Note from the Editor
- Note from the Editor
In the thirteen years that I have managed the Seoul Journal of Korean Studies, the world of academic publishing has seen its fair share of changes. When I started in 2008 the printed version was still paramount, since its contents were not yet easily available on the internet. Within South Korea, Nurimedia’s DBPia made the articles available through its electronic databases, but since not many libraries outside Korea subscribed to it, we had to wait until Project Muse accepted the journal into its database in 2013 to gain a wider digital reach. The momentum now seems to have shifted from databases, which put the contents behind a paywall, to open access publishing, with new platforms such as PLOS One or MDPI creating new journals that can be freely downloaded and older journals striving to make their content available for free.
So where does that leave an established journal such as this? It would seem logical to simply go along with the trend and switch to making content freely available online. However, it is somewhat disheartening that there appears to be very little debate among academics about the implications of these shifting trends. “Free” is a relative concept: Although it is indeed convenient that any research article we are looking for can be found with a few mouse clicks in a matter of seconds, the hidden costs should also be considered. Researchers now frequently have to pay for the privilege of being published, and while those affiliated with a major university can usually reclaim the submission fee as research overheads, those without such an affiliation have to pay out of their own pocket.
Another hidden cost is that of editorial oversight and copyediting: Many commercial publishers cut corners on the editorial process, and demand that contributors deliver material in publishable form, doing little themselves in terms of fact checking or corrections. Of course, we urge contributors to employ their own editors so that manuscripts are delivered in good shape, but in practice most articles go through very extensive in-house copy editing and proof checking, involving the efforts of external copyeditors, editorial staff, and [End Page v] myself.
But more fundamentally it seems to me that the idea of “content” has received too little critical reflection, and hence I use the term “content” reluctantly in relation to academic research. First of all, reducing research articles to mere “content” on the same level as Wikipedia pages or blog posts has the effect of effacing any qualitative difference. Second, and more importantly, it reduces research to something that can be easily packaged and repackaged for commercial purposes. In other words, it is convenient not just for the researcher-as-consumer, but also for the content-creating platform that seeks to valorize its “content.” Finally, and in the same vein, reducing research to content that is simply thrown out on the internet among all the other information may ultimately force researchers to become dependent on the amount of interest their article generates in terms of article views or citations.
Of course, it does not necessarily have to be this way: If academic institutions take the initiative in curating the online provision of academic research output, then of course it is possible to marry the quality control provided by the research institution that manages the journal with free availability. However, in practice it seems that many universities are merely latching on to what happens in the commercial world—with important exceptions of course, chief among which are JSTOR and Project Muse, which provide carefully curated selections of academic articles, albeit still behind a paywall.
This digression is ultimately somewhat self-serving, in that I am trying preemptively to justify the continued existence of this journal, and its role in curating and incubating new research to the highest possible standards. But what those standards are is, of course, a matter of continuing debate, and hence it is important to pass the torch of editorship to a new generation with new ideas on how to provide the best possible scholarship on Korean humanities!
Let me then return to the traditional purpose of this column, which is to...
