Open Commensal Publishing simply means that anyone should have a right to publish --- without either commercial , professional or academic gatekeepers pre-censoring that right.
Laws of Libel still apply.
And peer (and non-peer) reviews still happen under this approach --- as they do now, after publication --- whether that publication was pre-vetted or not.
Self published works , to many of us alert to typos and woefully inaccurate fact-reporting , seem to be no better and no worse than the work published after vetting by commercial editors, press gallery journalists with journalism degrees, and by academic editors and pre-publication academic reviewers.
The best have never needed a commercial publisher , a journalism degree , tenure or a PhD to be able to contribute to a culture's intellectual life.
The second-best, however, do.
They need that validation, to reside behind the wagons of some sort of aristocracy - to feel proud to be inside its closed commensal publishing, to be able to offer up whatever it is that they are capable of.
Too too often professionalism is merely the last refuge of the second best.
I have never sought that refuge but I also number myself as one of those second best, as perhaps you are too.
We second best and second rate never can tell where the true flashes of untutored and unfettered genius will briefly emerge and then vanish ---- and we can't afford to stifle any of them , not with the state this planet is in right now.
Open Commensal Publishing is simply the Cabinet of All the Talents needed to address our current global crisis ....
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