Enclosure and emancipation in scholarly journals publishing: Overview, critical, global and communication perspectives

The current state of scholarly communication is presented as one of contest between an increasingly commercial system that is dysfunctional and incompatible with the basic aims of scholarship, and emerging alternatives, particularly open access publishing and open access archiving. Two approaches to facilitating global participation in scholarly communication are contrasted; equity is seen as a superior goal to the donor model, which requires poverty or inequity to succeed. The current state of scholarly communication within the discipline of communication is examined. A relatively healthy percentage of not-for-profit publishers and at least 76 fully open access journals suggest strong potential for emancipating scholarship in communication from commercial imperatives. Specific sites of struggle and actions for scholars, including developing open access journals and self-archiving, are presented