An early draft of the second chapter of my thesis, Scholarly communication in crisis, is now available as part of my open thesis approach.
Summary
Scholarly communication at present is a complex system characterized by expansion of capitalism into scholarly publishing and a process of rationalization that at times leads to irrational results in conflict with the basic goals or values of scholars. The increasing enclosure of knowledge and information through the concept of intellectual property is key in the process of commodification of resources once considered a classical public good as nonrivalrous and nonexcludable. Alternatives identified to date include the commons, cooperative approaches, open access and emerging new publishers such as libraries.
