[GOAL] Re: [Open-access] Re: Hitler, Mother Teresa, and Coke

Wed Nov 7 21:18:54 GMT 2012

Sure, career is nothing bad in itself, but if "career survival" is the 
primary motivation and the main factor that drives ones' decisions - as 
hypothesised in your blog post - then its proper name is "careerism".

Changing the system is a responsibility of everyone: every scholar - 
senior or junior - who cares about doing good science. For some reasons 
(experience, reputation) senior scholars have more power to make 
changes, but on the other hand, junior scholars have more fresh ideas on 
what could be done and more skills (entrepreneurial, programming etc.) 
to do this.

Definitely, some senior scholars feel fine in the current system and can 
be afraid of changes, although I'd be careful with generalizing this 
statement to all senior faculty. On this mailing list alone there are 
many senior academics who strive for changes and have done a lot to 
change the system - without their efforts we would have 1% open access 
today rather than 20%.

-Marcin

On 11/07/2012 06:52 PM, Eric F. Van de Velde wrote:
> Marcin said:
> The statement that "scholars publish for prestige" is an euphemism for 
> "scholars are careerists who care more about tenure than quality and 
> meaningfulness of their research". I don't believe this.
>
>
> I most definitely do not believe that myself for a minute. I don't do 
> euphemisms. The young and untenured need to publish in prestigious 
> journals for career survival. I don't see why that needs to be turned 
> into the negative "careerism". If you want to be a researcher, you 
> need a compelling cv. Publications are a big part of that.
>
> Changing the system should primarily be a responsibility of senior 
> faculty and university administrators. Unfortunately, they are 
> beneficiaries of the current system, give it more value than it 
> deserves, and are probably too cautious in their attempts to change it.
> --Eric.
>
> http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com
>
> Google Voice: (626) 898-5415
> Telephone:      (626) 376-5415
> Skype: efvandevelde -- Twitter: @evdvelde
> E-mail: eric.f.vandevelde at gmail.com <mailto:eric.f.vandevelde at gmail.com>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 1:56 PM, Marcin Wojnarski 
> <marcin.wojnarski at tunedit.org <mailto:marcin.wojnarski at tunedit.org>> 
> wrote:
>
>     Eric's distinction between publishing for communication or for
>     prestige is quite thought-provoking, if not provocative. Does
>     anyone have an idea how many authors fall to each group? What's
>     more important for majority of academics: communication or
>     prestige? ...
>
>     I think there's a misconception regarding prestige and its real
>     significance. This issue has been raised many times recently in
>     discussions about OA: the frequently repeated claim, expressed
>     also by Eric in his blog post, is that _scholars publish for
>     prestige_ (and for: high metrics, tenure, "exposition", benefits,
>     rewards, incentives, ...) - that's why adoption of OA is slow and
>     costs of traditional journals are high. Do you think this claim is
>     true?
>
>     I don't.
>
>     The statement that "scholars publish for prestige" is an euphemism
>     for "scholars are careerists who care more about tenure than
>     quality and meaningfulness of their research". I don't believe
>     this. I don't believe that majority of academics are careerists
>     who don't care if their papers are read by anybody. Suggesting
>     that entire academic communication is nothing else but a PR bubble
>     (prestige! prestige!) driven by primitive rules of social
>     darwinism - is not just totally wrong, but also offending to
>     academia. Maybe 5% of academics are careerists, the other 95% are
>     extremely interested in whether their papers have _real_ impact or
>     not ("real" in contrast to "measured by IF"). I mean: they have a
>     deep _hope_ that their research will ultimately have an impact.
>     I'm convinced that this hope accounts for at least 90% of
>     motivation of those people for becoming a scientist and doing
>     laborious research job that's compensated with a half or 1/3 of
>     what's paid for similar skills outside academia.
>
>     The key problem is that prestige of the journal and size+quality
>     of potential audience for the paper - are correlated. Every author
>     who respects his own work seeks as large and reputable audience as
>     possible - not for prestige (!) but for the ability to communicate
>     own discoveries to people who are able to understand, appreciate
>     and make use of them. That's why authors must rely on prestiguous
>     journals even if prestige itself has no value for them! (BTW,
>     looking at the society as a whole, I think scientists are the
>     people with _least_ respect for prestige, compared to any other
>     community).
>
>     The way to change the situation is by decoupling communication
>     potential of journals from their perceived prestige; and by
>     enhancing visibility of small, niche, low-prestige journals. The
>     focus must be on communication, community and readers; not on
>     prestige.
>
>     -Marcin
>
>     -- 
>     Marcin Wojnarski, Founder and CEO, TunedIT
>     http://tunedit.org
>     http://www.facebook.com/TunedIT
>     http://twitter.com/wojnarski
>     http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcinwojnarski
>
>     TunedIT - Online Laboratory for Intelligent Algorithms
>
>
>
>     On 11/06/2012 09:58 AM, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
>>     Copied only to the OKFN open-access list.
>>
>>     It may be useful to consider the question: "what can we do to
>>     change the situation?" - the OKF has a strong tradition of
>>     building things to change the world. The distinction between
>>     publishing for communication and publishing for reputation is
>>     valuable. Maybe by changing and improving the former (which I
>>     think OKFN is well placed to do) we can separate them.
>>
>>     On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 8:23 AM, Leslie Carr <lac at ecs.soton.ac.uk
>>     <mailto:lac at ecs.soton.ac.uk>> wrote:
>>
>>         Publishers are capitalists - I don't think they'd argue the
>>         point.
>>
>>
>>     This is a generalization. Many learned societies and scientific
>>     unions are not capitalists.
>>
>>     -- 
>>     Peter Murray-Rust
>>     Reader in Molecular Informatics
>>     Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
>>     University of Cambridge
>>     CB2 1EW, UK
>>     +44-1223-763069 <tel:%2B44-1223-763069>
>>
>>
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>
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-- 
Marcin Wojnarski, Founder and CEO, TunedIT
http://tunedit.org
http://www.facebook.com/TunedIT
http://twitter.com/wojnarski
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcinwojnarski

TunedIT - Online Laboratory for Intelligent Algorithms

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