[JoPP-Public] Open access / academic social network-repository

[Mathieu ONeil]

Hi all

There has been a lively discussion on the Internet research listserv about the exorbitant fees levied by academic publishers, possible alternatives, funding for "green" open access journals (as in free all the time like JoPP) as opposed to "gold" open access (where you cough up $2-3000 to Elsevier etc PER ARTICLE to make it free for all). Research funding agencies are starting to support "gold", and one question is how to channel funds for proofreading, copyediting etc to volunteer projects. I suggested using universities as go-betweens or as employers of proofreaders etc and someone else mentioned subscriptions. See:
http://listserv.aoir.org/pipermail/air-l-aoir.org/2013-December/029220.html

This is an important discussion to have as volunteer projects like JoPP inevitably confront volunteer editor burnout issues.  

Meanwhile my colleague Rob Ackland (who is nominally on our board though I'm not sure he subscribes to this list so I'm cc-ing him to this message) has made the intriguing proposal to set up a "p2p online social network" for academics as an alternative to academia.edu (a website where academics can upload articles, connect to others, and receive metrics about which papers are the most downloaded as well as where search terms come from) which raises privacy and free labour monetisation issues. See:
http://listserv.aoir.org/pipermail/air-l-aoir.org/2013-December/029224.html

My personal response: right on Rob! You can count on my support (once I've seen the next draft of that competition paper we've been working on ;-)). 

Seriously though this could be a significant advance for the commons and JoPP-people either individually or as a collective ought in my view to think about it. I thought I'd sound out support here before replying on Air-L.

cheers

Mathieu

ps. Maurizio has been having issues with his sub to his list so cc-ing him also.