I agree with Anne Galloway’s critique of Dana Boyd. I have found a lot of Boyd’s online writing problematic (I recall one critique I had with her inaccurate usage of the terms “hegemony” and “subversion” in a fairly superficial analysis of Myspace and Facebook). The blog is a space of response, and my response to Boyd is that this recent post of hers, too, is superficial analysis. Complete with over-generalizations and sweeping gestures, it is shy on evidence and heavy on emotional hyperbole. In some places, the writing sounds more like a Dateline or 20/20 intro. Boyd writes: “The underground economy of articles is making another dent into the picture as scholars swap articles on the black market.” Huh? Underground economy? I’d like to know where this underground economy of academic paper swapping is taking place. I’d like to know because that is one of the silliest declarations regarding professional work that I’ve ever heard. But wait. The assumptions are just getting started. Here is the basis of Boyd’s call to action:

Why not instead publish with open-access online-only journals produced as labors of love by communities of volunteer scholars (i.e. many open-access journals)? Oh, right. Because those aren’t the “respectable” journals because they don’t have a reputation or a history (of capitalizing off of the labor of academics). The result? Academics are publishing to increasingly narrow audiences who will never read their material purely so that they can get the right credentials to keep their job. This is downright asinine. If scholars are publishing for audiences of zero, no wonder no one respects them.

Online access journals may indeed be “labors of love” by those who support them. Overall, however, I am not sure that every space where online publishing occurs should be referred to in such a manner. Many online journals exist for the same reason many print journals exist: to distribute scholarship to a given community. In that way, they would all be “labors of love” of some sort. As far as respect or audience size, I see no evidence to support this claim. An online journal may have a lot of respect (cTheory, Postmodern Culture) or little (I will not name some in my own field for specific reasons) because of the editorial board make-up, the quality of scholarship, the type of scholarship, etc. Being online is seldom the reason for lack of respect. Not being professionally organized is a good reason for lack of respect. As far as publishing for an audience of “zero,” I’d like to see some concrete numbers that any print journal I or a colleague publishes in has an audience of “zero.” I’d like to see such numbers because they don’t exist.

Galloway does a good job as well pointing out the naive tone of the piece. She also quotes this other part of Boyd’s call to action:

Young punk scholars: Publish only in open-access journals in protest, especially if you’re in a new field. This may cost you advancement or tenure, but you know it’s the right thing to do. If you’re an interdisciplinary scholar or in a new field, there aren’t “respected” journals in your space and so you’re going to have to defend yourself anyhow. You might as well use this opportunity to make the valued journals the open-access ones.

Who are these “young punk scholars” anyway? Such a label sounds like a fairly cliche categorization. If I’m “young” and possibly doing something of interest, I’m a “punk?” Sorry. I’m not interested in such a silly label. I’ll save such romanticization for Greil Marcus or Dick Hebdige. Sillier yet is the “it may cost you tenure but you’ve done the right thing” claim, If you have invested so much in this profession and been one of the few who land a tenure track job in the field I belong to, not paying attention to the specific tenure requirements of your place of employment is not an act of rebellion or being “punk.” It’s just stupid. In the end, you’d be wasting years just so you could fail in a profession for not paying attention to its requirements for continued employment.
And finally:

Academic publishers: Wake up or get out. Silencing the voices of academics is unacceptable. You’re not helping scholarship or scholars. Find a new business model or leave the journal publishing world. You may be making money now, but your profits will not continue to grow using this current approach. Furthermore, I’d bank on academics shunning you within two generations. If you think more than a quarter ahead, you know that it’s the right thing to do for business as well as for the future of knowledge.

Except - maybe - in certain sciences, I see no evidence of this occurring. Specific organizations are still quite profitable - including the one that sparked Boyd’s piece. Others in the Humanities are not showing any indication that they are about to fold or even that they are “making money now”. A good deal of academic publishing is getting by or breaking even. Academic publishing is financed through a variety of means, and, overall, none of the places in my area of study are stating that they are about to close show any time soon. In fact, I don’t see any economic pressure on many of these organizations to go open source. Quite the opposite.

And what drives this other position is that there does exist capital and pay off for publishing in journals that maintain specific standards relevant to the apparatus we work in. Journals don’t feel pressure to change because writers don’t feel a need to abandon appropriate venues for their work. Nothing about being “open access” means “appropriate venue.” Few in my field are more new media than I am, and I am not yet convinced that all so-called open access journals are ready for prime time. They may be eventually, but to get to that state it makes no sense to ignore the realities of the profession the journals are meant to serve and inform. Boyd shows little knowledge of those realities.