As promised, a link to how Lawrence Lessig’s decision to bail on restrictive academic publishers resonates close to home. In Otherwise Engaged, Alex writes:

Refusing to publish under restrictive agreements is a good option for senior academics with tenured positions at prestigious universities — academics whose future does not hinge on each publishing opportunity, in other words. But for junior academics, the price of challenging copyright can be much higher.

I recently withdrew from a forthcoming “Handbook on Internet Security”, to be published by Wiley Publishing, because the publishing agreement required me to relinquish my copyright. Given that the contribution was to be based on core material from my dissertation — which like many recent Ph.D.s, I hope to publish in fuller form — there were practical as well as principled reasons to refuse to sign the agreement. But if I were on the academic job market or in a tenure-track position, that foregone publication opportunity would be an advantage lost. Junior academics simply can’t afford to turn down publication opportunities.