The Missing Model: A “Circle of Gifts”

Abstract

In spite of the search for electronic publishing models, there is apparently already early, energetic scholarly publishing on the networks. Without a great deal of adjustment and even without formal academic recognition, the Net's accessibility and excitement have provided academic "incentives." With thoughtful development, it could provide a highly effective and competitive path to delivering scholarly knowledge. Indeed, there is currently so much momentum that it is difficult to imagine a failure to proceed, short of a deliberate and concerted attempt by universities and scholars to suppress the "thousand flowers" blooming on the scholarly networks, a choice not to support and subsidize academic publishing on the Net.An effective scholar-based publishing system must recognize and support the widely divers forms of communication necessary for research and scholarship. It should not discriminate against nonlucrative projects or disciplines. It complements the paper-based scholarly efforts of university presses and of academic libraries, which are already beginning to provide networked access and archiving for university-generated scholarship. It creates a linked structure of scholars, societies, and academic institutions. It aims to fulfill another vital objective: retaining for the academy some ownership of its authored intellectual property.The Missing Model, fledgling and fuzzy, is alive and well and living on the Net. To thrive, the academy needs to thoughtfully nurture it. The Circle of Gifts concept formally entwines the scholarly community, research institutions, scholars, and learned societies in the age-old and time-honored enterprise in which ideas are shared, affordably, by the creators of the ideas.

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