refusing to support Elsevier

[Chad Nilep]

To follow up on Celso's observation (or at least what I make of it), "There's no way out from within: that's the way the field works, and when the Market can show shamelessly its big claws -- which is its vocation -- it's because the times are ripe for it." 

As an adjunct and quite junior faculty person, I feel right and truly trapped. I would like to advance in my field, not (only) because I am personally ambitious but because I truly feel that academic research, even with inevitable short comings, makes a genuine contribution to the place of humanity in the world. At the same time, I would resist neoliberal capitalist models of knowledge production, not (only) because I receive the short end of such arrangements but because I feel that they shortchange most individuals and humanity as a whole.

The options I am left with are either (1) refuse to support Elsevier -- and by the way Blackwell, Benjamins, Cambridge, Routledge (all of which I have learned either first-hand or from trusted colleagues exploit scholars in similar ways), and probably most other publishers,* or (2) attempt to advance as a scholar by publishing my work in "respected" journals and books. I cannot do both, as they appear to be mutually exclusive.

*But, ever the optimist, I constructed this list of not-for-profit journals last fall. http://linganth.blogspot.com/2011_09_07_archive.html

Chad Nilep
Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Nagoya University
Japan