Academic publishing as a public good

Academic publishing has long been dominated by commercial players. That fact is well-known, as are many of the problems. But there is a growing movement towards new models, under the labels of “open access” and “open science.” Until two weeks ago, I’ve held a role as co-editor of an interdisciplinary journal, which allowed me to see some of the problems from close. But I’ve also learned more and more about solutions.* What follows are some personal reflections on these issues – if you’re familiar with the problems, you might want to jump directly to the solutions part below. The problem Academic publishing is basically a mechanism for sharing knowledge among interested parties, whether other academics or the broader public. So why not put everything out on the internet, one might think? Well, because there is too much – one needs some kind of mechanism for directing attention to stuff that is really important, to offer readers decision support about what to read in any case and what…