When the dam breaks...

Publication of research is one of the most important facets of academic life. I can't stress enough how important it is for good research to be as widely and swiftly disseminated as possible. Without it, our practice is less likely to be informed, and more prone to repeated errors. As a researcher myself, I take this challenge very seriously. Along with other educational researchers, I attempt to identify key issues for investigation and then spend considerable time and energy examining as much of the terrain that surrounds my research question as I can. Once I have analysed the data, I am usually able to arrive at some conclusions and write some form of report, which is likely to include a set of recommendations that I hope will benefit my community of practice. Such findings should be published widely to inform the entire community. This is the way it should be. And yet often, sadly, it just doesn't happen.

Recently, several writers have bemoaned the fact that a) there is often a significant time delay between the submission of papers to academic journals, and the papers actually reaching the reader, and b) many of the top, elite journals we are expected to publish in are in fact read by a very small percentage of the community the research is intended to reach. Open access journals (and there are several alternative funding models that support these) are the best way to address these problems. They open content up to be read by a much larger audience, and in my personal experience, they turn around reviews and publish sugnifcantly quicker than the standard traditional closed journals. Much of this argument is elaborated on in Sarah Thornycroft's excellent post Redefining Academic Publishing in Digital Spaces, in which she calls for a reform of the current archaic system.  


Way back in 2008, in one of the most erudite arguments ever made for open access publishing, danah boyd called for a boycott on writing for closed academic journals. Several notable scholars joined this boycott - refusing to publish again in pay-to-subscribe academic journals - but at present this movement is a trickle rather than a deluge. The truth is, not many academics can afford to turn their backs on closed journal publishing. Those that do take a public stand against closed publishing do so for a very good reason. As it stands, the current publication system has academics over a barrel. Many cannot secure tenure or gain promotion without publishing their work in the top notch journals, almost all of which are currently locked down. Moreover, many governments apportion research money to institutions who have the best track record of publications in the said journals. This strangle hold rewards the publishers with huge profits at the expense of the hard working academics, who are forced to provide their labour for free. I believe the prices many publishing houses charge for access to their journals is obscene and unjustifiable, and the costs prevent many students and scholars from reading important research they would otherwise benefit from.

Last month I took a similar personal stance to danah boyd, vowing that I would never again publish my research in closed journals. Because I feel very strongly about this, I have decided I must take this even further. From now on, I am no longer reviewing for closed journals. I have also resigned from my post as co-editor of the journal Interactive Learning Environments, after 3 years at the helm. I have nothing against the good people who run the journal, many of whom are friends of mine. I resigned because the role of editor of a closed journal is incompatible with my personal stance on open access. It would have been hypocritical of me if I had stayed. I'm now putting my full support behind the open access movement, because it is the right thing to do. Education should be accessible for all, and we can no longer sit back and do nothing as the edubusinesses charge people more than they can afford for learning they need.

I don't have the hubris to believe that this will change the world. It won't. Nor am I deluded enough to consider that what I am doing will challenge the might of the dozen or so big publishers who hold the monopoly. It will not. It may not make any difference whatsoever. But if by taking this stance I can raise awareness of the problems locked down journals cause, and signal that there are alternatives, then it will be worth it. If others feel the same, we can begin to make a difference. The cracks are already showing and the dam wall is beginning to leak. Some publishers are already seriously considering how they will survive when the open access movement gains enough traction to pose a significant threat. I'm hoping that one day soon the trickle will become a deluge, and that when the dam breaks, the publishers will have to sit up and take notice.      


Cost of Knowledge Petition to boycott Elsevier Journals


Image source


When the dam breaks... by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Blogging about

The academic world doesn't tend to value blogging as much as it does formally peer-reviewed publications. In the past, this has been justifiable. However, as a growing number of academics, many highly respected by their peers, migrate away from the closed journal system and refuse to dance any longer to the old tune, greater numbers will be publishing not only in open access journals, but also on blogs. I have written about this previously, but need to re-emphasise the true value of blogging. Here are four reasons why the academic community should revise its collective opinion about blogging.

