Censorship has become increasingly visible of late around the world. As part of that trend, the academic freedom of scholars can also come under threat when the financial and intellectual agendas of their publishers run up against nationalist and other populist ideologies in different countries. I recently experienced such tensions when a book I co-edited met with some unexpected obstacles while being translated. On this basis, I can offer other academics, their publishers and institutions some insights about how to prepare for and address such circumstances.
Read MoreHumanities scholars, including medievalists, are generally free from scientists’ imperative to “publish or perish.” We tend to value quality over quantity, are used to the slow pace of publication and low citation rates, and appreciate our works’ literary and artisanal quality. So why accelerate the process unnecessarily by uploading early (or un-formatted) work in the form of preprints to public, non-profit repositories like BodoArxiv? Here we discuss six reasons why we should consider doing so and why in part it’s already happening, sometimes in response to larger cultural shifts in and beyond academia.
Read MoreDifficult questions remain unanswered about how the University of Amsterdam ushered the privatization of Amsterdam University Press, colluded in embellishing the shift’s circumstances, and what that tells us about the value of academic labor when leaders of a public university embrace rather than resist breakneck capitalism.
Read MoreEditors, often relying on reviewers’ labor and input, tend to spend more time and energy waging a defensive war on their journal’s identity and quality than actively discovering exciting new work. Field-specific preprint repositories are one way to streamline editorial boards’ activities, allowing them to identify and curate collections from a far greater pool of papers—and potentially at earlier stages of gestation—than is their current habit.
Read MoreIf you have a pressing need to read an academic paper that’s hiding behind a paywall, your quickest course of action may well be to use Sci-Hub. Less myopically perhaps, you should also ask the paper’s authors why they continue to cooperate with those for-profit publishers whose high prices have made breaking the law your path of least resistance
Read MoreEarly last week I uploaded to my Academia.edu homepage a brief note signaling and explaining my decision to close my account on that site. As a medieval historian, I had been an active and enthusiastic member since 2010, with moderately high exposure, and while “On leaving Academia.edu” was meant as a provocative goodbye, I hadn’t expected it to draw much attention. In the four days that elapsed between uploading my note and closing my account, however, the text was accessed more than 22,000 times and the critical discussion board accompanying it (known as a Session) was still going strong, attracting some 2,000 active followers making numerous contributions, including from the site’s founder and CEO, its Product VP, and of course hundreds of engaged scholars and academics from around the world.
Read MoreNet als veel academici, word ik regelmatig gevraagd een wetenschappelijk artikel te 'peer reviewen'. In tegenstelling tot veel collega's baseer ik mijn reactie op een dergelijk verzoek sinds kort op de vraag of de uitgever zijn kopij beschikbaar stelt aan een breder publiek.
Waar we voorheen bezorgd waren dat het grote publiek ons werk niet begreep, is het probleem vandaag dat de geïnteresseerde leek het zich niet kan veroorloven. Het merendeel van de tijdschriftartikelen verdwijnt achter betaalmuren.
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