[GOAL] [SCHOLCOMM] Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action

[Dr Andrew A. Adams]

A fair amount of Google research does end up published. It's impossible to 
know what percentage. However, there is not the "publish or perish" pressure 
on Google researchers to publish. In most cases, they are encourged to engage 
with the broader research community via attendance at relevant conferences 
(academic, academic/industry, multi-stakeholder) as and when it's important 
for their research and personal career development. In the fields of privcy 
and security (one of my core areas) i regularly encounter Google-based 
researchers on technical and socio-technical issues at conferences and read 
their papers. In addition to a lack of external pressure to publish from 
their institution, they do have to get permission to submit from managers 
which in the case of conferences or special issues with tight deadlines, can 
lead the researchers to be less likely to publish. This is similar to many 
other tech-related companies such as telcos (I've worked directly with people 
at KDDI, the second largest Japanese telco).

Other major applied research organisations in tech vary a lot. MS reserachers 
are invovled in some fields quite heavily, but not in others. I don't believe 
i've ever seen a paper published by an Amazon researcher, and it's well-known 
that Amazon discourages company-based commits to FLOSS projects (but on a 
case-by-case basis allows individuals to submit code as individuals if they 
can make a case that it serves Amazon's purposes for the general code-base to 
include Amazon's own developments).


-- 
Dr Andrew A Adams                      aaa at meiji.ac.jp
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan       http://www.a-cubed.info/