Going to Fire Island for a long weekend. We have been going there nearly every summer since we moved to NYC in 1990. We spent the summer there when our daughter was an infant. I finished my first academic book there that summer. Its a wonderful place where there is nothing to do but sit on the beach, read on the beach, and run on the beach. Then you nap some and repeat.
Some stray thoughts before I leave.
1) I am reconsidering the ASIC DS trainers. My feet have been sore and they aren't bad in terms of good cushioning but still light weight. They still aren't that stable and feel mushy but I can at least deal with the stability with taping my feet for the long runs. For the short stuff they are fine.
2) Very disappointed in the new Woody Allen movie. Its trite and no where near as charming or clever as Midnight in Paris.
3) Jealous Phil M. got to see Dracula's castle after a conference in Bucharest.
4) Getting better about saying no. I am so under the gun that I said no to one conference and two writing projects all with late summer deadlines. One of those projects felt bad saying no to because its a conference volume in honor of a close friend and mentor. But they delayed almost 9 months and then wanted final drafts within 6 weeks which is not realistic given all my other deadlines.
5) Reviewing a draft contract to do a new edition of the treatise which I finished lo those many years ago on Fire Island. The draft contract is less favorable to the author in every possible way than 16 years ago. Now have to negotiate over advances, author copies, author discounts, interim deadlines that were all easy last time around. Has industry changed, publishers getting greedy, or both?
6) Not enjoying the heat and humidity for either running or daily life.
7) Really glad my friends are slowly figuring out that law professors actually work over the summer.
8) very excited about going to see Vampire Weekend at the Pitchfork Festival, Dark Knight Rises on opening day, and skipping Lalapalooza. (OK, we work differently then other folks, but at least my friends have learned to stop asking "So what's it like to have the summer off?").
9) Got stupidest editorial query ever. Asked to verify spelling and order of name of author where highlighted. Only place highlighted was MY NAME after title of article!
10) Been thinking of proliferation of for-profit policy journals in competition law field. I can think of almost ten, few of which existed a decade ago. Most are based or focused on developments outside the US, some are on-line only, some are print with on-line presence. Most fall somewhere in between a true law review and a magazine. All cost a fortune. At the same time, both the Antitrust Bulletin and Research Issues in Law and Economics have far less visibility then before. Want to think more about these trends and post something more substantial when I get back.
Can't wait to hear your further thoughts on the journal bit. I've published several shorter pieces in journals that I can't afford to read because of their ridiculous subscription rates. That irks me more than a little. It raises the question of the value of our work: it has become popular to say law profs write things nobody values and are paid by the taxpayer for doing so. But a for-profit journal takes our work, monetizes it, and keeps the change. Part of the fault lies with the tenure and promotion process, which renders us unable to pursue compensation schemes (i.e., we are "compensated" by the mere acceptance of the article). What about creating a journal that splits the profits among the contributors? Or even better, in a time of lean institution budgets, among the contributors' institutions?
ReplyDeleteWe should make this a separate thread but am wondering is our profession better or worse than general social networking where people give away massive amounts of personal information so the platform can aggregate and monetize that information through advertising and taking a cut of third party developers apps (think Farmville)? Is better or worse that maybe of the semi-scholarly journals in question are themselves academics who share in he profits with the publishing companies in question? Is it better or worse than SSRN where we provide the content for free or in return for non-monetary reputational compensation?
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