Friday, August 7

Academic Gatekeeping: Who has the Power?

The recent flurry of discussion about two publications with Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education brings back thoughts about academic gatekeeping. Who decides what gets to be published? Who decides what doesn't? Those people on editorial boards define what is 'knowledge' in our field. Ladd (2003) discussed that this kind of control over 'knowledge' is very dangerous, especially for historically oppressed communities such as ours.

Donna, Heidi and I wrote about academic gatekeeping in this publication about sign language research in sign language communities with Sign Language Studies (soon to be produced in ASL).

Our article was originally turned down by the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education after two very intense revising sessions, and to this day, I can not forget one reviewer's comment about our article: "too anti-hearing".

I thought this pictorial comic perfectly describes the beauty of online access / open access for all of us, especially for our visual language.

(click on image to enlarge)