I’d like to consider The Directory of Open Access Journals among other examples of portals to/repositories of open access texts. I’m hoping that this discussion can push beyond even traditional academic journal sites. What might these spaces offer us as teachers, librarians, students, practitioners of DH, etc. as sites of resistance to the ever-escalating commodification of knowledge?
Then again, how do we examine the structure of a site like DOAJ carefully and critically, as a text itself? There is an easy tendency to impart a heroic narrative to this movement (to which I certainly have felt prone), but if we were to look for its limits and omissions, what might we find? How can our discussions of open access engage more closely with materiality of technology, education, austerity? If we were to start to historicize the open access movement, what would inform the stories we tell ourselves and others? Engagement with queer, postcolonial, Marxist, and feminist theorizing around knowledge is especially exciting to me as I approach these questions, and imagine different futures for OA.
I’d be interested in this topic. As someone without any institutional affiliation, if scholarship isn’t Open Access I’m not likely to read it. (If an article is important enough I can ask friends for bootleg copies, although this feels a lot like running moonshine.)
Lately I’ve been wondering about how open access can change the conversation, and whether democratizing discussion is always a good idea.