Open Access and the Economics of Scholarshipin Rhetoric and Composition Studies

Abstract

Rhetoric and composition, as an academic discipline, argues for a strong link between scholarship and practice. However, restrictive publisher agreements, limited distribution channels, and perceptions about the value of open access among gatekeepers can limit access to scholarship and its potential for application. This study, through analysis of publishing policies and practices for rhetoric and composition journals as well as surveys and interviews with journal editors, examines the current state of open access in the field. Findings reveal the need for more consistent and widespread adoption of more open policies for publishing to extend the impact and value of scholarship in the field.

Notes

¹ We thank RR reviewers of this article, Duane Roen and John Schilb, for their helpful feedback and insightful recommendations for revision. We are grateful, as well, to Chanon Adsanatham, Jonathan Alexander, Linh Dich, and Carol Rutz for their generous and thoughtful suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.

² The problem extends to monographs and edited collections. Charles Bazerman, David Blakesley, Mike Palmquist, and David Russell confirm that “the print publication of scholarly books in the humanities and social sciences has been affected by financial pressures ranging from increased production costs to decreased acquisitions of books by libraries and individuals.” Scott McLemee gives numbers to these assertions: in a report on “The Costs of Publishing Monographs,” the average initial publication “cost per monograph is between $28,747 (using the minimal baseline) and not quite $40,000 (factoring in indirect overhead expenses). It bears repeating that this is not the final cost of publishing, printing, binding, and warehousing” (IHE). In rhetoric and composition, we see a productive counter to such tendencies in the WAC Clearinghouse (https://wac.colostate.edu/), which publishes open-access books and journals for college-level writing instructors.

³ We observe that the Bibliography has now moved to https://community.macmillan.com/docs/DOC-2007 as a collection of PDFs, with the online version created in January 2016 but offering PDFs dated as pre-publication proofs in August 2011. The migration to PDFs results in the format of the Bibliography becoming less open to repurposing.

⁴ We are grateful for considerable assistance from WSU management analyst Lauralea Edwards with the Python script and former WSU graduate student Tyler Ringstad with preparing the spreadsheets. Spreadsheets can be accessed at http://goo.gl/E3tDKn and http://beta.rhetoric.io/in order that readers might put our data into play with other sources of information about accessibility and explore further the issues we raise.

⁵ The survey questions are available at http://goo.gl/gAXhPc.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mike Edwards

Mike Edwards is an Assistant Professor of rhetoric and composition at Washington State University and Topoi Editor of Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. His book Postcapitalist Economics and Technologies of Composition is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press Series in Composition, Literacy, and Culture. His work has appeared in Rhetoric Review, Pedagogy, and elsewhere. He likes cats.

Jessica Reyman

Jessica Reyman is an Associate Professor of rhetoric and professional writing at Northern Illinois University and Senior Chair of the CCCC Intellectual Property Caucus. She is author of The Rhetoric of Intellectual Property: Copyright Law and the Regulation of Digital Culture (Routledge, 2010). Her work has appeared in College Composition and Communication, Computers and Writing, and College English, among others.