Blogging is an excellent medium for professionals to use to crystallise their thinking. When I write down my thoughts, whether on paper, or direct to the text box on this blog, I begin to refine my thinking. Before I write down my ideas they tend to be inchoate and not particularly lucid. Once my ideas have been laid down on the page, I am then free to elaborate, edit, revise and refine. I can also save the work to come back to later when I have thought some more about what I'm trying to articulate. Although this in itself is value enough, there are many other benefits for academic bloggers.

Blogging also offers authors a potentially worldwide audience. Some blogs have a greater following than mainstream newspapers or established media sites. The blog you are now reading regularly attracts an average of 50,000 hits each calendar month. Star bloggers can exert a certain amount of influence if they have the audience. Yesterday I argued that most closed academic journals have a limited readership. I know, academic publishing has never really been about how many people read your work, it's usually more to do with the kudos gained from publishing in an elite journal. And that's exactly what is so badly wrong with the current academic publishing system. Publications are for the public. We should all make our work more freely and widely available for our peers to read. We should also make our work available to the interested laypeople out there who may not have the academic qualifications, but do have the interest and the passion for the subject. Blogging is an ideal popularist method for making ideas and research accessible for all.

Thirdly, blogging is a very powerful dialogic tool. Important ideas should be open to challenge and debate. Closed journals, with the best will in the world, can only ever provide a contrived, time-shifted debate on any given subject. Blogs are different, because blogs are virtually instantaneous. Once a post has been published, anyone can read it and quickly respond, sending their comments directly to the blog while their ideas are still hot. Many a valuable debate has already been had on blogs, with a simple post as the stimulus for valuable dialogue across a community of practice.

Finally, anyone can start a blog, share their ideas and build a community of interest around their subject. It takes a little time, effort and commitment, but the rewards can be extraordinary. So, what will you be blogging about?


Blogging about by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The open case

Today, more than ever, academics and professionals need to question the value of publishing in closed journals. Forget for a moment the ludicrous prices many publishers charge for personal and institutional subscriptions. Think about the audience. Just how many people will actually read an article in a closed journal? 10? 20? 50? 100? The answer for most closed journals is - not very many. Conversely, publishing in an open access journals can increase the audience dramatically. Essentially, because they are free and online, open access journals are read more widely.

Online open access journals trump paper based journals every time in terms of amplification of ideas too. Often open access journals provide online forums for discussion of the articles presented. This kind of dialogue is invaluable both for the readers and authors. Many open access journals also provide reader metrics. Authors can see at a glance how many people have downloaded their abstract, or full paper, and some also track where the readership is located around the globe. This simply cannot be achieved with paper based journals. All you can know for certain is how many subscribers there are for each issue sold. I have already written about sharp practice - the cynical manner in which some publishing houses exploit the goodwill and free labour of academics, and then make huge profits selling on journal subscriptions back to the academic community, so I won't revisit this point.

What is worse though, is the fact that much of the academic establishment continues to frown upon open access publications as though they were second class citizens in the publishing world. There are a number of elite journals (largely rated on the basis that their published works are cited more widely than those of other similar publications, and also tacitly on the reputation of the editorial board) that academic managers encourage their researchers to target. If researchers can secure publications in any of these elite closed journals, they will be well placed when it comes to the official research assessments that come along periodically, where governments award money for further research. Those top universities that demonstrate the best research outputs (that is, the most prestigious) and publication track records receive most of the cash. Those who don't can pretty much forget it for another round. It's an inward looking, self-feeding, self congratulatory 'old boys' club, and it is entirely unjust at so many levels. It's a hierarchy that rarely changes. No wonder many people despise the ivory tower brigade and their academic snobbery.

There has to be a better way to disseminate research. There are many high quality open access journals in existence, and several that are highly recommended in the field of learning technology and distance education. Some of these are listed as links below. If you know of others, please send me the links and I will include them on this blogpost. There is also a large list of links available to open access and hybrid education related journals. One that is not listed yet on the list is Research in Learning Technology (formerly ALT-J) which will be converting to open access in January 2012. Other closed journals should, and probably will follow suit. Open access is not synonymous with poor quality. In fact many online open access journals work twice as hard to prove that they are high quality. What open access does mean is larger readerships for the published research. That has to be worth something in anyone's book.

