Enclosure and open access in communication scholarship

The current state of scholarly communication is one of contest between an increasingly commercial system that is dysfunctional and incompatible with the basic aims of scholarship, and emerging alternatives, particularly open access publishing and open access archiving. Two approaches to facilitating global participation in scholarly communication are contrasted in this paper; equity is seen as a superior goal to the donor model, which requires poverty or inequity to succeed. The current state of scholarly communication within the discipline of communication is examined. Journal publishing in communication shows a greater diversity of ownership and less commercial concentration than scholarly publishing overall; this, and the at least 76 fully open access journals in this area suggest strong potential for emancipating scholarship in communication from commercial imperatives. Specific sites of struggle and actions for scholars, including developing open access journals and self-archiving, are presented.