From: Heather Morrison <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 09:48:14 -0700 Interesting article from Al Jazeera English on the increasing percentage of faculty (76%) on the adjunct track, many below the poverty line, and the potential implications of trends like MOOCs and automated grading systems on academic labour: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/04/20134119156459616.html What does this have to do with scholarly publishing? The whole system depends on the free gifts (see note) of academics of their articles and peer review services, not to mention conduct of research in the first place. If the system that supports the researchers is melting beneath our feet, what future is there for scholarly publishing, if any? Note: acknowledging that these gifts are not always free, sometimes royalties are involved, particularly for books, however even here they are so far below actually paying people to do the work and write the results that this is still primarily a gift economy for the scholar. If you take a sabbatical at partial salary to write a book and get royalties amounting to a small fraction of the salary differential, both you and your university employer are heavily subsidizing the book production. best, Dr. Heather G. Morrison The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com