Australasian Journal of Educational Technology
Digital Culture and Education
e-Learning Papers
EDUCAUSE Review
European Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning
Future Internet
International Review of Research in Open Distance Learning
The Journal of Distance Education
Journal of Interactive Online Learning
Journal of Technology Education


The open case by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

...before the ink is dry

Had a great conversation at lunch today with Peps McCrea over at the University of Brighton. We were talking about our common interest in the educational benefits of blogging, and I made a suggestion that digital identity was a significant factor in the way teachers and other professionals use it (I will blog on this idea in a future post). I expanded by talking about my own use of blogging. I had to examine my own motives which I have already reflected on in previous posts such as Why do I bother? So what are my reasons for expending so much of my time on blogging?

Essentially, I blog not just because I want my ideas to be shared as quickly as possible, but also to receive feedback in the form of discussion. Journal articles take so long to publish, they are often out of date long before the ink is dry. This is because they go through a process of peer review and revision, and then they can hit a brickwall if the journal has a significant backlog of accepted papers, and a page count limit (which most do). I know that peer reviewed academic journals are the lifeblood of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) which comes around every few years (and by which all participating universities are judged on the quality of their research outputs, and subsequently awarded money for more research). I know that great store is placed on high impact journals in th REF and there is always a mad scramble at this time in the cycle, where everyone is submitting articles in the hope they will be published before the deadline. But how much value is there really to be had in publishing articles in high impact, double blind, peer reviewed academic journals beyond the REF? You have to be in it to win it, but the general rule of thumb is that the best research institutes scoop up the lion's share of the cash each time, and the rest are left to grab for the crumbs. An enormous amount of energy and time is taken up during the submission process, often with little or no reward to show at the end.

Here's something else to consider: How many people actually read your journal article when it's finally published, either in paper format or on the journal's webpages? The journals we are talking about here are almost all paywall journals - if your institution doesn't have a subscription and you are not in the mega-rich academic club (and let's face it, who is?) then you are unlikely to be able to read it, and neither are many others. Will publishing in a high impact journal ensure that you are promoted? Possibly, but not probably, as many academics have discovered. How about some monetary reward? Not a hope of that, sunshine - the publishers have tied that one up at both ends. In some business models, they even get you to pay for the priviledge of publishing in their journal. Nice trick if you can do it. If I was to be cynical, I might suggest that the publishing houses have conspired to convince academics that they should spend inordinate amounts of their time dreaming up research ideas, running their experiments and studies, and sweating and toiling over the write up of the research, before giving it away for free so that the publisher can then make a lot of money out of it.

For me, and for an increasing number of fellow academics, publishing in traditional journals is becoming increasingly anacronistic in the digital age of social media communication. We can be our own publishers now. We can build up audiences and loyal followings that are larger than most journals and publishing houses could ever boast. For me, blogging is now the first place I consider when I want to disseminate my ideas quickly, directly to my own community of practice, and in a form that is considered relevant and accessible to those who are engaged in that particular sphere of activity. Blogging is freely accessible, and it is usually concise enough to be assimilated in a few minutes.

Please don't misundertand me - I am not totally dismissing the place of the academic peer reviewed journal. Heavens, I'm an editor of a major learning technology journal, and if I believed they were totally irrelevant, I would resign immediately. No, journals still have their place. What I am arguing here is that the blog is a more rapid, concise and appropriate medium to disseminate important ideas, and it is also a better environment within which to engage critically with colleagues to discuss, argue and otherwise develop a discourse around the subjects in question. I have seen some journals attempting dialogue between protagonists occasionally, but often the result is a stilted, and seemingly contrived dialogue which is somewhat divorced from real-time, real-world conversations. How is the blog different? For me, the blog is an interactive record of ideas; an open archive of opposing viewpoints; a meeting place for live discussion; a repository of thoughts; a testing ground; a launching pad; a dynamic environment within which disagreement can sit comfortably with accord; a fertile ground for the planting and growing of disparate content.

Image source by Hakan Dahlstrom


...before the ink is dry by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.