I’m seeing a lot of conferences now that result in edited volumes. This might be an easy way to start a high quality open access publication.
Suppose we set up some kind of society (e.g. The Society for Open Access Philosophy) to throw a yearly summer philosophy conference. The process for getting into the conference would have to be highly selective. We want the screening to be as good as the screening for a high-quality, peer-review journal. So, I think we’d need a review board of established, highly regarded philosophers.
The purpose of the conference would be two-fold. First, it would be a workshop for these high quality papers. Second, it would be a kind of meeting space for people interested in open-access philosophy. Hopefully, it would forge connections that would lead to other open-access projects. ]
After the conference, participants would have some set time to revise their papers. The papers (or some sub-set of them) would be published in a yearly volume. Each paper would be available as it’s own PDF on some website.
As an added treat, the collection of papers could be made available through a self-publishing press (see here for more on that idea). Philosophers would be able to purchase a bound copy of this edited volume at a fraction of the cost of current edited volumes, and the 80% profit share could be distributed among the authors as a kind of reward for supporting open access philosophy.
Why does publication cost so much anyway? Shouldn’t journals be able to operate nearly for free over the Internet, and then have no reason not to be totally open-access? (creative commons even)