Commercial Publishing, Scholarly Communication, and Open-Access

[Heather Morrison <hgmorris@sfu.ca>]

Interesting article by Conley and Wooders in Economic Analysis and
Policy:

But what have you done for me lately? Commercial Publishing, 
Scholarly Communication, and Open-Access.

Abstract

We discuss our experience in both commercial and open-access 
publishing. We argue that, in the papyrocentric (paper-centered) 
era before 1990, commercial publishers served a useful and 
necessary purpose. In the electronic era, post 2000, the academy 
has very little to gain from commercial publishers, who may 
actually impede rather than facilitate scholarly communication. 
We consider the costs of running an open-access journal and argue 
that they are considerably less than is commonly supposed. We 
describe the role of workflow and content-management software 
systems and how they can facilitate not only open-access 
journals, but also working-paper series, conference organization, 
scholarly societies, and other forms of scholarly communication.

Fulltext available from:
http://www.eap-journal.com/vol_39_iss_1.php

Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com