Every single professor writes reviews.
We are taught that it is an obligation and sanctions wait for those who don’t review.
Some #reviews are written for non-profits, like a conference or an association/uni-based journal. The reviews support the community tied to the paper’s topic. I have no issue with non-profit outlets.
Some reviews are written for for-profits, like a sketchy conference or privately owned/hosted journal. The reviews help support profits for publishers. I have serious issues with for-profit outlets.
For-profit publishers exploit volunteer labor and commoditize scholarly work. They keep the profits to cover the overhead of publication and article curation. The ‘excess value’ that they pocket runs into the billions of dollars.
The Guardian article provides a good summation of the issues & the for-profit revenue model.
However, it does not strongly condemn the decisions that made for-profit publishers necessary and the problems they create.
Why do we have for-profits?
Because the government defunded scientific publications, perhaps, due to a belief in the power of markets or a need to demonstrate stewardship of public funds, the government got out of the business of supporting publication & into the business of paying others to disseminate ideas. This likely warmed the cockles of #freemarket adherents everywhere.
Ok. So there are economic and ideological reasons for for-profit academic publishers.
But there are good reasons to put an end to the practice.
For-profit publications depend on the volume of papers to sustain their business. Absent more papers, revenue streams dry up. Further, absent the illusion of quality, journal submissions dry up.
For-profit journals' thirst for ‘high-quality papers' has introduced & amplified the demand for faculty to generate more papers. It has created forces to publish more papers in more rigorous outlets to earn tenure.
What does this mean?
Tenure went from assessing idea generation & testing to evaluating paper generation & publication.
And in an era of n+1, the spiral of forced productivity made tenure increasingly #stressful & challenging to attain.
What steps can we take? To starve the for-profit publication machine? And fix the problem?
First, #faculty need to move away from focusing on the number of papers and pivoting to discussing ideas.
Second, ‘N’ should not drive #tenure. Quality ideas should drive tenure.
Third, we must acknowledge problems created by that pressure for ‘N’ #publications to sustain the #forprofit publication system.
Pressure to #publish has harmed the mental well-being of authors & encouraged bad behavior, like #harking.
Finally, we need to pressure governments to adequately fund science, with a focus on ideas from not-for-profit journal #publication. If funding agencies reward research appearing in non-profit outlets, we will see a different dynamic in academe.
We can fix this. Do we have the will to?
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jason-thatcher-0329764_is-the-staggeringly-profitable-business-of-act
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