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Sure, career is nothing bad in itself, but if "career survival" is
the primary motivation and the main factor that drives ones'
decisions - as hypothesised in your blog post - then its proper name
is "careerism".<br>
<br>
Changing the system is a responsibility of everyone: every scholar -
senior or junior - who cares about doing good science. For some
reasons (experience, reputation) senior scholars have more power to
make changes, but on the other hand, junior scholars have more fresh
ideas on what could be done and more skills (entrepreneurial,
programming etc.) to do this.<br>
<br>
Definitely, some senior scholars feel fine in the current system and
can be afraid of changes, although I'd be careful with generalizing
this statement to all senior faculty. On this mailing list alone
there are many senior academics who strive for changes and have done
a lot to change the system - without their efforts we would have 1%
open access today rather than 20%.<br>
<br>
-Marcin<br>
<br>
<br>
On 11/07/2012 06:52 PM, Eric F. Van de Velde wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:CALQVpOG+74Zis0QagtBG1YGdL3fu4U1HPE9k+gcPp0QOX57=Tw@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">Marcin said:
<div><span
style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.727272033691406px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">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. </span></div>
<div><font color="#222222" face="arial, sans-serif"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font color="#222222" face="arial, sans-serif"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font color="#222222" face="arial, sans-serif">I most
definitely do not believe that myself for a minute. I don't do
euphemisms. T</font><span
style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif">he
young and untenured need to p</span><span
style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif">ublish
in prestigious journals for career survival. I don't see why
that needs to be turned into the negative "careerism". If you
want to be a researcher, you need a compelling cv.
Publications are a big part of that.</span></div>
<div><font color="#222222" face="arial, sans-serif"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font color="#222222" face="arial, sans-serif">Changing the
system should primarily be a responsibility of senior faculty
and university administrators. Unfortunately, they are
beneficiaries of the current system, give it more value than
it deserves, and are probably too cautious in their attempts
to change it.<br clear="all">
</font>--Eric.<br>
<br>
<div><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com" target="_blank">http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com</a></div>
<div><br>
Google Voice: (626) 898-5415
<div>Telephone: (626) 376-5415<br>
Skype: efvandevelde -- Twitter: @evdvelde</div>
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href="mailto:eric.f.vandevelde@gmail.com" target="_blank">eric.f.vandevelde@gmail.com</a></div>
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<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 1:56 PM, Marcin
Wojnarski <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:marcin.wojnarski@tunedit.org" target="_blank">marcin.wojnarski@tunedit.org</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> 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 cols="72">--
Marcin Wojnarski, Founder and CEO, TunedIT
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TunedIT - Online Laboratory for Intelligent Algorithms
</pre>
<div>
<div class="h5"> <br>
<br>
On 11/06/2012 09:58 AM, Peter Murray-Rust wrote: </div>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<div class="h5">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>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="tel:%2B44-1223-763069" value="+441223763069"
target="_blank">+44-1223-763069</a><br>
<br>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Marcin Wojnarski, Founder and CEO, TunedIT
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