Presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon, USA, 23 March 2014.
Under the leadership of then 1st vice president and program chair Aneta Pavlenko, Temple University, the 2014 AAAL conference had as one of its focal areas the changing scene of publishing in a digital and global age. Within an array of offerings addressing the theme, this three-hour invited colloquium, organized by Heidi Byrnes, Georgetown University, and Emily Farrell, of De Gruyter Mouton, explored trends and challenges especially pertinent to the work of applied linguists.
Presenters left little doubt that what is underway is a fundamental repositioning of the full spectrum of scholarly activity: from the funding of research to economic models underlying ownership, production, and dissemination of knowledge; to forms and speed of accessibility; to legal and logistical ramifications that undo previous notions of copyright; to the engagement of universities as homes of scholars, and repositories and access points of scholarship; to the role of professional societies; and, last but not least, to the value publishers of print journals or monographs bring to the enterprise.
Arguably, the most revolutionizing trend is the move away from a system in which scholars published their research in journals without payment, under conditions where distribution and dissemination were financed by publishers through journal subscriptions. Indeed, academic careers were aligned to this. However, there is now a shift to a model whereby the author, or a surrogate for the author, such as the funding agency of a research grant or the author's home institution, provides the financial resources, or author publishing charges (APCs), in order to ensure publication of the author's research. While this model is well known in the natural and biomedical sciences, it is less familiar in the social sciences and tends to instill bewilderment, if not to say outright hostility, in the humanities with their generally scarce funding support.
In the forum's first presentation, Alyson Reed, executive director of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) with its flagship journal Language, relayed how her organization's new model deftly negotiated several competing goals. Strategies included: delayed open access with a one-year embargo; APC charges of $400 for immediate open access; the requirement for membership in order to submit and access content during the embargo period; maintaining parallel content mechanisms of print and online; and having the author retain copyright but licensing the content to the LSA – all the while expanding digital content to take advantage of online capacity and timeliness.
Relating the experience of a respected online open access (OA) journal, Dorothy Chun, University of Santa Barbara, editor-in-chief of Language Learning & Technology, clarified that OA journals can follow established practices of quality control through double blind reviewing just as print journals do. Under the leadership of competent editors and qualified editorial boards, they can achieve enviable records of dissemination and citation, quite literally around the world. However, because ‘open access’ in no way equals ‘cost free,’ the stability of funding sources is crucial. Because Language Learning & Technology’s financial base derives from two federally funded Language Resource Centers, with their known funding insecurities, the journal has no choice but to consider various income producing options, such as receiving APCs paid under diverse open access models or by working with commercial publishers in order to ensure operational stability.
Michael Boock, from the Center for Digital Scholarship at Oregon State University, summarized how various access models (‘gold’, ‘green’, ‘libre’) dealt with aspects of access, timeliness, copyright and licensing, and financing to assure the undisputed benefits of OA while recognizing economic realities. The ongoing considerations at the federal government level; the involvement of major funders; and the engagement of universities as well as being diverse repositories of research mean that we can expect continued forms of adaptation to the new world of digital publishing.
Unsurprisingly, thoughtful adaptations that meet the challenges and opportunities inherent in the new realities are being rolled out by publishers themselves. Emily Farrell of De Gruyter Mouton and Tommi Grover of Multilingual Matters succinctly described the value added by commercial publishers, particularly at the various stages of producing book-length publications. Their contribution is not only the willingness to take on financial risks but also the provision of considerable levels of expertise in a variety of areas, stability for all actors in the enterprise, care in preserving the scholarly record in sustainable and responsible ways, and support for the field as a whole in its diverse activities.
Adaptation was also the topic of the presentation by Anne Ray, senior licensing editor at JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to expanding access while preserving the academic record. JSTOR is among the best known intermediaries between various constituencies ranging from publishers, to readers, to authors, to university libraries, giving assurance that a range of carefully negotiated options exists that take into account the diverse interests of scholars in a way that is financially feasible. Two recent initiatives, ‘Register & Read’ and ‘JPASS’, exemplified how JSTOR is working to connect the reader with the vast array of interdisciplinary research now available in digital form while also ensuring preservation of and support for new forms of scholarship.
Finally, Heidi Byrnes, Georgetown University, and Rod Elllis, University of Auckland, respectively editors of The Modern Language Journal and Language Teaching Research, addressed the forum theme from the perspective of print journals, which have long served as indispensable guarantors for the dissemination of research and scholarship in applied linguistics and as primary evidence for faculty status and advancement. While the appearance of OA journals, in principle, is to be welcomed because both journal types address different needs, serve different constituencies and goals, and contribute different values in the ecology of knowledge creation and dissemination, there is little doubt that the digital age, along with globalization, has complexified journal publishing, particularly for well-regarded international journals. Pressures are particularly noteworthy due to: the proliferation of journals, especially online OA journals where standards are difficult to discern; the dramatic rise of submissions because of the ease of electronic submission; the desire of Asian countries to gain rapid access to international publishing and the prestige associated with it; the consequent burdens for sustaining a high quality and timely blind reviewing process; the challenge of timeliness of publication; and the considerable work of editors themselves, oftentimes with insufficient levels of support and appreciation of their work.
The forum allowed for an extensive discussion period and alerted attendees to the fact that, given sufficient interest, AAAL would find ways of continuing this conversation in diverse media through the organization's web page.
