A perspective on problems and prospects for academic publishing in Geography - Meadows - 2016 - Geo: Geography and Environment - Wiley Online Library

peter.suber's bookmarks 2017-05-12

Summary:

Abstract:  This commentary highlights problems of inequity in academic publishing in geography that arise from the increasing use of metrics as a measure of research quality. In so doing, we examine patterns in the ranking of geographical journals in the major global databases (e.g. Web of Science, Scopus) and compare these with a more inclusive database developed by the International Geographical Union. The shortcomings of ranking systems are examined and are shown to include, inter alia, linguistic bias, the lack of representation of books and chapters in books, the geographical unevenness of accredited journals, problems of multi-authorship, the mismatch between ranking and social usefulness and alternative or critical thinking, as well as differences between physical and human geography. The hegemony of the global commercial publishing houses emerges as problematic for geography in particular. It is argued that the global community of geographers should continue to challenge the use of bibliometrics as a means of assessing research quality.

[Includes a section, "Is open access an adequate response?"]

Link:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/geo2.16/full

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » peter.suber's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.geo oa.metrics oa.quality oa.rankings oa.journals oa.impact

Date tagged:

05/12/2017, 15:59

Date published:

05/12/2017, 11:59