I've been pointed to a discussion about the journal "Internet Archaeology" by a friendly colleague. The journal IA has recently dropped its paywall and is now free access for everybody - to which I say Hooray and Thank you.

However, as someone in the discussion on Antiquist points out, it's not all free. The journal is financed by an "author pays" scheme, which means you need to be able to pay for having your paper published. The discussion quickly goes off into other terrains where there are problems in data access, but for me, the interesting bit is that one of the contributors says that "author pays" is not a problem, since nobody pays for that out of their own pocket anyways.

To which I say... not true. Definitely not true.

I would never publish in an author pays scheme, not only because I am a firm believer in the principle that the money flows towards the author, not away. I would also not be willing to shell out even more money for an experiment, thankyouverymuch. As a rule, I pay for my experiments myself, because getting funding for them? Difficult. Having an institution behind you makes things easier, but even then it's not guaranteed that you will get funding. Plus the time you have to spend on trying to secure said funding... never underestimate how much of your time, and energy, applications can suck out of your life.

I had plenty of experience with that topic when I tried to secure funding for my phd thesis (hint: I didn't get lucky). You have to do a new application package every time, then it takes ages to go through the system, and finally if you don't get funding, you have to deal with the emotional fallout. (At least I did.) At the end, I estimated about two to three weeks' work worth for each application. There's quite a lot of times that I've heard people complain that they are not getting around to really working, because in order to secure further funding so they will not lose their job, all they have time for is write one grant application after the other.

At some point, especially if the experiment is more work-time and not too much monetary investment for the things you need, you might decide it's not worth the effort to go for funding, and just go ahead and do it. Then, at the end, if all went well, you have an experiment and some results... and there you are. The thing should now be published. The last, very very last thing that I, personally, want to do in that case? Pay the journal.

So who is going to pay the people working at the journal? Actually, I would be fine with a paywall for journal articles - let the reader pay. With one caveat, though: make the prices reasonable. 30 or 50 USD for a 10-page article? You bet that nobody who can get around paying that will pay. However, if you charge 10 or 15 USD - that would be much more reasonable.
And for things that are older than, say, 2 years? If the journals would just charge one or two dollars, you can bet that I would not take the trouble to get the article via the library, or maybe ask a friend who has access. I'd pay, just for the convenience of having it at once. Because it's not a high price, and I'd be comfortable in paying that. Probably a lot of other folks would think exactly the same, and do exactly the same.

Oh, and in my ideal world? The author should get 10% of the income that the article generates. Fair pay for the work that went into it.

Some mornings, even having "Blog" on my to-do list doesn't really help to get you a timely morning blog. I sit down at the computer and then I fall into a hole, doing something and being utterly gobbled up by that.

This morning, for example, I started out checking emails (as usual), writing a few short ones, and then the phone rang. Then I did my Czech lesson. And then had a bit of chat on Trillian for the current book project, and then I thought I'll just do one pomodoro's worth of work on the book right now so that I can send a file over to Australia. Which utterly enthralled me and now I'm in the second hour of work on it, and when taking a short break I suddenly realised that a) the bit of breakfast I had much earlier in the morning was not very much, and b) the blog post is yet unwritten.

So... there's the blog post. Of me telling you why it's late. And because that's not much to blog about, here are some things related to why it's late:

Pomodoro. After a long hiatus in this, I have re-activated the use of pomodoros as productivity aid yesterday. At the moment, it's mostly to make me stick with one subject for at least 25 minutes. It's nice to use this technique again, and it does help - I have gotten quite a bit of work done yesterday and today already.

Czech lesson. I've been at this for two weeks now, and I have the feeling I'm making good progress. Since I'm still quite happy with the programme, I will pass a link on to you. It's from Strokes International; they offer 24 languages (well, 22 if you want the course based in English, and counting English as second language), and you can test the first three lessons for free. They have some of the harder-to-get languages, such as Czech, Polish, Romanian, and you could even learn Japanese.
The programme has the usual problems of a computer language programme with speech recognition - sometimes you need to repeat a word a trillion times, sometimes you don't really know why it won't accept your pronounciation, and there is nobody telling you whether you are really off or whether it's a fluke in the speech recog. Still, it makes you speak a lot. It also makes you write a lot, in a not too nasty way. There are plenty of repetitions, plenty of pictures to help in learning, and a lot of "game-like" exercises such as a memory with the written term on one card, the picture on the other, and you get the spoken word for both as you flip them.
While there are a few small things that irk me (such as having to adjust the window size to my preference every time, and the programme not remembering that I want the keyboard picture at all times), I do enjoy the lessons and have the impression that yes, I am learning stuff, and not just in short-term memory - and that is the most important bit, after all. (I can memorise things quickly and easily for short term, which is nice, but not too helpful when it isn't settled into long-term brain storage, too.) For now, I can recommend it - and I hope it will stay that way!

Collaboration can be a wonderful thing. Collaboration can add new insights, different perspectives, throw up new questions and give answers that one person alone could never have found. Successful collaboration means being able to do something you alone would not be able to do.

Collaboration, if it works well, means less work and less re-inventing of the wheel for everyone involved. More efficiency. Plus the exhilaration that comes with the feeling of, for once, not being alone. Of having someone who pulls the weight with you, that you can carry the load together.

When it goes badly, however, having agreed on a collaboration means nothing but headaches, and heartaches, and the exact opposite of efficiency. There's the added bit of irony that the more a project could profit from collaboration, because each person in the team has expertise and knowledge and a specialty field that has little overlap with the others', the worse it will go and the more heartache it will cause if somebody drops out or does not deliver.

I have had both - the successful collaboration (thanks, colleagues!) and being left alone by drop-outs. It's unfortunate, and bad, and sad, when a collaboration dies. Bad enough when your colleagues tell you straight out that they have to stop working on the project, for a while or forever, because something came up that needs all their time and energy to handle.
It is much worse, though, if you do not get told this. If all of a sudden, communication just... stops, and you feel like you are talking to a wall. With no echo, even. And that is what I hate most about the drop-out thing - the silence. Silence regarding all your mails, all your attempts to get some communication back. You sit there and wonder whether something has happened - an email gone astray, an address going offline, something dire in the life of the other person - or if you really are just ignored, consistently and callously. Because obviously you don't even deserve a short mail saying "I got your mail, things are bad here, please go on without me, sorry."

I know, much too well, that sometimes one bites off more than one can chew. And I believe that either you manage, somehow, to deliver after all - maybe a bit later, maybe a little less elaborate and less brilliant work than your best - or you should own up to not being able to do it. Hell, there's nothing wrong with being honest and saying "sorry, I can't do this now after all". It is unfortunate, and sad, but it is at least some communication and a clear message, and either the project of the collaboration will then die a quiet little death or those remaining in the active team will know that they have to either leave that part of the field untilled or do the work themselves. Letting the others hang, not knowing what goes on? That's unfair.

Having been let hanging rather recently by more than one person, in more than one project, I am not sure when I will do another collaboration. It might be a good while - I am pretty sure, though, that I will not resist the lure forever. For the next time I get into it, though, I will try to remember the following before getting started:

- Make sure you have contact data to reach everyone in your team. Full contact data, as redundant as possible - not just a single email address. Get the full address, at least one alternative email addy if possible, and all phone numbers. You might never need them, and that's fine, but if someone goes MIA - you'll be glad you have them.

- Be clear on communication policies. Also make it clear that whenever in a project that there are problems it will be best for everyone to address these honestly and straightforward - up to and including dropping out or going dormant in the project due to issues of whatever kind.

- Get clear statements on who is in and who is not, and set clear deadlines within the project so everyone will (hopefully) deliver in time.

- Get sorted out, clearly, on who is to do which task, and in what time-frame. Get this communicated to everybody.

- Did I mention getting full contact data? Get full contact data of everybody while they still speak with you. Really.

Unfortunately and as I have learned, even being clear on deadlines and on communication and handing out specific tasks to others is no guarantee at all that things will, indeed, work out. So sadly, but most importantly: Have a Plan B ready for when all this fails, and you are left alone with no communication, no help, and a half-written paper that you don't have the skills, knowledge, or even literature to finish up on your own.

