Much discussion going around regarding danah boyd's recent proclamation of her intention to publish in open access journals and call for other academics to do the same. I can appreciate the general spirit here: there's a logic to the goal of making scholarship broadly available. On the other hand, in seeking to build a professional identity (and maintain one), publishing in traditional, closed journals is often a necessity. It's probably more reasonable to consider a more balanced approach, and, over time, perhaps we will move more toward open access.
Anyway, I see in this conversation a larger issue as well. At one point, boyd suggests, somewhat hyperbolically, that an article in a closed journal might have a readership of zero. Zero? Doubtful. But 100 is possible. An article in CCC might average a 1000 readers or so, I would guess, but that's because of the high numbers of NCTE members. However, writing an article on computers and writing, it's hard to imagine an audience of more than a couple hundred people.
I'm thinking here of Kurt Spellmeyer's argument in Composition Studies in the New Millennium (not that he's the only one to make this argument): essentially that rhet/comp is making a poor decision in following its lit studies brethren in becoming increasing esoteric and less relevant to the broader culture. Sure, this is how one becomes an academic discipline, right? Develop erudite methods and discourses that require years of study to master. It's largely true though that no one really cares what we think or say (except perhaps to take the opportunity to lampoon some conference paper titles). But isn't also true that no one reads or cares about what most scientists say either? Somehow that's different though, isn't it? Scientific knowledge is for a different purpose, or at least it seems that way. It doesn't exactly matter if most Americans don't believe in evolution. Species keep evolving, scientists can study it, and knowledge and even practical applications can be built on it. On the other hand, if hardly anyone knows postmodern theory (and many who do, disagree with it), does it continue to exist untrammeled in the same way as evolution?
Maybe that's a poor analogy. I don't know.
