It was partly Alessandro Delfanti on Twitter pointing out J.Sci Com in the context of our discussion that led me to make the decision. It’s not like our hands are tied as researchers in public understand of science – there are options! In highlighting those that come to mind you’ve made my job much easier when I get back to Australia in deciding where to submit instead.

If others have alternative suggestions, please do share.

I’m really pleased to see the recent call at Harvard for academics to consider resigning from journals that reject open access. I get the sense we’re on the verge of a tipping point now…

1) PLoS Biology Public Engagement Series

2) J.Sci Com. You might think it’s rubbish. Change that. Send good papers in it. They will be read (and then cited…) by many, many more people because of it. This is, I appreciate, possibly a rather a long-term policy.

3) Self publish in ways which incorporate peer review. Matt Nisbet’s Climate Shift report is a great example of this. Again, this isn’t necessarily going to help with all research auditing exercises. There are also some further problems to consider here, as the Climate Shift’s issue with an embargo break demonstrated. We need to be clever about this. But if sci com academics can’t be clever about modes of open scholarly publishing, who can?

4) You can just stick with PUS and Sci Com but do a lot of engagement work around your papers and find ways to put drafts on your own sites, as well as leaning on the editorial board and community to either go open access or self organise their own
Is what Sage gives us as a community worth the price we pay? Couldn’t we all just do the “hobby, for free” work Prof Bauer thanked us for at PCST ourselves, without them and host it on a uni site. I think UCL has set up a system for academics to start their own journals, I’m sure others will follow suit.

5) Publish outside of sci com. We’re a 2nd order interdisciplinary field, there’ll be another – so work with economics, policy, sociology, geography, psychology, cultural studies, history, etc. I don’t like this. But it’s an option.

Any more ideas?

rivo