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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? ...<br>
<br>
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 <u>scholars publish for prestige</u>
(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?<br>
<br>
I don't.<br>
<br>
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 <u>real</u> impact or not ("real" in contrast to
"measured by IF"). I mean: they have a deep <u>hope</u> 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.<br>
<br>
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 <u>least</u> respect for prestige, compared to any other
community).<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
-Marcin<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Marcin Wojnarski, Founder and CEO, TunedIT
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://tunedit.org">http://tunedit.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.facebook.com/TunedIT">http://www.facebook.com/TunedIT</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://twitter.com/wojnarski">http://twitter.com/wojnarski</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcinwojnarski">http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcinwojnarski</a>
TunedIT - Online Laboratory for Intelligent Algorithms
</pre>
<br>
<br>
On 11/06/2012 09:58 AM, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAD2k14M4izMA46hSxTW0NZ5P=xmuhQFyamQyF6wQD25xEAardQ@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">Copied only to the OKFN open-access list.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 8:23 AM, Leslie
Carr <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:lac@ecs.soton.ac.uk" target="_blank">lac@ecs.soton.ac.uk</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Publishers are capitalists - I don't think they'd argue the
point.<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
This is a generalization. Many learned societies and
scientific unions are not capitalists. <br clear="all">
</div>
</div>
<br>
-- <br>
Peter Murray-Rust<br>
Reader in Molecular Informatics<br>
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry<br>
University of Cambridge<br>
CB2 1EW, UK<br>
+44-1223-763069<br>
<br>
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</pre>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">
</pre>
</blockquote>
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