John and Scott are saying it is not. In fact, they are going further, and saying that the commercial element does actual harm by limiting the access of “a precocious high-school student, or a struggling researcher in Belarus or Ghana,” or someone like John Taylor himself. And despite my own .edu perch, there are many times when I’m traveling that I hit a research roadblock because I’m not able to gain access to a journal through the university library’s subscription (my vpn often but doesn’t always resolve this).

But I worry that John and Scott are perhaps being a bit naïve, and that part of the bottleneck imposed by commercial publishers has become a feature rather than a bug. As peter notes in 22 above, academics are motivated by renown, that is the currency of the realm. And, not to be too crass, it converts into real currency through tenure, promotion, grants, and bidding wars to poach or retain prominent faculty. The prestigious commercial journals have only so much space, so they function very effectively to create a valuable exclusivity that results in pay-offs in currency of both the tangible and intangible sorts.

When people persist in doing something that initially appears irrational, there usually is some sense to it if you look close at their material interests (or, as Deep Throat said, follow the money.) Because powerful people find utility in terms of renown and money in the current system, they conclude that its benefits outweigh its costs, and will work to preserve it.

I am well aware of the role of prestige and reputation in scholarly communities and you are right—the implicit argument by analogy is a bit weakened by this point. I wished to point out a good bit of rhetorical writing about what I believe is an important issue for the future of science and scholarship.

Rhetoric aside, the real issue, as I see it, is whether or not the goals of scholars of all types would be better met in an open access environment, given that the majority of the work is already done by academics, and the barriers to this alternative have diminished greatly over the years. The ability for this medium to meet the prestige needs of academics is surely a necessity for change.

I admit to a personal stake in this. Having left academia for IT work and family, I can no longer afford access to journals that I once refereed for, and wherein my former classmates and professors continue to contribute. There are ways around this, but I would rather that (for many reasons personal and not) it be freely available to all with an interest, myself included.

The key reason that the all-work-donated-for-free model works for academics, but not for (say) games designers, is that academics are rewarded in proportion to their renown, not in proportion to (say) their contributions to their employer’s revenues, or their centrality to their employer’s operations. Other professionals – perhaps everybody – also seek renown, but it does not usually form the primary basis for their career progress, and hence their financial remuneration.

Actually, the discussion (especially early on) at PTRM did consider the possibility that this move was somehow profit driven (Bevir’s editorship of some apparently profitable books on governance for Sage were discussed as a possible explanation, as I recall).

But if this is the motivation, it seems as though the Sage people doing the thinking weren’t thinking very clearly. PT is a specialist journal, and the move they apparently tried to make seemed carefully calculated to piss off the specialists to which the journal appeals to. The journal obviously makes money on institutional subscriptions, and I imagine most every University library that hopes to have a political theory collection subscribes. This is, in no small part, due to faculty recommendation.

I’m open to a profit-seeking explanation, but I’ll remain somewhat skeptical until someone can demonstrate how this move was supposed to do that.

Here is a bitter taste:

I have an ingenious idea for a company. My company will be in the business of selling computer games. But, unlike other computer game companies, mine will never have to hire a single programmer, game designer, or graphic artist. Instead I’ll simply find people who know how to make games, and ask them to donate their games to me. Naturally, anyone generous enough to donate a game will immediately relinquish all further rights to it. From then on, I alone will be the copyright-holder, distributor, and collector of royalties. This is not to say, however, that I’ll provide no “value-added.” My company will be the one that packages the games in 25-cent cardboard boxes, then resells the boxes for up to $300 apiece.

But why would developers donate their games to me? Because they’ll need my seal of approval. I’ll convince developers that, if a game isn’t distributed by my company, then the game doesn’t “count”—indeed, barely even exists—and all their labor on it has been in vain.

Admittedly, for the scheme to work, my seal of approval will have to mean something. So before putting it on a game, I’ll first send the game out to a team of experts who will test it, debug it, and recommend changes. But will I pay the experts for that service? Not at all: as the final cherry atop my chutzpah sundae, I’ll tell the experts that it’s their professional duty to evaluate, test, and debug my games for free!

On reflection, perhaps no game developer would be gullible enough to fall for my scheme. I need a community that has a higher tolerance for the ridiculous—a community that, even after my operation is unmasked, will study it and hold meetings, but not “rush to judgment” by dissociating itself from me. But who on Earth could possibly be so paralyzed by indecision, so averse to change, so immune to common sense?

I’ve got it: academics!

I don’t know of anyone who actually reads any of the journals any more; everyone I know just checks for new papers on arXiv. But I’d guess they are still used for reputational reasons by e.g. tenure committees, though I’ve never sat on one so I don’t know for certain.

” Stuart, continued reliance on these firms in the humanities and social sciences is based on two things: . . . and the logistics of arranging editorial management, peer review, infrastructural maintenance, and managerial continuity in a zero- or low-revenue environment.”

Yet, strangely enough, the first 2 of the 4 activities you mention are usually unpaid by the revenue-earning journal publishers. Academics (and their education institutional employers) subsidize these activities by giving their time for “free”. Given the high fees that the libraries of these same institutional employers currently pay for journal subscriptions, surely a model where the institutional employers pay instead for the other 2 of the 4 activities would make sense, ie, online journals with hosting and administrative support provided by educational or research institutions, not by commercial publishers.

*O/t note: this has nothing to do with hating physics. It has everything to do with making fun of political scientists for wanting to study politics as if it were physics.