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Thanks for the stats. In this kind of surveys much depends on how
the question is formulated and what naming is used. I think
"communication" is a very abstract term and not really the root
motivation for publishing. If they asked about "impact" (like
"having impact on your discipline of research") instead of
"communication", the fraction of people to vote for this option
would be much higher that 33%.<br>
<br>
-Marcin<br>
<br>
On 11/07/2012 11:17 AM, Sally Morris wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:89F3A25133B94754A22D2A972E75528E@SallyPC"
type="cite">
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<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span class="760380310-07112012"><font
color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">It's along time ago
now, but Alma Swan and Sheridan Brown surveyed nearly 11,000
scholarly authors for ALPSP in 1998/9 and received 3 218
replies.</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span class="760380310-07112012"></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span class="760380310-07112012"><font
color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">33% put communication
with peers as their primary reason for publishing; career
advancement was next (22%). Personal prestige (8%), funding
(7%) and financial reward (1%) were way behind.</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span class="760380310-07112012"></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span class="760380310-07112012"><font
color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">Sally</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span class="760380310-07112012"></span> </div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2">Sally Morris</font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2">South House, The
Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK BN13 3UU</font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2">Tel: +44 (0)1903
871286</font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2">Email:
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk">sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk</a></font></div>
<div> </div>
<br>
<div dir="ltr" class="OutlookMessageHeader" align="left"
lang="en-us">
<hr tabindex="-1">
<font face="Tahoma" size="2"><b>From:</b>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org">goal-bounces@eprints.org</a> [<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org">mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org</a>] <b>On
Behalf Of </b>Marcin Wojnarski<br>
<b>Sent:</b> 06 November 2012 21:57<br>
<b>To:</b> <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:open-access@lists.okfn.org">open-access@lists.okfn.org</a>; Global Open Access List
(Successor of AmSci); Peter Murray-Rust<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [GOAL] Re: [Open-access] Re: Hitler, Mother
Teresa, and Coke<br>
</font><br>
</div>
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 moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://tunedit.org">http://tunedit.org</a>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.facebook.com/TunedIT">http://www.facebook.com/TunedIT</a>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://twitter.com/wojnarski">http://twitter.com/wojnarski</a>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" 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 href="mailto:lac@ecs.soton.ac.uk"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">lac@ecs.soton.ac.uk</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px
0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote">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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<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>
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<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
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