Occupy Publishing: A Postcard to the Peer-Review Imaginary

Abstract

Peer-reviewed publishing is the gold standard of academic integrity,but it is not itself an integral process. Different kinds of practices and procedures in the publishing world pass for peer-review and so serve legitimizing functions for scholarship. On the one hand, this has led to a kleptocracy in which established scholars cash in on their (often deserved)establishmentarianism. On the other, it has allowed the proliferation of new kinds of publication that operate outside established cultural institutions like university presses, yet also serve legitimizing functions. These new forms of publication deconstruct the authority of institutional publishing and enable new ways of defining and occupying the interstices of public culture. More recently, even as traditional print journals have been slow to move to born-digital publishing (making do with PDF versions of their print pages, posted on the web), many new journals have formed on the web, often without regular press sponsorship. These journals, such as N+1,Southern Spaces and nonsite.org, offer the opportunity of publishing shorter and less scholarly pieces, like travel essays and commentary, in a context that offers the legitimacy of peer review. They have large editorial boards and list their credentials prominently. In so doing, they help heretofore minor forms of writing get credit, and also help conventional academic work move away from past institutional boundaries.