I posted this over at DGI but I think it is worth mentioning over here since I write plently on IP law.

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Chris Ketly over at Savage Minds has written an excellent roundup of the ironies that plague academic publishing today. These ironies, however, are not all that humorous.

It is distressing to see the AAA abide by a closed publishing model, even while in public they are supposedly committed to “public anthropology.”

I think however the tide is shifting among academics. The recent resolution made by the Cornell Faculty Senate is a move in the right direction.

The Senate strongly encourages all faculty, and especially tenured faculty, to consider publishing in open access, rather than restricted access, journals or in reasonably priced journals that make their contents openly accessible shortly after publication.3

The Senate strongly urges all faculty to negotiate with the journals in which they publish either to retain copyright rights and transfer only the right of first print and electronic publication, or to retain at a minimum the right of postprint archiving.4