Message from the Grassroots: Scholarly Communication, Crisis, and Contradictions

Librarians have responded to the decades-long “serials crisis” with a common narrative and a range of responses that have failed to challenge the ideology and structures that caused it. Using Walter Rodney’s theory of the guerilla intellectual, we critically examine the dominant understanding of this so-called crisis and emphasize the role that capital plays within it. The imperial nature of scholarly journal publishing and some of its many contradictions are discussed. “Transformative” agreements receive special attention as a hyper-capitalist manifestation of these contradictions at the heart of commercial publishing. The politics of refusal are one response to the commercialism, prestige, and power imbalances that drive the academic publishing system. Highlighting the differences between refusal and reform, this paper explores the protagonistic role that librarians can play in a protracted struggle within and beyond the confines of our profession. This paper is intended to move beyond the traditional discourse of laying blame solely at the feet of the academic publishing oligopoly and expounds on the bourgeois academy’s use of knowledge production for capital accumulation.