Martin Paul Eve

All that glisters: investigating collective funding mechanisms for gold Open Access in humanities disciplines

BACKGROUND This article sets out the economic problems faced by the humanities disciplines in the transition to gold open access and outlines the bases for investigations of collective funding models. Beginning with a series of four problems, it then details the key players in this field and their various approaches to collective “procurement” mechanisms. DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT The Open Library of Humanities seeks to instigate a collective funding model for an open access megajournal and multijournal system that should enable for a phased transition to a gold open access model that does not require author-facing article processing charges. Libraries who participate then have a governance stake in the platform. NEXT STEPS The project is currently working towards sustainability and launch. Authors’ pledged papers are being called in and libraries are signing up to the model.

Tear it down, build it up: the Research Output Team, or the library-as-publisher

Academic publishing is in an unstable period of transition. There is a growing degree of anger, especially from early-career academics in a time of austerity, at perceived publisher extortion. The current models of open access do not address all these problems, especially with regard to library budgets. While some of this anger is misplaced, publishers must either self-discipline their practices or find themselves displaced by alternate models. Libraries, likewise, face a dangerous time in which the threat of third-party tender for their services brings extinction ever closer. This article begins to outline a system dubbed the ‘Research Output Team’ (ROT) that moves publishing in-house to institutional libraries, thereby safeguarding publishing jobs and expertise while defeating the problematic aspects of the existing set-up.

Whose line is it anyway?: enlightenment, revolution, and ipseic ethics in the works of Thomas Pynchon

This piece effects a critical revision of the interactions between late Foucault and the works of Thomas Pynchon through the theme of Enlightenment, a relationship far more nuanced than granted by current appraisals. Examining resistance, revolution, and the critical attitude alongside a focus on the Foucauldian sphere of ethics, this work posits Pynchons negative and positive utopianism as a regulative idea. Reading both Pynchons fiction and his essays, particularly ‘Nearer My Couch to Thee’, alongside Foucaults two pieces on Kants ‘Was ist Aufklärung?’, it emerges that the divide between Pynchon and Foucault hinges more upon what we can know about ourselves and not necessarily, as has always been supposed, on who, or how, we can dominate. Pynchons stance on revolution and resistance runs broadly in line with late Foucaults remarks on incrementalism; any change that can come about will, and should, be incremental while remaining pessimistic towards Meliorism. The narrowing of the sphere of ethics to ipseity that Foucault introduces to effectively counter the problems of agency that this entails, however, are not shared by Pynchon. For Pynchon, work upon the self is intrinsically contaminated and cannot be clearly delineated from the wider, impinging systems. With apologies to the author himself, it seems fair to say that when reading Pynchon in the Foucauldian Enlightenment tradition: we do know whats going on (to some, perhaps ingrained and inescapably limited, extent), and we let it go on, only ever imagining, in sorrow, how it could (never) be otherwise.

Open-Access publishing and scholarly communications in non-scientific disciplines

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the current state of debates surrounding Open Access (OA) in non-STEM disciplines. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses a selective literature review and discussion methodology to give a representative summary of the state of the art. Findings – Non-STEM disciplines persistently lag behind scientific disciplines in their approach to OA, if the teleology towards open dissemination is accepted. This can be attributed to a variety of economic and cultural factors that centre on the problem of resource allocation with respect to quality. Originality/value – This paper will be of value to policymakers, funders, academics and publishers. The original aspect of the paper pertains to the identification of an anxiety of irrelevance in the humanities disciplines and a focus on “quality” in Open-Access publishing debates.

On the mark? Responses to a sting

It all seems very simple. A researcher writes up her findings to share them with her community. The findings are sent to a journal where the editor sends the manuscript out to peers to read. The reviewers comment and return the manuscript to the editor. The editor either asks the researcher to address the comments, or rejects the manuscript based on the reviews. The researcher sends their final manuscript to the editor, who in turn works with the publisher to ensure dissemination. Done.

