The commons, the battle of the book and the cracked enclosures of academic publishing

Contention about the ownership of texts and what we now know as copyright stretches back to at least the sixth century and the controversial copying of a biblical script by the Irish monk Colm Cille that resulted in the Battle of the Book. This article traces how my coeditors and I stumbled into this ongoing battle in our efforts to ensure this Supplement to the Community Development Journal on the commons would be freely available on the knowledge commons. Describing our search for cracks in the pay walls that commodify and enclose much publicly subsidised research that should be common knowledge, paradoxes in the current drive in academic publishing towards Open Access are considered, including its potential closing down of the publication of non-funded independent research.