Open Media Scholarship: The Case for Open Access in Media Studies

Abstract

This commentary, after outlining the broader rationale for open access in scholarly publishing, makes three arguments to support the claim that media and communication scholars should be at the forefront of the open access movement: (1) The topics that we write about are inescapably multimedia, so our publishing platforms should be capable— at the very least—of embedding the objects that we study; (2) media studies, owing to their fragmentation and marginality, can sidestep the prestige “penalty” that drags down other disciplines’ open access efforts; and (3) our rich research traditions on popular media dynamics are begging to be applied (and perhaps rethought) in the context of scholarly communication.

Financial and Other Perceived Barriers to Transitioning to an Equitable No-Publishing Fee Open Access Model: A Survey of LIS Journal Editors

“…16 TAs implicitly endorse the inequitable APC model, and there is a broader tendency to conflate OA publishing with APCs, but other models exist. 17 For example, Subscribe to Open (S2O) is a model based on subscription-like payments by current subscribers; if enough subscribers sign on to this model then the content for the year becomes OA. 18 This model is considered more pragmatic and simpler to implement than other models because journals can convert their publications one year at a time and libraries do not need to vastly change their acquisitions processes.…”

Communication Studies, Interdisciplinarity Debates, and the Quest for Knowledge

“…This assertion is among the growing calls by communication scholars to rethink communication discipline and its fields more constitutively whether we see it as a practical, theoretical, or applied area of inquiry. However, the challenge remains the fact that communication is a mosaic and heterogenous discipline (Calhoun, 2011;Craig, 2007Craig, /2008Pooley, 2016;Vorderer and Kohring, 2013). Moreover, and specific to the francophone literature, the articulation of communication studies within the broader "sciences de l'information and de la communication" (SIC) umbrella brings to focus other challenges beyond the discipline's heterogeneity and the notion of science as a "technique" of knowledge creation (Davallon, 2004;Fontaine, 2008;Ollivier, 2001).…”

Online Posting, Single-Blind Review, Open Access, and the Future of Refereed Journals

“…The recent developments in the open access movement seem to offer a solution by having the government, research funding institutions, and universities pay for the publishing cost of journals, not shifting the cost to the authors (e.g., European Commission, 2019). Even in our field of communication, Pooley (2016) advocated for open access to publish journal articles for readership and citation advantages and International Communication Association (ICA) adopted open communication (open science) as a theme for this year's annual conference. But without profit incentives and market competition, will a nonprofit consortium be as ambitious and effective in promoting the articles or the journals as commercial publishers?…”