In “Liberation through Cooperation: How Library Publishing Can Save Scholarly Journals from Neoliberalism,” Dave S. Ghamandi argues that the current academic publishing system is thoroughly entrenched in contemporary neoliberalism. He also suggests that certain directions that the Open Access movement is taking—such as the increase of Article Processing Charges (APCs)—further a neoliberal agenda as they maintain a capital concentration with the oligopoly of corporate academic publishers. Ghamandi calls for a more radical approach to scholarly communication premised on cooperative models: “New ways of organizing are needed to fulfill the public’s rightful claim to a democratic form of open access that treats knowledge as a common good. In short, a revolution is in order” (2). He cites SciELO and Érudit as examples of successful, community-oriented, open access approaches to scholarly communication. Ghamandi closes by suggesting that an increase in cooperative library publishing could be a viable alternative to the current neoliberal, capitalist approach.

 

Work cited

Ghamandi, Dave S. 2018. “Liberation through Cooperation: How Library Publishing Can Save Scholarly Journals from Neoliberalism.”  Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Publishing 6: 1-17.