[GOAL] Re: RE : Re: A creature of its own making?
Jean-Claude Guédon
jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca
Thu Dec 31 14:19:24 GMT 2015
Thank you, Yves. This was exactly my point, and I have been making it
for quite a few years.
Three decimals are completely unwarranted.
This is how Garfield puts it himself:
"ISI uses three decimal places to reduce the number of journals with the
identical impact rank. It matters very little whether the impact of
JAMA is quoted as 21.5 rather than
21.455" (http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/jifchicago2005.pdf
on p. 5). He stated this ten years ago. Only ten years...
Now the real question is: why do we want to avoid identical impact rank?
Yves Gingras' answer is perfectly correct: impact factors make rankings
possible. But it also produces a particular kind of ranking - one with
little chance of having equally ranked journals. It produces a "strict"
ranking, exactly as rankings became strict among sprinters when time
measurements went down to the one-hundredth of a second - never mind
that the nervous influx of human beings stands at the one-to-two tenths
of a second... However, with one-tenth of a second, we had too many
world champions and "progress" was not fast enough.
Why are equally ranked journals avoided? Because strict rankings makes
the competition all that more intense.
Why is intense competition favoured? because, as a general management
tool, competition is wonderfully effective for the managers. It
disciplines competitors most wonderfully. The problem is that effective
tools for managers are not necessarily effective for research. They may
even be counter-productive For example, too much stress on strict
rankings and competition can lead to cheating - a situation most
journals do not like to speak about. Michael Gibbons, the former
Secretary of Commonwealth Universities, argues years ago that too much
competition among the elements of a system may weaken the whole system.
And with such intense competition, how can anyone accuse "academia" of
throwing money away like a bunch of boobies? The research segment of
academia has little choice in the matter, and publishers wield this
covert leverage device with great skills. University managers might be
somewhat to blame but they, themselves, are caught in the world rankings
of universities. Yves Gingras, again, has written an interesting article
in La Recherche showing, for example, that the Shanghai rankings itself
is not scientific. For those who can read French, the URL is:
(http://www.larecherche.fr/savoirs/politique/classement-shanghai-n-est-pas-scientifique-01-05-2009-88514).
Once this is understood, most of the pieces to understand the present,
dismal, state of scientific publishing fall into place. And academia is
not the main culprit; it is the main victim. And it pays dearly for it
(not in money only, one might add).
"Kind regards"
jcg
--
Jean-Claude Guédon
Professeur titulaire
Littérature comparée
Université de Montréal
Le mardi 29 décembre 2015 à 16:40 +0000, Gingras, Yves a écrit :
> Hello all
>
> Jean-Claude asks:
>
> "5. Why are impact factors always provided with three decimals?
> Answer: Far from clear."
>
> I think the answer is easy to find: its function is to make rankings possible. As I show in my boo, Les dérives de l'évaluation de la recherche: du bon usage de la bibliométrie (Paris, 2014), p. 71 ; f you use only one digit (9, 8, 7, etc) nearly all journals have the same rank! For the case of economics journals, for example, 31 are equal à IF=2.. and 118 have IF=1. If you use 2 digits (say 3.1) you still have eighteen journals equal at 1.1.... So, despite the fact that a thermometer telling you it is 20,055 degrees would be laughed at, it seems that scientists take the Impact factor seriously...
>
> Happy New year!
>
> Yves Gingras
> ________________________________________
> De : goal-bounces at eprints.org [goal-bounces at eprints.org] de la part de Guédon Jean-Claude [jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca]
> Date d'envoi : 29 décembre 2015 09:21
> À : Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Objet : [GOAL] Re: A creature of its own making?
>
> There are some things that I agree with in Jan Velterop's post. The temporary dimension of both flipping journals from the oligarchs and hybrid journals is a welcomed prediction, although I believe its end will have more to do with funders' attitudes and librians than with publishers.
>
> There are other sections in Jan Velterop's comments that I am far less at ease with, in particular the question of journal brands. While I agree about the iconolotry or idolatry of journal brands, there remains to analyze how it is constructed. This is not simply a spontaneous reaction of researchers to a situation bequeathed on the 8th day of Creation...
