Publishing,copyright, and pay walls...

The MobiMOOC research team has been working on our third paper, further analyzing aspects of MOOCs, and MobiMOOC in specific.  Our forthcoming paper tackles the topic of emotive language usage in MOOC discussions as a predictor of continued, or future, participation in the course. We are currently in the process of going over and refining the paper, but I don't want to give away the punchline before it's done in its totality :-)

In any case, I've taken the lead on this project to see which journal we can publish our findings in.and I have found a journal whose theme is online learning and asynchronous networks, which fits in with MOOCs and MOOC pedagogy (although, to be honest I don't know how much MOOC pedagogy there is out there...perhaps something to put our heads together about). Anyway, I was looking over the author submission guidelines to see what sort of format they wish to have us submit our paper in terms of citations, footnotes* and text formatting; and here is where I noticed that we, the authors, have to (explicitly) hand over copyright to the journal in order to have it published. The journal is also behind a pay-wall which is another consideration.  My previously published work required neither transfer of copyright, nor were there paywalls.

This gave me pause for thought.  I am interested (as is the MobiMOOC research team) in having this paper published, but I am not sure if I want my work to be behind paywalls and not retain copyright.  I get the feeling that this is the norm in academic publishing, but it doesn't really sit right.  What do fellow academics think?  I am relatively new to this, I just have a couple of articles published, and I don't have a PhD yet, so I'd like to hear back from more experienced people out there who've been in the game longer. Is the lure of a big name journal justification to put aside your philosophical stance on open publishing?  With the exception of IRRODL and JOLT, are there open access journals that you'd recommend?

Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Issues?


* note to journal editors: please bring back the footnote...informational (and other) footnotes are awesome, no need to get rid of them because we're online! :-)

Comments

Apostolos K. ("AK") said…
I think it depends on what you are publishing for, i.e. the key reasons for publishing. If it is to meet your University's requirements to publish in high ranking journals, so that you can get tenure or whatever, then you might have to go for a closed, behind a pay wall type of journal.

I have only very limited publishing experience, but my first paper, written collaboratively with a colleague was published in a high ranking journal. However, whilst we get quite a lot of queries about that paper, it will only ever be accessed by people who have access to a University Library or who can afford to pay for it.

Since then, I have favoured publishing in open journals. Increasingly people will look for papers online - and increasingly - hopefully - people who are not associated with Universities and their libraries will be able to do research by accessing online journals. IRRODL has a list of open journals on their site - http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs and presumably there are other lists elsewhere.

And the ALT journal will be open access next year - http://www.alt.ac.uk/news/all_news/alt-journal-be-open-access
 
November 28, 2011 at 3:54 PM
Apostolos K. ("AK") said…
Thanks for the resources :-)
Since I am not a faculty member the ranking of the journal doesn't really matter to me since it doesn't factor into promotion or bonuses. I think what does matter is whether or not the journal is going to be around in a few years. If a  journal doesn't look like it's going to stick around, even if it's open access, it doesn't mean that it will be around in perpetuity :-)

If and when I choose the faculty route as a career choice, I do wonder if journal ranks will still be as relevant as today.
November 29, 2011 at 10:48 AM
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