banking, insurance, investment, pharmaceutical, and telecommunications corporations, in addition to government agencies. Take Robbins-Gioia, for instance. The United States Army recently tapped this Informa subsidiary during an overhaul of its command and control infrastructure. The firm was brought in to assess how well the Army had achieved its goal of “battlefield digitization.”

The United States Air Force, meanwhile, tapped Robbins-Gioia when it needed help improving its fleet management systems for U-2 spy planes. Other aspects of Informa, such as the Monaco Yacht Show, are perhaps more benign. Nonetheless, Informa is a significant global player whose business ventures extend into some of the most important geo-political and economic realignments of our time.’ (Ted Striphas (2008), ‘Acknowledged Goods’ Worksite, Differences and Repetitions: The Wiki Site for Rhizomatic Writing. Available here.)

I think there are alternatives to either publishing a closed journal or not publishing in a particular field at all. One would be to start an open journal in the field, one that is international in scope. An open journal can be set up and disseminated internationally pretty easily and quickly nowadays, using Open Journal Systems or something similar (although generating an ‘international’ level of prestige for a new journal can of course take a while).

I’m not mentioning this as way of criticizing anyone’s strategic/ tactical, political or ethical decisions - I merely want to point out that these *are* decisions that we all make. For example, I know some academics have taken the decision to stop giving their free labour in the form of editorial work, peer-reviewing etc., to non-public, non-open access, for-profit journals; or to journals and publishers who don’t allow authors, as a bare minimum, to self-archive the refereed and accepted final drafts of their publications in institutional open access repositories; or who are owned by multinational corporations involved, say, with the military or arms trade; or who operate high annual library subscription charges.

Gary

Gary Hall
Research Professor of Media and Performing Arts
School of Art and Design, Coventry University
Co-editor of Culture Machine
http://www.culturemachine.net
Co-founder of the Open Humanities Press
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org
Website http://www.garyhall.info