I never understood why we pay so much for someone else to distribute our research when we can do it ourselves (sort of like how music is done today). Some artists may opt to go through big studios, but many are now just doing it on their own via MySpace, YouTube, what not. A service like Apple’s iTunes can help with the distribution, but share the “profit” with the content provider. We pay a butt load to submit and our research to be peer-reviewed and then edited (usually the editor or assistant editor never really checks for writing quality), then some of us have to pay again to view our own work on the publisher’s site.

My tax money pays for my own research and for it to be public. Can’t really do that if there is a giant pay wall. Well, if I paid so much to publish through these publishers, they should make the article free for readers. For them to charge both way doesn’t seem proper, unless they were promoting our work like book publishers do for their content providers–book signing etc. I want!

I haven’t really thought through my opinion but that’s my ramble on the publisher side of things, so far.

About the RWA…that’s another ramble, ramble, ramble… (I’ve watched too much South Park, lately)