Call for Proposals: Proposals invited for a workshop at the Society for Cinema & Media Studies conference (Vancouver, 2006): Should academic research be freely available? In the past 10 years, we've witnessed skyrocketing subscription prices for academic journals--causing college libraries and scholars to cut back on the titles they carry. Simultaneously, we've witnessed the growth of an inexpensive distribution system: the Internet. Some e-journals have popped up in our field and many of them do not charge for access. Some, such as Postmodern Culture, began as a free service and then subsequently came to limit access to paying customers (in PMC's case, through Project Muse). This workshop will explore the issues facing free scholarship: * How can a permanent archive be maintained? * How does one effectively index the research in free publications and archives? * What free software is available to facilitate these tasks? * What human resources are necessary to support free, peer-reviewed e-publication? * Does the price on a publication affect its prestige? Are free publications deemed unworthy by tenure-review committees? Work towards freely available scholarship has already been begun by organizations such as the Public Knowledge Project and the Open Archives Initiative. Please see their Websites for more information. We hope to have a PKP representative attend this workshop as it is based at neaby Simon Fraser University. If you're interested in pariticipating in this conversation, please contact: Jeremy Butler jbutler {at} ua.edu Box 870152 University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, AL 35487 http://www.cmstudies.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=626 -- Jeremy Butler www.ScreenSite.org www.TVCrit.com www.AllThingsAcoustic.org Professor - TCF Dept - U Alabama ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu