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<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=760380310-07112012><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2 face=Arial>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><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2 face=Arial></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=760380310-07112012><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2 face=Arial>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><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2 face=Arial></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=760380310-07112012><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2 face=Arial>Sally</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=760380310-07112012><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2 face=Arial></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV align=left><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Sally Morris</FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=left><FONT size=2 face=Arial>South House, The Street, Clapham,
Worthing, West Sussex, UK BN13 3UU</FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=left><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Tel: +44 (0)1903
871286</FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=left><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Email:
sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV><BR>
<DIV dir=ltr lang=en-us class=OutlookMessageHeader align=left>
<HR tabIndex=-1>
<FONT size=2 face=Tahoma><B>From:</B> goal-bounces@eprints.org
[mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org] <B>On Behalf Of </B>Marcin
Wojnarski<BR><B>Sent:</B> 06 November 2012 21:57<BR><B>To:</B>
open-access@lists.okfn.org; 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>
<DIV></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 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 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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