K A Wallace

Digital Publishing & Scholarly Authors

I discuss some of these issues in greater detail in my articles (see below).

Many academic writers routinely sign away copyright and licensing rights for their publications without realizing the scope of what they have done. Many are then shocked by various restrictions there may be on the distribution of and their ability to use their own work.

Some publishers allow open access for a fee. For example, Springer operates a program called Springer Open Choice. It lets authors make their journal articles available as open access in exchange for a fee; currently, that fee is $3000 (USD). At BioMed Central, where all articles are open access, article processing charges range from $2040 to $285 (USD), depending on the journal. Programs such as these couple the cost of publication with research budgets. While this might work in the sciences, non-grant supported authors (most humanities and social science scholars) can't afford most such fees. Moreover, if most of the research is conducted through government financed funding in the sciences, the question could be raised whether such a structure is the best use of taxpayers' money for advancing the public's interest in the dissemination of knowledge. That is not to deny that there are publication (including indexing and access) costs that need to be covered. The question is rather whether authors' interests and the public interest in the dissemination of knowledge are best served by such a system.

The Long Tail Economics of Publishing

Scholars and researchers need to recognize the extent to which digital, electronic publishing has changed the process and economics of publishing. The situation is significantly different now compared to when there was only print media, because digital media dramatically changes the scope of control that publishers can exercise and changes the potential stream of revenue from subsidiary fees and sales. (For example, publishers now have the capability of selling individual book chapters and journal articles on-line.) This is the "Long Tail" (and see links below).

The question is whether authors' interests and the public interest in the dissemination of knowledge are being served by the current system. Publishers currently act as the "middlemen" between producers (authors) and end users (libraries, universities, other scholars, students, the public at large), and currently, they (publishers) control distribution of and access to information, as well as monopolize the revenue stream, in ways that may not be in the interests of all the other parties.

What To Do

Universities, if they acted collectively, and in concert with scholars and researchers, could have tremendous leverage in restructuring how information is produced and disseminated. Academic writers need to play leading roles in restructuring academic publishing. Some researchers are beginning to exercise coordinated effort in this regard. For instance, Scoap (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) is aiming to develop a new system of publishing in high-energy-physics that would replace expensive subscriptions to journals with participation in a nonprofit organization. Even if the SCOAP model is not exactly what would work in every area, in other disciplines and areas of research, researchers, authors and universities alike, all need to start engaging in such coordinated efforts.

My Articles on Digital Publishing

• Marketing Ideas: Reshaping Academic Publishing in a Digital World, by K.A. Wallace -- originally published and available in Science Progress of the Center for American Progress.
• Who Profits When You Publish? by K.A. Wallace -- a shorter, revised version of "Marketing Ideas"; published in Academe: Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors July/August 2008, pp. 58-61. Download PDF.

The Long Tail and Digital Publishing

• "The Long Tail," by Chris Anderson
• The original article, published in Wired (2004).
• The book: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More (Hyperion Books, 2006; ISBN-10: 1401302378 and ISBN-13: 978-1401302375) -- available at your local library, as well as at Amazon.com and other booksellers.
• The Deep Niche, by Michael Jensen (2007) -- about the long tail and publishers' potential profits.
• The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority, by Michael Jensen, The Chronicle Review of The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 15, 2007, pp. B6-B8 -- how digital academic publishing might affect faculty evaluations. (Requires subscription.)
• University Publishing in a Digital Age
• A Perspective of a University Press Director

Resources on Digital Publishing and Authors' Rights

• Kevin Smith's Scholarly Communication@Duke
• Peter Suber's Open Access News
• SHERPA/RoMEO: Publisher copyright policies and self-archiving
• The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition: Resources for Authors
• Creative Commons
• Copyright Basics

The Long Tail and Free Lance Writers

• The Imperiled Future of Copyright -- how free-lance writers are affected by long tail related issues, such as Google print, and open source.
• See also the National Writers' Union

The Long Tail and TV and Film Writers

Writers for television and film may be paid for scripts, as well as collect what are known as "residuals" (rebroadcast, reproduction, or collectively, "reuse" fees). With the development of digital media, the long tail for residuals and other revenue collected through marketing of DVDs, cable and internet streaming had not been addressed in previous WGA author payment structures. This was the major issue in the Winter 2007-08 Writer's Guild of America (WGA) strike. Up until this strike, the writers, for the most part, made nothing on the digital use of their work.

Some Philosophy On-line & Open Access

• Philpapers: online research in philosophy
• Noesis a search engine for open access academic philosophy on the internet
• Philosophers Imprint Open Access, on-line journal "edited by philosophers, published by librarians"
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• A Directory of On-line Journals in Philosophy
• List of philosophy on-line resources compiled by Sally Haslanger