Yesterday, our Experimental Publishing reading group took as one of its chosen texts Tara McPherson’s ‘Scaling Vectors: Thoughts on the Future of Scholarly Communication’, which appeared in the Journal of Electronic Publishing in 2010.

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0013.208?view=text;rgn=main

It has lines such as: ‘While innovative publishing efforts have emerged from a variety of spaces … it is safe to say that change has not broadly swept through the humanities.’

And: ‘The impulse to conserve the status quo emerges largely from humanities scholars themselves. Faced with a variety of threats (both real and perceived) to the humanities, scholars tend to hold on to established modes of working.’

All raises the question, has much changed in the 15 years since these words were written? And if not, why not? Does anyone have any ideas?

#publishing
#oa
#radicalOA
#academicpublishing #experimentalpublishing #journals #humanities

Yesterday I posted on the Radical Open Access list, responding to last week's Radical OA III: From Openness to Social Justice Activism conference. Titled 'What Do We Not Think About When We Think About Money?', a version of this post is now available on my Media Gifts blog:

http://www.garyhall.info/journal/2025/4/14/what-do-we-not-think-about-when-we-think-about-money.html

'... when it comes to open access publishing projects, financial sustainability matters - of course. But to what extent has the toxic, 'neoliberal', 'managerialist' university shaped even us to focus on the money, funding and funding models, the business side of things, paid/free/volunteer/service/recognised & rewarded labour? Even how radical OA can capitalise on the current financial crisis of the university (at least in the UK and US)? ...

'... money is extremely important, yes, I appreciate that. But what gets lost when it becomes one of the main lenses through which we view radical open access? ...'

#publishing #oa #radicalOA #radicalOA3 #academicpublishing #SocialJustice

Lyall, A., Ortiz, M. & Billo, E., (2025) “Greenwashing at Elsevier: A political ecology of corporate publishing”, Journal of Political Ecology 32(1): 6276. doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.6276

#politicalecology #radicalOA #elsevier

Tickets are now live for 'Radical Open Access III: From Openness to Social Justice Activism'

It takes place on the afternoons of April 10/11. In-person attendance in Cambridge and online. Speakers and registration details in the following link:

https://radicaloa.postdigitalcultures.org/conferences/radicaloa3/

#oa #OpenAccess
#AcademicPublishing #openaccess_publishing
#scholarlyPublishing
#radicaloa #SocialJustice #humanities #socialscience #activism

https://punctumbooks.pubpub.org/pub/antagonize-this-the-empty-signification-of-academy-owned-publishing-in-the-neoliberal-university/release/2

Powerful post on the blog of punctum books by Eileen A. Fradenburg Joy and Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei engaging with:

1) Sarah Kember and Amy Brand, "The Corporate Capture of Open-Access Publishing," Chronicle of Higher Education, August 16, 2023, https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-corporate-capture-of-open-access-publishing.

as well as two pieces in Culture Machine 23 (2024):

2) Sarah Kember, “Householding: A Feminist Ecological Economics of Publishing,” https://culturemachine.net/vol-23-publishing-after-progress/kember-householding/

3) Jefferson Pooley, “Before Progress: On the Power of Utopian Thinking for Open Access Publishing,” https://culturemachine.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/CM23_Pooley_Before_Progress.pdf.

For a briefer initial engagement with Pooley’s piece, see Gary Hall, 'The Pluriversal Politics of Radical Publishing's Scaling Small': http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2024/10/18/the-pluriversal-politics-of-radical-publishings-scaling-smal.html

#oa #OpenAccess #radicaloa #publishing #OAbooks #humanities #research #anticapitalist

@jpooley

1/6 'Before Progress: On the Power of Utopian Thinking for Open Access Publishing’ by Jefferson Pooley: latest excellent read from the new Publishing After Progress special issue of Culture Machine, edited by Rebekka Kiesewetter:

https://culturemachine.net/archives/vol-23-publishing-after-progress/

#oa #OpenAccess #radicaloa #publishing #utopian #anticapitalist #degrowth #postextractivism #postcapitalism

Excited about introducing the final session of our #ExperimentalBooks online conference, Experimental Books – Re-imagining Scholarly Publishing, later this afternoon. It's a keynote panel featuring Prof. Paige Raibmon and Dr. Winnie Soon, with Dr. Lozana Rossenova (@lozross) as respondent.

Prof. Raibmon is going to be speaking about ‘Digital Space as Indigenous Territory, Scholarly Writing as Relational Practice: Reflections from the Collaborative Production of an Open Access Book'.

@siusoon is going to be talking about 'Writing a Book As If Writing a Piece of Software'.

You can register here: https://experimentalbooks.pubpub.org/registrationinfos

#OAbooks #OpenAccess #radicalOA #publishing #media #writing #collaboration #technology #software

https://experimentalbooks.pubpub.org/p

Open Humanities Press is pleased to announce the publication of Articulating Media: Genealogy, Interface, Situation, edited by James Gabrillo and Nathaniel Zetter.

Like all Open Humanities Press books, Articulating Media is available open access:

http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/articulating-media/

Book description:

To ‘articulate’ media means to understand them by locating their connections in space and time. Articulating Media offers new approaches to the writing of technology and the technologies of writing by twinning an investigation of language with an attention to location. Where does media theory take place? How should media theory understand its own occupation of the spaces of media? What materialities might survive media’s many articulations and associations?

#OpenAccess #OAbooks #radicalOA #publishing #media #writing #technology