Funding open access in media studies: The case of mediastudies.press

Jeff Pooley, mediastudies.press co-director, published a piece in NECSUS on funding for scholar-led publisher, which doubles as a history of mediastudies.press.

This case study recounts the brief history of the open access publisher mediastudies.press, with the aim to draw broader lessons about #openaccess in film, media, and communication studies. The press, which I established in 2018, is scholar-led, nonprofit, and fee-free. It publishes books and a diamond OA journal, History of Media Studies (2020-). Mediastudies.press was founded as a self-conscious experiment, with three overlapping motivations: (1) to demonstrate the viability of a collective funding, fee-free approach to OA publishing; (2) to provide a home for book projects underserved by the commercial publishing ecosystem; and (3) to furnish a platform for multimedia and versioned projects particularly appropriate to the kinetic and formally inventive media studies fields. A fourth motivation was more personal. I had begun writing about open access issues in the mid-2010s with gathering interest. My sense was that I ought to learn more about the scholarly publishing landscape if I was to make informed critiques of, and proposals around, the prevailing system. Diving in head first with a small press struck me as a viable – if over-ambitious – means to that end. Thus mediastudies.press was born.

The essay concludes, on the funding question:

The real question is political will. If the scholarly publishing system is hurtling toward open access, who will pay for it? There are two choices, in effect: authors or direct support for publishing. Hinging authorship on the ability to pay is a bald injustice. If we are committed to furnishing open access for readers and authors alike, we need to push for what is the only fair way forward: collective funding. Recent developments in Europe and Latin America furnish a glint of promise for an APC-free future. The big commercial publishers will, however, fight to retain their obscene OA profits. The choice of which path to take will, ultimately, fall to universities, scholars, and the public who fund both. In that respect mediastudies.press is a political statement. Together with its scholar-led peers, we hope to demonstrate, in miniature, that a different publishing world is possible.

“Funding open access in media studies: The case of mediastudies.press” appeared in the NECSUS special issue on #open.