open access

We humans are thinking, speaking creatures, with a theoretically limitless capacity to analyse the world around us, and, if we are lucky, to also make sense of our own internal worlds. Under informational capitalism an elite class of 'thought robbers' exploit our mental and affective capacities. We, and especially the untenured 'we', the indy intellectual 'we', or the cultural activist 'we', toil at our texts only to perhaps then witness them being padlocked inside hierarchies of knowledge which we cannot afford to access. The 'University Inc.' or 'edu-factory' and its co-dependent sibling, academic publishing, siphon the worst qualities of managerialism and profiteering to support systemised structures of knowledge enclosures. In response, the cognitariat have started to rebel. In 2012 a mathematician blogged the withdrawal of his labour from the Elsevier academic behemoth. His stance triggered worldwide solidarity. While the unfolding narrative of grassroots mobilisation resonates with the official, overly earnest Open Access movement, it seems to hold more anarchic possibilities for the cooperative creation of unfettered systems of production and exchange of knowledge.

Die sogenannte Heidelberger Erklärung und die Kampagne namhafter deutschsprachiger Medien gegen Open Access und Google Books verrät nicht nur ihre Arroganz und Borniertheit gegenüber neuen Formen der Produktion und Dissemination von Kultur und Wissen, sondern offenbart auch anti-liberale, autoritäre Züge - die bürgerlichen Medien haben ihre liberalen Wurzeln wohl vergessen oder verdrängt. Die "intellektuelle Finsternis", die von FAZ und Die Zeit auf Grund der "unheimlichen Kräfte" des Internet befürchtet wird, ist bereits da und von ihnen selbst mitverschuldet. Was jedoch wirklich gebraucht wird, anstatt drakonischer Urteile und Netzsperren, sind neue Wege der Vergütung kultureller Produktion, die an den etablierten, im Niedergang befindlichen Instanzen vorbei gehen.

Getting Published Tuesday 28th April

This panel discussion will bring together a range of speakers who will
highlight different routes into getting published within and external to
academia. It will be followed by a discussion around the benefits and
challenges inherent in these routes in particular in relation to new
possibilities afforded by new media/ web 2.0.

Chaired by Kenneth Armstrong, Professor of Law, Queen Mary, University of
London. Speakers include:

Sarah Stanton, Cambridge University Press
Rachel Kirton, Taylor and Francis On Line Development