The Chronicle of Higher Education
Michael Satlow
May 18, 2016
The
web, we all thought, was going to transform academic publishing. At the very
least, it would make research far more accessible, lowering the cost and
expanding the reach of publications. At most, it would fundamentally alter the
nature of research itself, making it far more collaborative. In either case,
though, academic publishing as we knew it was doomed.
Now, a
decade later, as the web has fundamentally transformed so many areas of our
lives, academic publishing is one area upon which its impact has been only
modest at best. There are, it is true, a few open-access journals and many
academics maintain blogs, but contrary to expectations, journal costs have
soared and our writings remain perhaps less accessible, locked behind paywalls
while libraries forgo buying print versions. While it is not difficult to
understand why this has happened, a solution to it has been elusive.
