[GOAL] [SCHOLCOMM] On Academic Freedom

[Couture, Marc]

Jennifer wrote :

>
In terms of restricting where one may publish, doesn't the usual institutional tenure and promotion policy do that as well, if more subtly? There are definite expectations of where one may publish, as I understand it. (Not being tenure-track myself.)
>

That's right on point (same for the rest of Jennifer's post).

While all agree that academic freedom includes the freedom to choose one's research topics and to disseminate the results, there is much variation among organisations and individual researchers as to the exact meaning of this freedom, particularly its extent in practice. For instance, Manan, cited by Karran and Mallinson (2017, p. 6; http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/26811) points out that "there are professors who used academic freedom as a weapon to defend themselves from their performance being evaluated by the academic community". These would certainly, on the same basis, object to the rules (implicit or explicit) you allude requiring publication in peer-reviewed journals, or in a certain class or category of them. However, few have done so, and I don't think they have had any success, even if one may argue that it's what AAUP's "full freedom in the publication of the results" means.

As I explained in a previous post, the use of academic freedom as an argument is justified, in my opinion, when it's a condition for "doing science right", meaning in the interests of the scientific community and/or the public. It would be perfectly justified if a rule or decision has the potential to make certain topics impossible to pursue, or certain results impossible to disseminate. For instance, were universities to enforce their copyright on the works of their professors (which they most probably own, at least in certain jurisdictions), that would be in real conflict with academic freedom, because they would be able to decide if a given work can be published, or if a part of it should be removed.

But if we go further than that, for instance the freedom to choose any journal, I think it's more fruitful to discuss the issues at hand, in this case first and foremost the hierarchy (or "prestige economy") of journals, instead of trying to ascertain if a rule or a decision is in conflict with a certain definition or interpretation of academic freedom.

Marc Couture

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De : scholcomm-request at lists.ala.org [mailto:scholcomm-request at lists.ala.org] De la part de Jennifer Heise
Envoyé : 26 mars 2018 10:38
À : SANFORD G THATCHER
Cc : Danny Kingsley; scholcomm; goal at eprints.org
Objet : Re: [SCHOLCOMM] On Academic Freedom

I have some questions in relation to these assertions:

I'm unclear how signing your copyright over to a publisher in toto (which is basically what I was asked to do when publishing with Haworth) would still allow you the right to object to derivative works. Surely only the copyright owner can object to derivative works, and in fact, if the creator is not the copyright owner, the copyright owner has the right to object to derivative works subsequently published by the original creator! (In fact, this is one of the issues I believe the Statute of Anne was meant to address-- Gervase Markham, for instance, was sued by a consortium of his publishers for having sold them all works that were derivatives of each other.)

In terms of restricting where one may publish, doesn't the usual institutional tenure and promotion policy do that as well, if more subtly? There are definite expectations of where one may publish, as I understand it. (Not being tenure-track myself.)

After 27 years in the field of librarianship, I can confidently assert that the decline of the scholarly presses that Sandy Thatcher decries predates the OA movement significantly, though not predating the surge of predatory pricing in the 1990s by journal publishers. 18% increases in journal budgets were the rule of thumb even before the widespread electronic availability of subscriptions (the research on that trend is left as an exercise for the reader), and many academic libraries were cutting book budgets to survive even then. Even the AUP admits that the decline of the university press can seen as far back as 1970.

respectfully,


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