Tuesday 15 January 2013

Corrected entry (February 12): FRAMEWORK: The Journal of Cinema and Media

'Snakes&Funerals' by Emily Jeremiah, James S. Williams and Gillian Wylde. Taking Jean-Luc Godard’s canonic film Le Mépris / Contempt (1963) as a starting-point, Snakes&Funerals set out to explore the queer possibilities of image and sound, especially of colour and of ‘straight’ repetition. First published in Frames, Issue 1, July 2012.

Film Studies For Free [thought it had] had a lovely surprise today. It found, through Google Scholar, that NINE full issues of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media (including the most recent five issues) were freely accessible through the Digital Commons of its publisher Wayne State University Press. It jumped to the pleasing conclusion (encouraged by the use of the word Commons + free access), that this great journal had turned to open access publishing.

Then, on February 11, FSFF received a very courteously worded email with the following message from a very nice representative of Wayne State University Press:

Unfortunately, this journal is not open access, and we have no plans to make it so at this time. I'm writing to you so that you have the correct information about Framework


When you visited the site, BePress (administrator of Digital Commons) had not yet activated the toll-access barrier to the journal content. That was an error on our part, one that we have since rectified. Those who click on the links you have posted on your blog will not be able to download the article for free. Instead, a $5 fee is charged before access is granted. I apologize for the confusion [...].
$5 is much, much cheaper than most traditional "gated" online academic publication access, for sure. But FSFF must apologise to its readers -- who, up until a short while ago, will have been able to access contents for free -- for drawing a premature conclusion.

2 comments:

Hrishikesh Ingle said...

This is such a great post. I had been searching to have a look at ISSUE 45 for so long !! Thanks a lot Digital Commons, WSUP, Katherine and hope that Framework remains openly accessible...

Catherine Grant said...

Sorry Hrishikesh! Hope you got what you needed before the toll went up!