In German, the English term "team" has become pretty much a standard part of our language, and we use it a lot (it's shorter than "Arbeitsgruppe" or something with a similar meaning in German, you see?).
In German, there is also an only half-joking explanation of TEAM as an acronym, standing for "Toll, ein andrer macht's" (Great, someone else will do it). Yes. Well. I think I don't need to say more.

I perfectly know it's not Friday yet. But oh, how I wish it to be - even though there is lots to do still this week. (Or maybe exactly because of that?)

It's Thursday, though, and a stack of books is waiting for me in the library, a not insignificant number of them about Indigo dyeing. There was that resist-dye experiment last Textile Forum (you might remember), and I am currently writing up the artice about it. Which at some places requires a bit more research into why things happened the way they happened... hence I was ordering in literature.

Oh, and I'm writing up the article now because it is planned for publication in our second Textile Forum Proceedings volume. We are getting a second volume! I am still all feeling fluffy inside about that. Back in, oh, autumn 2008, when Sabine, Roeland and I sat in the pub on the last evening of the EXAR conference and Sabine and I said "we totally need to have a crafts-focused yearly conference for textile people" and "we sort of have the suspicion that if we don't go ahead and organise it, that will never happen" and Roeland said "I can set you up a contact with Eindhoven", neither of us would have thought to one day have a book with proceedings, let alone more than one. So yes, we are very, very happy about that.

So. Not Friday yet. More work. But happy work.

I have been skimming, reading and researching a heap of articles recently (processing them with the help of Qiqqa, as explained some time back).

Article databases and online journal repositories can be a wonderful way to lose a few hours, by a similar thing to the encyclopaedia effect - you sort of hop from one topic to a related one, and from one author to more of that author to another author... well. I think you all know how that ends. If you don't have access, though, it will most probably end in frustration - so many things, such high prices, so little chance to get at them.

One easy way to get article access is to get a library card from a friendly University library in your vicinity. But what if you do not live near one? For the Germans (or those living in Germany), there is good news: Everybody who has a permanent address in Germany can ask for participation in the Nationallizenzen scheme.

You register for this (stating, of course, your German address); then you get sent a letter with your login data. The Nationallizenzen access has a few restrictions, such as moving walls keeping you from the most recent publications and similar, but it's a very nice and convenient way to get at a huge number of articles and e-books that you otherwise would pay several arms and legs for.

So... hooray for access! And now I shall read some more articles. Because I can. (And because I need some more nice references and suggested further reading for, oh, still too many topics of that book project.)

I got an email comment regarding my post about publishing and money flow from last week - and it's probably worth it to go into a little more detail here.

There's three kinds of getting published - the kind where you get paid for (my favourite!), the kind where you don't see money, and the kind that you pay for yourself.

I've already written about what I think of paying for getting published. Now, for the record - I know that especially in academia, there are circumstances (like you have to get your thesis published, and it's such a fringe topic nobody will ever buy the book, probably) where you will end up paying for getting the book out. Personally, I think that is not good, and even unfair, and I would recommend that if you do need to get the book published with an ISBN number and stuff, try to find a publisher that will offer you decent conditions, or look into PoD and BoD services. (If you feel that you really want to cough up a lot of money just so some big-name academia publishing house's name and logo graces the spine of your book which will technically be on the market but cost a shitload of money so only libraries, if they, will buy it, feel free to do so. Myself, I have a strong opinion on things like that, which you can probably guess from what I have written so far.)

This leaves the two other options for consideration: publishing for free, and getting money for it. I will start with my favourite option. You write a book, you invest a lot of time and money, and nerves, and probably shed some tears or at least metaphorical tears, and wiggle so much on your seat you have pants-wear-and-tear to pay for, and all the black pixels in your computer get all worn out, and so on. You hand the book on to a publishing house, and they wear out some more pixels and chase around electrons and do stuff with ink and paper and advertisement designers and stuff. And then they do maths, and calculations, and then they send out a book, a real honest physical book that smells like newly printed paper, to bookshops and sellers and other people. The publisher deserves money for their work, and the booksellers need to buy their food and pay their rent, and the printing costs money and the warehousing too, so there's not so much money left once that's all paid for and done - but the author has also invested time and effort, a not inconsiderable amount of that, and that should also be rewarded with money. Not just with the good feeling of having a book out (because that won't pay the rent for the author either). I am not expecting the book revenue to add up to a honest freelancing hourly wage, and about every author out there will probably tell you that you have to write really well and really much and really fast to make a half-decent living off writing, and that is for novels and not for science books too - but I would very much like to have something coming in onto my bank account telling me that what I did is appreciated, and rewarded, and I will be able to go have some moderately priced sushi once a year, at the very least.

