*Scholarly Publishing and its Discontents*

That is the new book and also free pdf by Joshua Gans.  This is an ideal book of sorts.  He writes it clearly, says what he wants to, ends it, and then gives it away for free.  Here is part of his conclusion:

It is easy at a high level to think about how knowledge could be unbundled, but once a framework is developed, then graduate students who were learning and reading past knowledge would be encouraged to translate their own information into the new framework.  The knowledge could be freed from the bounds of journals without undermining all the curation and attribution work that goes with them.  And at the same time, a searchable database that is open by design would exist not for articles, pages, or PDFs, but for the knowledge itself.

I’m all for moving in this direction, my main worry is to wonder how much difference it will make.  Systems of hierarchy tend to reemerge in some manner or another, no matter what the setting.  And if there is one thing we have learned from the internet, it is that free entry can lead to a greater rather than lesser consolidation of interest.

I recall back in the 1990s, when my colleague Don Lavoie was so excited about organizing science by “linkable hypertext,” in a kind of new knowledge utopia, a Habermasian wet dream.  It was to be an intellectual paradise.  What we got was…the blogosphere.  Still a paradise of sorts!  And free.  But not a scientific paradise.  I’m sure some of you in the comments can explain that to the others perfectly well, whether you are trying to do so or not.

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