on the humanities and the commons
This post (from the cult-stud list) is related to the kind of paradigm shift in academic publishing we’re all about:
Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2007 16:11:57 +0000
From: Gary Hall
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS
CULTURE MACHINE http://www.culturemachine.net http://www.culturemachine.net/csearch
Open access publishing has been operating successfully within the sciences for over 15 years now. Yet compared to other online movements and practices, such as creative commons, free software, open source and peer-to-peer, which have variously been regarded as providing models for new regimes of culture, new kinds of networked institutions, even for the future organisation of society, the open access movement has had relatively little impact on the humanities to date.
By making the research literature freely available to researchers, teachers, students, investigative journalists, policy makers, union organisers, NGOs, political activists, protest groups and the general public alike, on a worldwide basis, open access is seen as having the potential to break down some of the barriers between the university and the rest of society, as well as between countries in the so-called ‘developed’ and ‘undeveloped’ worlds. It is also held as helping to overcome the ‘Westernization’ of the research literature through the creation of a far more decentralised and distributed research community. So why, given the often radical nature of the content of their work, have those in the humanities, and to a lesser extent the social sciences, been so reluctant to challenge what John Willinsky in The Access Principle refers to as the ‘complacent and comfortable habits of scholarly publishing’? Why have those in the sciences apparently proved the more institutionally, socially and politically progressive in this respect?
In an attempt to go at least some way toward addressing this situation, we are continuing to seek contributions to the CSeARCH open access archive for research and publications in cultural studies and related fields: communication and media studies, continental philosophy, literary, critical and cultural theory, new media, visual culture, psychoanalysis, post-colonial theory and so on.
You can find CSeARCH, which stands for Cultural Studies e-Archive, at:
http://www.culturemachine.net/csearch
CSeARCH is not-for-profit and free to download from and upload to.
Recent self-archived contributions to CSeARCH include:
Jack Bratich (2006), ‘Public Secrecy and Immanent Security’, Cultural Studies Vol. 20, Nos. 4-5, July/September.
Sam Gillespie (2001), ‘Neighborhood of Infinity: On Badiou’s Deleuze: The Clamor of Being’, Umbr(a) 1: Polemos.
Imre Szeman (2003), ‘Culture and Globalization, or, The Humanities in Ruins’, CR: The New Centennial Review 3.2.
– Dr Gary Hall Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies, Middlesex University Co-editor of Culture Machine http://www.culturemachine.net Director of the Cultural Studies Open Access Archive http://www.culturemachine.net/csearch My website http://www.garyhall.info
New Book: Gary Hall and Clare Birchall (eds), New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006) http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/edition_details.aspx?id=12249
Leave a Reply