Abstract
The current state of scholarly communication is presented as one of contest between an increasingly commercial system that is dysfunctional and incompatible with the basic aims of scholarship, and emerging alternatives, particularly open access publishing and open access archiving. Two approaches to facilitating global participation in scholarly communication are contrasted; equity is seen as a superior goal to the donor model, which requires poverty or inequity to succeed. The current state of scholarly communication within the discipline of communication is examined. A relatively healthy percentage of not-for-profit publishers and at least 76 fully open access journals suggest strong potential for emancipating scholarship in communication from commercial imperatives. Specific sites of struggle and actions for scholars, including developing open access journals and self-archiving, are presented.
Highlights
Introduction and literature reviewThe purpose of this section is to introduce the concepts of enclosure and emancipation in the context of scholarly communication, and relate these to the existing scholarly publishing system and an emerging alternative open access system
Enclosure is closely related to commodification and commercialization of scholarly work, but the two concepts are not the same, nor do they necessarily correspond For example, there are not-for-profit scholarly publishers that use dissemination methods based on enclosure, and there are commercial publishers that charge for the service of publishing, but disseminate on an open access basis
Analysis of numbers based on a report by the Research Information Network (RIN) (2008) indicates that of the approximately £8 billion in revenues received annually by the global scholarly publishing industry, about 73% comes from academic library subscriptions, with another 15% coming from other subscriptions, including subscriptions from other library types as well as from individuals
Summary
Stream is interested in publishing articles and book reviews by Canadian graduate students in communication studies and related fields. Papers should fit into one of the three proposed “streams,” but we invite contributors to challenge their conceptions of these subjects with interdisciplinary approaches to these subject areas. We hope that this student initiative will become a space for graduate students to publish new work and expand upon new ideas, contributing to a thriving graduate intellectual culture
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