Melody's Blog

Really interesting post Sunday on The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics which I recommend to all librarians and teaching faculty--especially my faculty colleagues who so patiently listened to me and asked terrific questions at last months faculty seminar. The question is how do you assess new open access journals. I answered this at faculty seminar, but this blog post does so more thoroughly and eloquently than I did! Just as said though, very important--who are the journals editors, board of advisors; would you allow your name to be used if you didn't think the journal promoted the kind of quality you desire in an academic publication. This article should definitely be read by all faculty serving on tenure and promotion committees. YES, open access journals can be just as scholarly as those that are not open access. In my presentation I mentioned Sopher Press--if you are a theological librarian colleague and do not know about these journals, you must take a look. Take a look ...

Not long ago I read with interest, Meredith Farkas' blog on "Is Ebsco the New Evil Empire? " I think this week, Sage Publications has maybe topped Ebsco for this prize position for theological librarians. A thread on the ATLANTIS listserv, which is comprised of theological librarians, has lamented the takeover (note: the Sage envelope containing the bad news to each of us actually says "takeover letter") of two journals this week by Sage resulting in prices being raised--double for one and triple for another. I not only lament the raising of prices, but a certain lack of understanding of mission. (This is not Sage's fault--their mission is to make money.) In my paper at ATLA (which, btw, is available if you are a member as a pre-print on the ATLA Sharepoint site) I said that journal prices rising in all disciplines is unsustainable, but for theology and religion there is another dimension--if we are supposed to be bringing the reign of God (and I think scho...

Today I received a notice from a journal asking me to subscribe. Here is my response: I received your notice of the journal XXXX . I would love to subscribe to it, but I will not be doing so. Currently, I have NO plans for adding subscriptions with models of pricing which I believe are not sustainable. I do not believe that scholarly societies that have sold their journals to for-profit publishers are generally operating in a model which supports their own mission. If you do truly believe that no minister or theologian “can be adequately educated who is not acquainted with the debates this journal compasses,” you would charge a price for it that was sustainable for theological schools like my own and most of the other small seminaries that cannot afford to add journals at this price. I notice from the publisher's website that most of your board comes from large institutions that may be able to support prices such as these, but the large majority of seminaries are like my own that h...