>
> 1. What does the brand rely on?
>
> Answer: the impact factor.
>
> 2. Who manages the impact factor (or equivalents)?
>
> Answer: Thomson-Reuters
>
> 3. What is the impact factor for:
>
> Answer: managing the competition among journals by a) creating a confusion between quality and visibility, and b) by creating a kind of permanent visibility race for all journals selected by Thomson-Reuters. Those not selected by Tjhomson-Reuters are simply forgotten, including by specialists of scientometrics who, routinely, limit their research to where they have some fix - whatever fix - on some form of measurement, however bizarre the measured set may have been constructed.
>
> 4. How does Thomson-Reuters select journals?
>
> Answer: ???? The answer is sometimes given as if it were based on quality, but this does not work since the impact factor does not measure quality; this kind of answer simply feeds into the confusion between quality and visibility.
>
> 5. Why are impact factors always provided with three decimals?
>
> Answer: Far from clear. Garfield admitted once it was to avoid having two journals with the same impact factor (!!!). This can be easily interpreted as a way to exacerbate the sense of competition among journals. And we know how far some journals are ready to go to manipulate impact factor results.
>
> 6. Are impact factors used only to evaluate journals' quality?
>
> Answer: First of all, impact factors do not evaluate quality, but, rather, visibility (see above). Second of all, impact factors usage has been illegitimately extended to individuals and institutions. As both researchers and institutions are constantly evaluated through rankings, impact factors have become the basic metric to manage a single, generalized system of competition. Researchers are evaluated according to where they publish (and not how good their publication is), and institutions nowadays are commonly ranked according to a variety of criteria that include where their researchers publish. Institutions, as a result, reward (in a wide variety of ways, may it be added) those who publish in the right places. The whole business is routinely described as the quest for "excellence" which is basically correct if we remember that excellence is identified by competition and not by quality.
>
> The whole system acts like a mad extension of the (faulty) Spencerian interpretation of the Darwinian's principle of natural selection. Let us remember that when a lion hunts a herd of antelopes, the lion's success means identying either the weakest one or the unluckiest one among the antelopes; in no case does it help identify the gold, silver and bronze medals of the herd. And surviving such a hunting session is not akin to increasing one's market share of whatever... (for those who think that science works like neo-liberal economics).
>
> Research institutions and funding agencies rely on a generalized system of competition to manage whatever they try to manage. Amusingly, research institutions have themselves been caught in this mad ranking context (Shangaï), thus forgetting that the only ones who profit from rankings are those who organize them.
>
> The generalized system of competition has gained a kind of simplistic rhetorical advantage because it presents itself, in the last analysis, as a number (notwithstanding the three enigmatic decimals). Numbers are numbers, "cannot be disagreed with" and, therefore, are ruthlessly efficient to handle managerial decisions, from the level of labs to that of national ministries.
>
> Meanwhile, publishers who have patiently built these elements in their business model - hail Robert Maxwell who even tried to force Garfield to give up the Science Citation Index through a suit - are coyly touting the impact factor of their journals (with three decimals, still, and still as enigmatic as ever), thus reinforcing the de facto standard value of the impact factor in the eyes of many.
>
> There is only one last detail lacking to get the system really and totally sewn up by a monopoly: tie up the publishing sector with the impact factor into one single entity. Scopus moves in this direction and, symmetrically, Thomson-Reuters explores publishing possibilities, starting with emerging countries. Once one of these oligarchs manages to be both judge and party, then we can really begin to tremble.
>
> So, it is not that academia "throws" money at publishers like a bunch of boobies; it is that they are caught in a kind of generalized rat race from which they do not know how to free themselves. This is because the principle of this perverse form of generalized competition hinges upon reputation and, as R. K. Merton demonstrated decades ago, the "communalism" of researchers is based on exchanging freely the results of their research for symbolic capital. The problem is that the symbolic currency that presently dominates is intellectual funny money. Publishers know it, but their profit depends on it; researchers tend to know it (more or less), but they have to submit to the rules of the game and have little real choice; funders believe it and often help enforce it; research administrators sort of know it but find it convenient to go along, while deploring what is happening to their library budgets; librarians, meanwhile, try to pay and satisfy everybody at once.
