New Article: Open Access, Megajournals, and MOOCs: On the Political Economy of Academic Unbundling

Here’s a new article (published online today) from the latest issue of SAGE Open that will likely be of interest to many readers.

Title

Open Access, Megajournals, and MOOCs: On the Political Economy of Academic Unbundling

Author

Richard Wellen
York University 

Source

SAGE Open
October-December 2013: 1 –16

Abstract

The development of “open” academic content has been strongly embraced and promoted by many advocates, analysts, stakeholders, and reformers in the sector of higher education and academic publishing. The two most well-known developments are open access scholarly publishing and Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs), each of which are connected to disruptive innovations enabled by new technologies. Support for these new modes of exchanging knowledge is linked to the expectation that they will promote a number of public interest benefits, including widening the impact, productivity, and format of academic work; reforming higher education and scholarly publishing markets; and relieving some of the cost pressures in academia. This article examines the rapid emergence of policy initiatives in the United Kingdom and the United States to promote open content and to bring about a new relationship between the market and the academic commons. In doing so, I examine controversial forms of academic unbundling such as open access megajournals and MOOCs and place each in the context of the heightened emphasis on productivity and impact in new regulatory regimes in the area of higher education.

Direct to Full Text (16 pages; PDF)
See Also: Richard Wellen’s  Contact Page and List of Selected Writings (via York University)

Filed under: News, Open Access, Productivity, Publishing