Page:Open access and the humanities - contexts, controversies and the future.pdf/64

 like magic, a collective undertaking.’4 Concurrently, it has been argued in other ﬁelds that ‘over time, economic and political domination become inseparable from prestige, cultural expertise, and ideological dominance’.5 From this argument, it seems imperative that notions of prestige be critically interrogated within the ﬁeld of scholarly communication. The primary question that I suggest should be asked is: what are the effects of prestige (which nonetheless has many practical beneﬁts) within various economic spheres and in the context of a transition to open access? As I will show, these systems of prestige contribute to the behaviour of academics towards the implementation of open access, to the economics of scholarly communications and also to the external perception of the academy.

In order to begin this analysis of the intersection of symbolic reputational exchanges and real-world ﬁnance, it is worth posing a set of critical, rhetorical questions along with some hypothetical reasoning that, in each case, implicitly views the function of journal/publisher prestige as more than a direct correlative of quality. In opening up this space, it should then become possible to gain a broader understanding of the way in which the economics of scholarly communication are bound up in a series of symbolic exchanges that are engendered by institutional (academic) practices.

1. What does prestige do to the economics of scholarly publishing? There is perceived pressure from assessment mechanisms to publish articles in high-prestige journals and books with high-prestige presses. Such journals and presses, therefore, are highly sought after by authors, creating a high level of supply. If good authors appear in prestigious journals or with presses, libraries must subscribe to their journals or purchase their books so that their researchers can read the material. If libraries must subscribe or buy, demand and perceived value is higher for such venues, which justiﬁes a price increase. Journals and presses that hold prestige, however, are subject to the same series of transfers and buyouts as other forms of publishing, as seen in Chapter 1. This potentially concentrates ever more expensive venues in ever fewer hands, which could make competition on price more difﬁcult.

2. What does prestige do for dissemination and how does it ﬁt with OA? If academics know where to ﬁnd top-quality material, then the brand name of a journal or a press serves as a