Following on from Part 1, let's begin to talk about the technological side of starting an OA journal. There are several components to the system that all need to come together. The timescales for ensuring this happens are different, but here's some descriptions and estimates on the different components.
Prefatory note (2016) Please note that I receive several email requests per week from individuals asking for help or detailed guidance in how to setup an OA journal. With my deepest regrets, I am afraid my time is simply insufficient to provide such guidance beyond what is here on these pages. Introduction Scholarly publishing is totally broken.
Abstract Academic publishing is in an unstable period of transition. There is a growing degree of anger, especially from early-career academics in a time of austerity, at perceived publisher extortion. The current models of open access do not address all these problems, especially with regard to library budgets.
It's taken quite a while and a lot of energy on my part, but my journal of scholarship on Thomas Pynchon, Orbit: Writing Around Pynchon, is now live and launched. I've learnt many things about academic publishing, most notably the full mechanisms by which CrossRef works. Indeed, here's a very fine DOI link to our preface! Orbit: Writing Around Pynchon is live was originally published by Martin Paul Eve at Martin Paul Eve on July 09, 2012.
I've just had through the request to sign a copyright form for a forthcoming article in a Taylor and Francis journal and duly read through their material on copyright. Taylor and Francis explicitly state that: All fair and good. However, I wondered, given the extensive schedule of rights that they provide back to an author, what the benefit would be of holding on to the copyright of the piece.
[View the story "Teaching Post-Millenial Fiction Conference" on Storify] Teaching Post-Millenial Fiction Conference 2nd July, 2012: University of Brighton Storified by Martin Eve · Tue, Jul 03 2012 09:39:57 RT @AlluviumJournal: We hear Alluvium author @djbduncan's causing a Miltonic sensation at #HEAdayC21. His article's going down well also!
A quick post to mark a milestone in my academic road. Today I submitted my Ph.D. thesis to the University of Sussex entitled "Hostility or Tolerance? Philosophy, polyphony and the works of Thomas Pynchon". The project has taken me 2 years and 8 months to date.
In the wake of the Finch report, the Times Higher published a story entitled "Finch's open-access cure may be 'worse than the disease'" which was a response from so-called elite universities bulking at the cost of Open Access publishing.
David Cameron has now launched the end of "compassionate Conservatism", pledging to end the "entitlement culture" of benefits. Twitter has, predictably, exploded: the irony overload of being lectured on entitlement by somebody who inherited his own wealth from a tax haven and went to an extremely privileged public school is, of course, unbelievable.
Up at Durham, Sam Thomas has just announced the details of the forthcoming International Pynchon Week 2013 Conference to be held at Durham University from 5th-8th August, 2013.
I'm always on the lookout for good, free image sharing sites and somebody pointed out MorgueFile to me the other day. It's not CC licensed. In fact, in many cases it's even more permissive. Hope that helps somebody. Another great source for free images to use in blogging was originally published by Martin Paul Eve at Martin Paul Eve on June 24, 2012.