>
> Jean-Claude Guédon
>
> ________________________________
> De : goal-bounces at eprints.org [goal-bounces at eprints.org] de la part de Velterop [velterop at gmail.com]
> Envoyé : lundi 28 décembre 2015 15:49
> À : Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Objet : [GOAL] Re: A creature of its own making?
>
> There's much that I agree with in Richard's post. I can only see 'flipping' and hybrid journals as temporary measures – though quite possibly necessary ones – in the reform scientific communication will have to undergo in the longer run. I regard the academic iconolatry, even idolatry, exhibited towards journal brands as damaging to scientific communication. Hybrid journals enable the veneration, as Richard calls it, to continue. And with that, of course, comes the monopoloid position journals find themselves in that allows them to exploit the perceived academic needs, resulting in excessive cost of the whole publishing system. You can't really blame the publishers for much of what's going on. Of course they defend their money-spinning operations, but what they do largely comes down to picking up the money that academia throws at them. They are not the root of the problem, they are merely a symptom.
>
> Jan Velterop
>
> On 28/12/2015 16:07, Richard Poynder wrote:
>
> On journal “flipping”:
>
> Jean-Claude Guédon’s comments on journal “flipping” that I referred to were
> made in the context of the Max Planck Society’s proposal to flip commercial
> subscription journals to OA business models. I can only repeat that in the
> long run this will benefit legacy publishers like Elsevier far more than it
> will ever benefit the research community.
>
> The same dangers are inherent in the various OA Big Deals that the Dutch
> Universities (through VSNU) have been agreeing with publishers like Wiley,
> Springer and Elsevier. Since important details of how these deals will work
> (and what they will cost) appear to be subject to NDAs it is hard to say
> with confidence, but the end game would seem to be much the same: journal
> flipping.
>
> On animus:
>
> What Jean-Claude’s criticism of large publishers like Elsevier and Wiley
> omits is the role that the research community has played in their rise to
> power, a role that it continues to play. In fact, not only has the research
> community been complicit in the rise and rise of the publishing oligarchy
> that Jean-Claude so deprecates, but one could argue that it created it —
> i.e. this oligarchy is a creature of its own making.
>
> After all, it is the research community that funds these publishers, it is
> the research community that submits papers to these publishers (and signs
> over copyright in the process), and it is the research community that
> continues to venerate the brands (essentially a product of the impact
> factor) that allow these publishers to earn the high profits that
> Jean-Claude decries.
>
> And by now seeking to flip this oligarchy’s journals to OA the research
> community appears to be intent on perpetuating its power (and doubtless
> profits).
>
> One might therefore want to suggest that Jean-Claude’s animus is
> misdirected.
>
> Richard Poynder
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org> [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf
> Of Guédon Jean-Claude
> Sent: 27 December 2015 17:43
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org><mailto:goal at eprints.org>
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: "Let them pay or let them wait"
>
> It all depends on how the flipping is done. Flipping a journal, especially
> if the title is not owned by the publisher, can be done in such a way as to
> avoid benefiting the (big) publishers. The general rule claimed by Richard
> Poynder is inaccurate. Incidentally, for me, an OA journal should be free
> to users, and gratis to authors. Full stop.
>
> As for any animus against Elsevier and the other big, commercial,
> international members of the publishing oligarchy, I will readily admit to
> it: when I see the extreme budgetary problems of our libraries, the tactics
> used to undermine important public projects such as Scielo, the 30-40%
> rates of profit of the oligarchs, the abuse and manipulations of impact
> factors, etc., I do not see how one cannot exert some degree of animus...I
> have witnessed at close range how Wiley behaved with the library of my
> university when the latter resolved to unravel the big deal with that
> particular oligarch. This event alone would be good enough a reason to
> express animus toward the oligarchs.