Now, if you are writing a PhD thesis or something similar, maybe in an esoteric out-there field that you love and few other people even know that it exists... you will have a hard time finding a publishing house that offers you money for it. When I was starting out to write my PhD, I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to publish it in a "normal", not a purely academic, publishing house. So from the very start, I tailored my writing towards that goal - and I was lucky on many counts with that: having a topic that does lend itself to being published regularly (since there is enough interest in that topic in the public), having supervisors who appreciated the style and voice in the writing and did not insist on "academese", finding a wonderfully supportive editor and a good, solid publishing house, and last but not least getting additional funding from VG Wort which made publishing the book at that price possible.

However, I have also written and published for free, plenty of times. All the articles that I have written? There was not a penny passed towards me. That is the third case, and it's the common method in academia - you publish, but you don't get paid.

Here's a snippet of the mail I received:

It does overlap your other articles on a fair price for craft though. By doing it for free am I lowering the costs for everyone? But by not doing it for free it wouldn't get done! The 'payment' I'm getting is things that money can't buy: I enjoy it, can see the longterm benefits from it (my work/ideas/research findings are published, I've gained experience, a reputation, it leaves the door of academia open and improves my ability to get in there later).

Ah, yes. I have firm principles in some areas of my life, and I have wishes that I know will not become true in others - and publishing (academic) articles and getting paid for them is definitely in the "I wish" category.
As in many things in Real Life (TM), there are shades of grey and not just black and white to things; and for some of the folks writing and publishing without getting pay for the article, it's not really an investment of time with nothing in return. If I am doing research and am getting paid for it, I have already been paid for my work - publishing for free is not working for free, in that case. If I am publishing without getting paid in money, I am (as mentioned above) getting non-monetary things back too: an article more to my name, my ideas get spread, maybe I can inspire some nice fruitful dialogue, some research gets furthered. For a freelancer, getting your name known better may be the difference between getting hired for things or not - so I could see it as an investment in a (very special) kind of advertisment for myself.
In my personal case, it might also enable me to get some copies of the book for re-selling, so I still have the chance of making a bit of money after all. What really bugs me a bit, though, is having published an article for free and then seeing said article as the online version with a really hefty price tag on it. Yes, there are costs to the publishing house - but sometimes these prices just seem unrealistically high to me.

But if you don't submit to this? We are, as academics, living in a culture where as a rule you publish your research and articles without getting money from the publishing house. You may get offprints or reduced prices for the printed article, but there is no money flow toward the author; in some cases, there is even Unlawful Flow according to Yog. Publishing for no money is not a too big deal for those who get paid for their research work, as much or all of that writing time is already paid for; it is, however, a serious investment of time with no direct revenue for an independent researcher. So the question is, in some way: can you afford to publish? On the other hand you cannot afford not to publish - to keep in the loop, to keep your doors open should you wish to stay or return to classic academia, to build up your reputation. And to get your research findings out - because unpublished research is a kind of a waste, too.
Best for publication is thus something that will get widely known, not just an obscure little place in the Internet, or a small regional journal that will be very hard to get in a few years' time, if you actually manage to learn that something of interest was published in there.
And the big names of journals? The ones that get read widely, and have a high impact? Those are often the real pricey ones, where you have a hefty price tag on each single article - even the nonprinted e-version.

So if I get the opportunity to publish an article about the Spinning Experiment in a big, widely-read journal - I take a deep breath, and the opportunity.

Have you published your research for free? How do you feel about that situation, and the question of money flow? Please let me (and your fellow readers) know in the comments - I'd love to hear your opinion!

It's hard to believe, but this post is actually number 1000 in this blog. Time for a celebration!

I have no pic of fireworks, but this one is a blooming Chili, and it will have to do as a celebratory pic:

It's amazing, really. One thousand posts...

Thank you for reading this blog - and here's to the next one thousand posts.