No heroes and villains in academic publishing | THE Comment

lterrat's bookmarks 2017-01-26

Summary:

"Predatory journals produce predictable outrage among people such as Jeffrey Beall and myself. They prey on vulnerable, desperate academics from the Global South and damage the integrity of the publication system by publishing rubbish. They also make a lot of money. The latest monthly issue of the journal I mentioned consists of about 400 papers. If that were repeated every month, it would amount to an income of $720,000 a year. And that is for just one of the hundreds of journals that Beall included on his list. We are talking about a big industry here.

But it is not nearly as big as the regular journal industry, dominated as it is by some gigantic and highly profitable corporations: both publishers and those offering services to them, such as impact factors and editorial workflow software. In 2013, the English language science journal publishing industry alone generated revenues of about $10 billion, according to the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, with the whole 'STM information publishing market' worth more than $25 billion.

It would be comforting to think that the work that goes up on mainstream publishers’ websites with my name attached to it was widely read, intelligible, even influential, and wasn’t just following the money. But, of course, it’s not true. Predatory journals may publish some awful rubbish, but so, if we are honest, do mainstream journals: it is just that more money is involved and the universities whose research they publish happen to be in the Global North. The only real difference is that I get rejected more often than those who opt for the 'predators' instead.

The loss of Beall’s list will certainly not improve the quality of published research, but it might at least eliminate the false dichotomy between 'good' and 'bad' journals. In reality, all journals are driven by the same combination of market and need: an identical alchemy of self-promotion, driven by a profound emptiness.

So the next time I get an email from publishing’s so-called dark side, perhaps I should just cough up the money and get off my high horse."

Link:

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/comment/no-heroes-and-villains-academic-publishing

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » lterrat's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.journals

Date tagged:

01/26/2017, 20:25

Date published:

01/26/2017, 15:25