>
> Alicia Wise, indeed, closely adheres to the forms of politeness. Alas form
> has never been a good way to guarantee substance. It is not enough to sign
> "kind regards" to ensure true kindness.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Jean-Claude Guédon
>
>
> ________________________________________
> De : goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org> [goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org>] de la part de
> Richard Poynder [ricky at richardpoynder.co.uk<mailto:ricky at richardpoynder.co.uk>] Envoyé : jeudi 24 décembre 2015
> 14:45 À : 'Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)'
> Objet : [GOAL] Re: "Let them pay or let them wait"
>
> God forbid that I should find myself defending a for-profit publisher, and
> God forbid that I should charge anyone with speaking with a forked tongue,
> but I cannot help but think that OA advocates sometimes allow their animus
> towards Elsevier (and its employees) to get the better of their good wisdom.
>
> I also cannot help but point out that on a separate mailing Jean-Claude
> Guédon has been arguing that "flipping" subscription journals to OA models
> is as valid a way of achieving open access as self-archiving. Yet, flipping
> subscription journals will in the long run benefit legacy publishers like
> Elsevier far more than it will ever benefit the research community.
>
> That aside, I am not aware that Alicia Wise has ever been anything other
> than polite to members of this list. It does not show open access in a good
> light that every time she posts to the list her comments generate the kind
> of response we see below.
>
> Richard Poynder
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org> [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf
> Of Guédon Jean-Claude
> Sent: 24 December 2015 17:32
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org><mailto:goal at eprints.org>
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: "Let them pay or let them wait"
>
> Hear! Hear!
>
> Alicia Wise always speaks with a forked tongue! I wonder how much she is
> paid to practise this dubious art.
>
> Self-archiving as described by Stevan is the right way to go.
>
> Happy holidays to all those exploited by Elsevier!
>
> Jean-Claude Guédon
>
>
> ________________________________
> De : goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org> [goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org>] de la part de
> Stevan Harnad [amsciforum at gmail.com<mailto:amsciforum at gmail.com>] Envoyé : mercredi 23 décembre 2015
> 08:18 À : Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Objet : [GOAL] "Let
> them pay or let them wait"
>
> On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 2:42 AM, Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF)
> <A.Wise at elsevier.com<mailto:A.Wise at elsevier.com><mailto:A.Wise at elsevier.com><mailto:A.Wise at elsevier.com>> wrote:
> Hi Thomas -
>
> All our authors, no matter where in the world they are, have both gold and
> green Open Access publishing options.
>
> With best wishes for a peaceful and relaxing holiday season,
>
> Alicia
> Elsevier Limited. Registered Office: The Boulevard, Langford Lane,
> Kidlington, Oxford, OX5 1GB, United Kingdom, Registration No. 1982084,
> Registered in England and Wales.
>
> Translation of Alicia’s Xmas message:
>
> "Let them pay (gold fees) or let them wait (green embargoes)."
>
> I add only that they can (if they have any sense at all) completely ignore
> all of Elsevier’s absurd, incoherent, and ever-changing
> double-talk<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?serendipity%5Baction%5D=
> search&serendipity%5BsearchTerm%5D=systematic&serendipity%5BsearchButton%5D=
> %3E><http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?serendipity%5Baction%5D=search&serendipity%5BsearchTerm%5D=systematic&serendipity%5BsearchButton%5D=%3E> about green and make their refereed, revised final drafts green OA
> immediately upon acceptance for publication -- by self-archiving them.
>
> With best wishes for a peaceful and relaxing holiday season,
>
> Stevan
>
> On 22 Dec 2015, at 17:39, Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou
> <thomasmboa at gmail.com<mailto:thomasmboa at gmail.com><mailto:thomasmboa at gmail.com><mailto:thomasmboa at gmail.com>> wrote:
> On this post,
>
> http://www.scidev.net/global/publishing/news/elsevier-african-open-access-jo
> urnal.html,
>
> Elsevier plans an African Open Journals, using the Gold voice. But for me,
> it is not the right way for us (Africa).
>
> I want all GOAL members to join me in an open letter adressed to Elsevier,
> with the objective to claim the full green voice for Africa.
>
> Since I am an African searcher, your support will be helpful
>
>
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