The Future of Reputation

by Henry Farrell on February 20, 2008

My GWU law school colleague Dan Solove has persuaded Yale University Press to let him put his new book, _The Future of Reputation_ “online under a non-commercial CC license”:http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2008/02/the_future_of_r_3.html. Good stuff: I hope to be reviewing the book here at CT one of these days soon as well as John McGowan’s _ American Liberalism: An Interpretation for Our Time_ (which I am half way through – it’s very good) and a fantasy blockbuster that Matt Lister has sent me, but tenure stuff has seriously cut into my writing-longish-essays time (normal service will be resumed shortly).

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The Future of Reputation «
02.21.08 at 3:11 am

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1

rd 02.20.08 at 11:57 pm

What’s the fantasy blockbuster?

2

c.l. ball 02.21.08 at 2:33 am

I’m of two minds over whether we should focus on “free” as in beer or as in speech, but I am surprised that no academic written or administered wiki or open-source text has emerged on an introductory level in the social sciences yet. It may be that everyon hopes that the lucrative royalties of a successful commercial text will still flow their way.

For an six-figure annual income I can’t say I blame them.

3

eszter 02.21.08 at 11:38 am

Oh, excellent. I was just reading some of this yesterday. It looks like Yale UP is a good way to go for CC books (that press published Benkler’s Wealth of Networks also available under CC).

For some context on Solove’s book, I recommend Siva Vaidhyanathan’s recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education since it covers that and some other related books. Good stuff, as you said. Seriously, great just for reading for yourself, but I think also helpful for teaching purposes.

4

Ingrid Robeyns 02.21.08 at 11:48 am

Could your colleague tell us what kind of arguments he has used to convince Yale UP? I am all in favour of having free on-line books in addition to the printed ones — especially on topics that are of relevance to students and scholars in poorly resourced universities/areas.

If I ever finish the book I’ve been working on (for way too long now), I would in fact be willing to pay the publisher to make it available for free on the web (but not too much of course, it’s not as if I have heaps of money here on my desk). It’s a difficult choice for an academic – we could of course “publish” it for free on our own homepages, but then we lose the reputation/quality signaling effect of a publisher, and it doesn’t “count” for research evaluation purposes. To have it with a great publisher and at the same time available on-line for free seems like a dream to me.

5

greensmile 02.22.08 at 12:30 am

wait, don’t we already know how the future of reputation turns out from Mr. Warhol?

[and haven’t these intertubes brought us all that 15 minutes already]

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