Too many goddamn echoes: historicizing the Iraq War in Don DeLillo's Point Omega

This piece provides a detailed engagement with Don DeLillos depiction of the 2003 Iraq war in his latest novel, Point Omega. Framed through both formal aesthetic signposting of the interrelations between modernist and postmodernist practice and also through explicit thematic comparison between the conflicts, I trace DeLillos treatment of Iraq in Point Omega back to his earlier writing on the Cold War in Underworld and focus upon the ways in which this comparative historical metaphor can be read with particular emphasis upon its implications for the nation state.

“some kind of thing it aint us but yet its in us”: David Mitchell, Russell Hoban, and Metafiction After the Millennium

This article appraises the debt that David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas owes to the novels of Russell Hoban, including, but not limited to, Riddley Walker. After clearly mapping a history of Hoban’s philosophical perspectives and Mitchell’s inter-textual genre-impersonation practice, the article assesses the degree to which Mitchell’s metatextual methods indicate a nostalgia for by-gone radical aesthetics rather than reaching for new modes of its own. The article not only proposes several new backdrops against which Mitchell’s novel can be read but also conducts the first in-depth appraisal of Mitchell’s formal linguistic replication of Riddley Walker.

Utopia Fading: Taxonomies, Freedom and Dissent in Open Access Publishing

It is fairly commonly known, in certain circles, that open access comes in different ‘flavours’. Besides the well-known adage of Richard Stallman that there are multiple types of freedom that can be divided into gratis and libre (‘free’ as in ‘beer’ as opposed to ‘free’ as in ‘speech’), the ways in which we provide access to material that is free in either sense are also plural. This piece, consisting of two parts, will give the historical backdrop to ‘gold’, ‘green’ and the lesser known ‘platinum’ models but also frame these routes to access in the light of a failed utopian project that has been undermined by credentialist models of assessment. While May 1968, another utopian failure, gave us slogans of hope – ‘Under the paving stones, the beach!’ – with open access publishing it seems the chances of finding our way back are growing slimmer, even if some hints of sand and surf shine through in the remaining admirable aspects of the system. The first portion of this piece will appraise the current taxonomies of open access arguing that ‘platinum’ is a form of category error; a misplaced term that nonetheless signals current dissatisfaction. The second section here will think, practically, on the question of ‘what is to be done?’ In this second part, with reference (ironically, given the pragmatism deployed) to Adornos theorizations of utopia, I will critique the conclusions of the UKs Finch Report as a document that neglects critical thinking, but one whose outcome may be dissent on a wide enough scale to trigger academic disobedience and revolt against the current publication system. From this I will lay out the three criteria that I believe are necessary for a transition away from ‘Article Processing Charge’-driven publication practices and the infrastructures that should be in place to capitalize on this dissatisfaction, including a modified Public Library of Science-type model.

The Silicon Valley Novel

In this article we propose that one of the emergent, but under-charted, and as yet unnamed thematic strands in recent American fiction and that contributes to recent literary history is that of the ‘Silicon Valley novel’. The trend can be seen in the literary fiction of Tony Tulathimutte, Jarett Kobek, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Dave Eggers, to name but a few, but also in the trilogy of novels by Ann Bridges dubbed, ‘The Silicon Valley Trilogy’. Silicon Valley novels are concerned with the emergent technological industry in the Bay Area but they are also of a specific periodising moment. Hence, while named for the geography, we here situate the Silicon Valley novel as more tied to time in the early twenty-first century.

A matter of distribution: APC logic against consortial funding mechanism

Watch the VIDEO here. Article and Book Processing Charges have become one of the most common mechanisms for paying for gold open access. It is envisaged that this looks like a “flip” from a purchase model to a service model. However, the change in distribution that is effected in such a transition is substantial. In this talk, I will examine the economic distributions of APC mechanisms as opposed to consortial funding. I take examples from the monograph and journal publishing spaces. I also examine the distributional changes from the UK’s Research Excellence Framework’s proposed mandate for monographs. I finally then ask what the actual costs are in running a small scholarly publisher and how the distributional changes implied by APCs – a move from fixed costs to unit costs – hit such entities. In all, this talk aims to provoke discussion about alternative models and mitigating strategies for collectively underwriting open access.