Written by The three articles to which I link below all came across my radar (Twitter?) screen today. I don’t see how anyone in academia can swish these three stories around in her/his mouth for a bit and not experience an entirely new taste.
Newspapers fold as readers defect and economy sours
(CNN) — The Rocky Mountain News, gone. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, gone…At least 120 newspapers in the U.S. have shut down since January 2008, according to Paper Cuts, a Web site tracking the newspaper industry. More than 21,000 jobs at 67 newspapers have vaporized in that time, according to the site.
Farewell to the Printed Monograph
The University of Michigan Press is announcing today that it will shift its scholarly publishing from being primarily a traditional print operation to one that is primarily digital…Michigan officials say that their move reflects a belief that it’s time to stop trying to make the old economics of scholarly publishing work. “I have been increasingly convinced that the business model based on printed monograph was not merely failing but broken,” said Phil Pochoda, director of the Michigan press. “Why try to fight your way through this? Why try to remain in territory you know is doomed? Scholarly presses will be primarily digital in a decade. Why not seize the opportunity to do it now?”
MIT makes research available on the web
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) faculty voted unanimously March 18 to make the school’s scholarly research available for free on the internet, joining other noted universities that hope to encourage more scholarship and expand researchers’ audiences…The open-access movement aims to put peer-reviewed research and literature on the internet for free and remove most copyright restrictions. Advocates believe this will invigorate more research across academia.
DIGITAL + OPEN = a different world for academic publishing.
Great pairing of articles. I especially love the second one as I had not seen that before for Academic Presses. I never really understood how they survived in the first place. Most of the stuff they put out was pretty niche oriented.
The MIT thing though is probably the most important from an academic standpoint – and I totally agree with it. Why in God’s name would we allow a few publishing companies to control access to the world’s scholarly knowledge base? We shouldn’t. Period.
The issue, though, is that we are probably going to need a better way to classify and source all this stuff. Universities need to be proactive in establishing e-journals to compete and the e-journals need to work together to provide one overarching search engine that works well (and tenure committees need to get rid of the e-journal stigma). Some other fields may have made more progress on this front, but education seems to have a long, long way to go on all fronts.
I also wonder the impact this could have on subsequent research with more access to what is already out there. Through my university, I have access to *almost* anything I can find. But what about after I graduate? If we want to encourage more teacher-researchers, access to resources is an issue. And was it you, Jon, who blogged about counting blogging as a form of publishing in tenure review? While it’s not the same, I grant, if it furthers thinking of others (documented in comments) then blogging should accrue some credit.
Point well made.
The above, along with the Yale Open Courses project and places like http://www.academicearth.org certainly represent a shift in thinking (and doing!).
So what will the ends be? High School students with a more accurate concept of college coursework, and perhaps better preparation? Truly “lifelong” adult learners?
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