Call for Book Proposals for the Critical Digital and Social Media Studies Series Now Open – University of Westminster Press blog

“Critical Digital and Social Media Studies is an established open access book series edited by Professor Christian Fuchs.

With funding from the Jisc Open Access Community Framework (OACF), which allows us to publish without author facing fees or book processing charges, we are now inviting submissions for book proposals that fall within the scope of the series and fit the criteria set out below. 

Books in the series are published open access online in ePUB, Mobi and PDF formats and simultaneously as affordable paperbacks. They are published using a Creative Commons licence and copyright in the work is retained by the author. Books are hosted on open access book platforms including the UWP website, JSTOR and OAPEN.

The series has published 24 books since its launch in 2016, and titles in the series have won and been shortlisted for major academic book prizes, published in foreign language editions, been widely reviewed in leading journals, and are amongst the most downloaded titles published by the Press….”

Open-Access-Transformation in der Medienwissenschaft — Ein Bericht von Kai Matuszkiewicz und Sarah-Mai Dang | Open-Media-Studies-Blog

Der vorliegende Bericht dokumentiert die Paneldiskussion Open-Access-Transformation in der Medienwissenschaft – Arbeitsprozesse mit Zukunft? auf der Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft 2022 zum Thema «Arbeit» bzw. deren Ergebnisse. Der Text widmet sich, im Anschluss an eine Kontextualisierung und Einordnung der Paneldiskussion in übergreifende Diskussionszusammenhänge, der Darlegung der Diskussionsergebnisse. Gestaltet wurde die Paneldiskussion von der Redaktion des Open-Media-Studies-Blog, Mitgliedern der AG Open Media Studies sowie der Kommission für gute Arbeit in der Wissenschaft der GfM.

 

Publizieren in der Medienwissenschaft — Andreas Kirchner über Open Access als Standard | Open Media Studies

by Andreas Kirchner

englisch version via gTranslate:

I recently noticed that the editors of the journal MEDIENwissenschaft: Reviews | Reviews has started to specifically mark Open Access publications that are subject to review – a clear indication of a change in media studies publication practice. In book list 4/22, 64 out of 186 titles, a third of all publications listed there, bear the new “OA” abbreviation. This is not a bad rate, especially considering that the open access transformation of books has only picked up speed in recent years. The spectrum of the 19 publishers that published the books is enormous: imprints from the multinational publishing groups SpringerNature and Taylor & Francis are represented as well as various university presses or small scientific and non-fiction publishers such as Büchner or Frank & Timme. The Bielefelder transcript-Verlag occupies a special position, which in recent years has been particularly committed to establishing Open Access in German-language media studies: 17 OA books on the “Book List” have been published there alone. In this illustrious circle, the name of a publishing house can be found – and that at least four times -meson press .

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NEW COMMUNITIES: SCHOLAR-LED PUBLISHING UND OPEN ACCESS — Aktuelle scholar-led Publishing-Initiativen und Open Access in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften (Teil 3) | Open Media Studies

by Tobias Steiner

 

«[M]ight it not be helpful to think of open access less as a project and model to be implemented, and more as a process of continuous struggle and critical Resistance?» (Adema and Hall, 2013)

«[I]f we are theorists, if we are radical, critical theorists, then our critique should aim at a transformation of the actual systems within which we work.» (Joy, 2017)

via deepl.com

In the first part of this blog series, scholar-led publishing was classified and situated in the context of Open Access. In the second part, I worked diachronically – with a focus on journals – how scholar-led initiatives from the field of cultural and media studies created their own spaces in the digital realm at an early stage and, through these, realized their respective individual interpretations of the basic motivation that also underlies Open Access: enabling free access to knowledge. In the third part, I will present a selection of scholar-led book publishers relevant to cultural and media studies, as well as collaborations, networks, and infrastructure initiatives.

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OLD TRADITIONS: SCHOLAR-LED PUBLISHING UND OPEN ACCESS — zu den Anfängen digitalen scholar-led Publishings in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften (Teil 2) | Open Media Studies

by Tobias Steiner

«Apparently, there are academics, and reputable ones at that, for whom the cost/benefit of the Mercedes Benz — the smart cover, prestigious logo, beautiful paper, and added-value galore — is less important than the means of quick and effective conveyance, even if it be merely a rusty old heap that runs. Academic aspirations are, in many cases, being modified by the financial realities of the day. I believe this is leading us to a more differentiated array of publications. I imagine the Internet full of curiously painted VW beetles and vans, an engaging mixture of information vehicles. If this speculation becomes reality, and if our academics and their institutions become aware that the current style of single-minded high-value publishing can lead to perishing, then we are headed for some value shifts over time.»

Anna Shumelda Okerson: Oh Lord, Won’t You Buy Me A Mercedes Benz Or, There is a There There, in: Surfaces, Bd. IV, Nr. 102, 1994, Folio 1.

via deepl.com

For the humanities and social sciences, early scholar-led publishing projects and initiatives that emerged and experimented with the new digital medium, especially before the widespread history of OA cited in the first part, still play a role that is too little noticed in the broad sense. As Moore, for example, points out with reference to early digital journal initiatives, numerous scholar-led initiatives from the humanities and social sciences existed well before the early 2000s, which are generally regarded as the start of the OA movement. These initiatives – also as a reaction to the strong commercialization of the journal market in the 1970s and 1980s2 – had set themselves the goal of organizing the production and circulation of scholarly communication in the digital realm themselves and making it freely accessible to the public.

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PLURALITIES: SCHOLAR-LED PUBLISHING UND OPEN ACCESS — zur Rolle von scholar-led publishing in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften (Teil 1) | Open Media Studies

by Tobias Steiner

Publikationskulturen sind im Wissenschaftsbetrieb ähnlich vielfältig wie die ihnen zugrundeliegenden Forschungskulturen. Im heutzutage oftmals normativ geführten Diskurs um Open Access besteht die Gefahr, dass diese Vielfalt zugunsten techno-solutionistischer Implementationen ins Hintertreffen gerät oder gar mittelfristig verloren geht. Im Folgenden möchte ich daher näher auf den Ansatz des scholar-led publishing eingehen und aufzeigen, welche Zusammenhänge zwischen scholar-led Initiativen und der ‹klassischen› Open Access-Bewegung bestehen.

Dazu beginne ich mit einer kurzen Diskurseinordnung und leite dann diachron ab, wie scholar-led Initiativen aus den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften – und mit ihnen aus den Kultur-, Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften – schon früh und parallel zu den weithin rezipierten Entwicklungen aus dem medizinisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Bereich der 1990er Jahre auf eigene Weise wichtige Impulse zur Öffnung von Publikationskulturen setzten. Im zweiten Teil stelle ich dazu ein Spektrum von scholar-led Journal-Initiativen vor, während der dritte Teil sich scholar-led Buchverlagen sowie scholar-led Netzwerken im weiteren Sinn zuwendet.

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