open-access is the future: boycott locked-down academic journals

Berkman Fellow danah boyd writes:

"On one hand, I'm excited to announce that my article 'Facebook's Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure, Invasion, and Social Convergence' has been published in Convergence 14(1) (special issue edited by Henry Jenkins and Mark Deuze). On the other hand, I'm deeply depressed because I know that most of you will never read it. It is not because you aren't interested (although many of you might not be), but because Sage is one of those archaic academic publishers who had decided to lock down its authors and their content behind heavy iron walls. Even if you read an early draft of my article in essay form, you'll probably never get to read the cleaned up version. Nor will you get to see the cool articles on alternate reality gaming, crowd-sourcing, convergent mobile media, and video game modding that are also in this issue. That's super depressing. I agreed to publish my piece at Sage for complicated reasons, but...

I vow that this is the last article that I will publish to which the public cannot get access. I am boycotting locked-down journals and I'd like to ask other academics to do the same."

danah continues her post with a number of position specific propositions, including:

* Tenured Faculty and Industry Scholars: Publish only in open-access journals.
* Disciplinary associations: Help open-access journals gain traction. 
* Tenure committees: Recognize alternate venues and help the universities follow.
* Young punk scholars: Publish only in open-access journals in protest, especially if you're in a new field.
* More conservative young scholars: publish what you need to get tenure and then stop publishing in closed venues immediately upon acquiring tenure.
* All scholars: Go out of your way to cite articles from open-access journals.
* All scholars: Start reviewing for open-access journals.
* Libraries: Begin subscribing to open-access journals and adding them to your catalogue.
* Universities: Support your faculty in creating open-access journals on your domains.
* Academic publishers: Wake up or get out.

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danah continues the dialogues that we most recently dug into via our 2007 Internet & Society Conference, University: Knowledge Beyond Authority. 

Further still, the conversation will continue with a visit from Peter Suber, a leading voice driving the global Open Access movement.  He will take on the issue during a special Berkman At 10 luncheon on Monday March 17th.  Keep an eye out for more about the lunch, and for more angles on Open Access from the Berkman community.