Thanks for raising the issue of cost of MCA, David. Checking, it turns
out that the electronic price was raised when we were not looking. I
will contact the publisher about it today.
Tony's point is also well taken, but the analysis incomplete. Yep, we
do the labor of
producing it. So why isn't it a public good?
We can easily make it one. We can self-publish electronically and give
it out free. That is what we used to do with the Newsletter that
preceeded the Journal. What will be some of the consequences?
Scholars will no longer be able to provide evidence of publishing in
a carefully
reviewed journal that appears in lots of citation abstracting services.
I was not happy about converting from the Newletter to a formal
journal. I am not happy
about the large amount of labor Peggy, a graduate strudent, and I put
into helping Harry, Anne, and his one staff person to coordinate all
the work of getting reviews, figuring out page counts, badgering
authors and reviewers who are late, threatening
our citation legitimacy, etc. It was FAR easier before.
I like the fact that Erlbaum makes one article a month free and that
XMCA readers get to choose what they want to talk about. But
personally speaking, I do not need MCA to have great discussions with
the members of this group
So, at the same time that I lobby to get the electronic version down
to a reasonble price
might members of XMCA come up with a better way to deal with the issue
of institutionalized publication of a non-mainstream journal?
For example, perhaps one of your universities would provide a nice
subsidy if you took on the role of editor, or of organizing the
editoral process. Or perhaps a non-American publisher in a country
where prices are less expensive would like to offer the journal and
support publication in a way that maintains its exchange value for
young scholars who do not want to publish in Educational Psychologist
or American Ethnologists, and who cannot affor the 125+ dollar
subscription price for Human Development.
Its a really important set of problems. All we need is the proper
solution. Perhaps I can get the cost of the electronic version of the
journal eliminated, B ut I see no way to make it free.
Suggestions?
mike
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