<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;">I'm not sure whether the recent Editorial Report in LT 20(3) (my last; "un-published", but here is a quote) helps Martin at least with diagnosing our predicament.<div><br></div><div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Times; font-size: 17px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>[...] Scholarship does not perforce</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Times; font-size: 17px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">NEED </span>journals. You can have an idea, make a discovery, defend an analysis,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Times; font-size: 17px;">develop an argument and discuss it with friends and colleagues, correspond</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Times; font-size: 17px;">about it, privately or in your blog, report it at scholarly meetings, write it up and</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Times; font-size: 17px;">put it on your own internet platform. The hearing you thus get in your discipline</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Times; font-size: 17px;">may be of a magnitude most journal publications cannot hope to rival: only</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Times; font-size: 17px;">think of the audiences conference presentations sometimes attract even in our</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Times; font-size: 17px;">own modest typological circles. You may get acknowledged and even receive</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Times; font-size: 17px;">formal recognition – except, unless you are published, the record you are on is</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Times; font-size: 17px;">that of individual or collective memory. The way we scholars are, creatures of</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Times; font-size: 17px;">yesterday’s habit, we would much rather see our precious words preserved in</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Times; font-size: 17px;">black and white. But the last word on whether circulation in cold print, or</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-family: Times; font-size: 17px;">eternal storage in one or another repository, is called for is really the reader’s.</div></div><div><br></div><div>(I quote out of context; the context is that in debates about publishing models it would be good to know more about readers.) </div><div><br></div><div>The GUARDIAN article Martin refers to offers another (though perhaps related) diagnosis, implying that it was not so much our "lack of organization", but, ulitmately, our vanity that enabled Robert Maxwell and his copycats at Elsevier to fundamentally change the ways of scholarly publishing. </div><div><br></div><div>Diagnosis first, therapy second. (If vanity is involved, there are many who have considered it a therapy-resistant folly.)</div><div><br></div><div>Frans</div><div><br></div><div>
<br><div><div>On 04 Jul 2017, at 21:35, Martin Haspelmath <<a href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">On 04.07.17 19:36, Wu Jianming wrote:<br><blockquote cite="mid:KL1PR0201MB208756ABD8CEB3634A66BCAFE0D70@KL1PR0201MB2087.apcprd02.prod.outlook.com" type="cite">Dear colleagues,<br> ...<br> I am wondering whether there is another way to spread good ideas freely and efficiently, which, nontheless, is equally recognized by the authority, just like journals.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br></blockquote><br>Good ideas (or bad ideas) can be published easily these days (e.g. you can easily<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://www.frank-m-richter.de/freescienceblog/2017/02/24/what-should-what-do-i-do-with-my-draft-paper-hide-it-upload-to-academia-or-upload-to-zenodo/">upload your paper to Academia or Zenodo</a>, at no cost), but for professional recognition, one needs a well-organized social mechanism.<br><br>Scholars have not been well-organized in the past: As Stephen Buranyi explains in a fascinating recent<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science">Guardian article</a>, over decades they left the initiative to commercial companies, who own the titles and who make huge profits (or waste our money because of inefficient organization). If standard business criteria were employed, then publishing a scholarly article would cost between<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://bjoern.brembs.net/2016/12/should-public-institutions-not-be-choosing-the-lowest-responsible-bidder/">$100 and $500</a>, not $5000 as is currently the case.<br><br>So how do we get out of the current predicament? I don't know, but we first need to recognize that we are in a disastrous situation.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br><br>Maybe we could have a typology journal that is published with a model similar to that of Glossa (with optional fees,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://www.openlibhums.org/journals/">supported by OLH</a>). Maybe we could find a university that gives "<a href="https://www.frank-m-richter.de/freescienceblog/2017/02/21/we-dont-need-open-access-but-scholar-owned-publication-brands/">tenure</a>" to a typology journal, the way most universities give tenure to researchers. Any ALT members out there with connections to librarians who want to secure their future by moving into publishing?<br><br>In any event, using ALT's money for "publication" (in fact, un-publication) behind a paywall is not sustainable in the longer run, so we desperately need new good ideas.<br><br>Best,<br>Martin<br><pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
IPF 141199
Nikolaistrasse 6-10
D-04109 Leipzig
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