The Distributed Journal as Counter-Infrastructure is a call for authors to create journal-like publication clusters through open repository metadata, shared titles, identifiers, keywords, and cross-citation.
The document argues that retrieval systems increasingly encounter openly available, structured records more readily than paywalled scholarship. Its proposed submission mechanism is direct deposit: create an openly accessible artifact, assign persistent author and work identifiers, enter a shared journal name, link existing cluster members, and publish without prepublication gatekeeping.
Four Archive journals are named: Transactions of the Semantic Economy Institute, Grammata, Provenance, and the Journal of Compression Studies. Each receives a scope, diagnostic questions, existing anchors, and example submissions.
The proposal substitutes post-deposit reception for selection. Citation, retrieval, cluster density, and Encyclotron audit are described as forms of review. The journal is a metadata-coordinated pattern rather than a legal organization or editorial corporation.
Version 2.0 adds urgency, stronger citation instructions, examples, proof-of-concept discussion, objections, and a guide for forking new journals.
Record #972 is explicitly a duplicate of another v2.0 deposit. Its restored body is useful as a manifestation witness, but it is not the canonical version node.