Hi Andrea (and everyone),
What happened and when...
The shift from "société savante" (not sure of the english exact equivalent)
being 'paying' for the literature to be made toward lucrative firms getting
money from the work of researchers is "not that old". (a look at COASP 2015.
<https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkW7KaGexWUDMPyF2RQAd2ieuxoTmCUZo>
if you wish)
Here is part of a 2016 conversation ... after a few mail with Aileen :
(some of you will appreciate the irony in the mail-system of st andrews
university)
Aileen Fyfe akf(a)st-andrews.ac.uk via
<https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1311182?hl=en-GB>
universityofstandrews907.onmicrosoft.com
14/11/2016
to Rudy
Dear Rudy,
We’re still working on the history of the 20th century finances, and trying
to identify the ‘tipping point’ you mention. For the Royal Society, our
impression is that it starts to break-even in the 1950s, starts to try to
make profit in the 1970s, and succeeds at making significant profit after
1990. But I don’t yet have a graph with data I’m happy making public. It
will happen!
Best,
Aileen.
So you have a clearer picture of when. About What, I simply see the
extension of capitalism searching for new area to apply its exploitation
logic. But to be frank, If further in the past aristocrats were able to
make research, it is because they could still feed on something while not
'selling' something. So I'm not sure the social distribution of science
could be claim more 'popular' in the past ('popular' as in popular -
politic education). I do not have any knowledge of the CNR period in
research (post WW2 in France) but that would certainly be an interesting
time frame to dig in.
Taxpayers are *stake*holders, and research is currently hardly on their
side.
To 'measure' the interest in science of 'non-universitarian' population
would certainly be of interest to this question. What I see is: 'people
want to know, to understand'. They may not be 'scientifically equipped' in
terms of methods, lack of an appropriate education system. But I'm quite
sure they are interested. For non-english speaker/reader it is not a
surprise they hardly read science articles (what is the share of Italian
scientific literature for instance ?). Their available time is also a
factor. But pin down their interest, show them some links and they may
read. Some researchers do not know about open archives, so average citizens
hardly ear about them.
Another argument on why they do not read: *It is the science of the
dominating power, not of the majority or dominated*. Bourdieu is quite a
light on this when he describes the ability of 'scientists' to make
themselves and independent body (producing for itself) yet relying on the
general agreement they should be paid to do so. The pro-science posture is
quite well establish, yet the nature of the research is hardly questioned.
Research is 'interest-free' according to some, and should not be stirred...
But of course it is something you say when the status quo is in your favor
(i.e. science is oriented in your interest). [to french readers :
http://www.sudoc.abes.fr/DB=2.1/SRCH?IKT=12&TRM=000817929]
<http://www.sudoc.abes.fr/DB=2.1/SRCH?IKT=12&TRM=000817929>To use examples,
what are the relative budgets (on the whole research budget) on
gentrification, non-capitalist work organisation, drug free medicines,
science sociology, politicians sociology, 1% rich sociology etc. I have no
interest in a lot of current publications myself. Would a commoner be
interested in research determining the factors that reduce 'rejection' from
employee of firm down sizing strategies ? (This is research I have seen
during my thesis at a conference. They had plenty of researchers digging it
in different ways).
I hope to have shed some more light on your questions.
BR
Rudy
On 30 March 2018 at 09:51, Andrea Zanni <zanni.andrea84(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Rudy for your reply.
I agree with you, "who is funding who" is an important question I did not
answer to.
I tried to explain what I understand about the system in a simple way, but
the more I wrote the more I
sensed that something was missing. I still don't understand for example
what happened (and when)
about the power shift that lead to the status quo: when exactly publishers
became so "powerful" that they could charge so
much money for selling their publications?
You say taxpayers are shareholders, and I agree: but I also think that the
majority of taxpayers are not really interested in academic
literature, and the readership of that literature is 90% academic (you of
course have a lot of professional and journalists who would love to read
scientific articles from time to time, and they can't).
This is to me one of the complicated things in this complicated mess:
you have basically the same people that have different roles/needs in the
system (academics)
and other players don't have much power or interest to change things.
Professors don't speak with librarians, young researchers are "fighting"
for power with old professors,
and the same researcher could love OA as a reader but need/want to publish
in CA as an author...
On Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 6:51 PM, Rudy Patard <rudy.patard(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Hi Andrea,
I dug it up while writing my thesis on environmental assessment. As you
may read, it is a field where we hear researchers crying for data for
decades but ironically they 'd rather continue crying than acting upon the
situation, i.e they don't do much for making it 'free' (cc-by like).
" Researchers don’t *sell* their papers. They sell their whole work as
researchers: they teach, they publish, they advise dissertations. That’s
the work they are paid for. But they don’t get money from the papers "
Indeed.
But to be a professor you need to have been publishing in a selective
list of journal (or any secured position researcher you have in the system
you are in, I'm french and do not know italian system. To us it starts at
lecturer MC and continue with professor Pr).
And to receive funding (now that competitive models rule research
funding) you have to show the most impressive list of publications (at
least a "more competitive publishing pedigree than the other competing
researchers)
... well nothing new as you describe that.
But in the end, you seem to skip a bit.
" Ultimately, the *ring that rules them all* is this final process:
evaluation of research, meaning *counting citations*. "
Here, state sentences with subject-verb-complement.
Who is funding what/who
Who evaluate what/who and particularly who decides that evaluation of
research *is* counting citations.
To act on a situation, we have to know the current *actors.*
When a group of researchers (known ones, leading their field can do so),
decides to quit a publisher (lingua-glossa
<http://kaivonfintel.org/lingua-glossa/> ; JMLR
<https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Machine_Learning_Research> ;
Journal_of_Topology <https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Topology> ;
others
<http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Journal_declarations_of_independence>) ,
they state their rules showing who is producing the value. But for the
general case, authors in dominant position
*are in dominant position because they followed the mainstream lucrative
rule.*
So it is more about how power is distributed inside academia than any
other question.
We have the publication system of our academical power system. It is a
struggle against a 'monopoly of scientific competence'. I may read anew
Bourdieu in case 'Questions de sociologie' - "Le champ scientifique"
gives
me a new lead.
In my thesis (if you read french, my .tex are on GitHub), I consider the
situation as a Nash equilibrium. My opinion is it may change as we make the
values of the game change or/and let enter other players. To me, a player
that is currently waiting - wanting on the bench is (some fraction at least
of) 'taxpayers'.
- To read something we/they pay 3 times : 1°) pay the researchers 2°) pay
the subscription fees of researchers 3°) pay what you read as a taxpayer
outside of a subscribing university.
- They/we pay research, but are hardly consulted on "What do you want to
know that we (as a species) do not know yet ?"
- They/we support the consequences of industrial research led for product
development (good or bad according to each-one judgments).
It is roots of my contributions about making wikimedian spaces tools for
aiding pressure on freeing publication. (for instance : not putting OA
publication in front necessarly, but putting correspondign authors and
funding contacts next to closed access articles with possible open archives
ready to receive them.
Let taxpayers play a direct role (for instance in institutions that vote
research grants. Here we have, universities grants, regions grants, some
specific institutions as ADEME ... or even in juries for HDR (french
'title' allowing a university Pr or MC to lead research : enrol PhD student
i.e. go up the ladder of academical capitalism). Do that and the cards of
the publication game may change.
BR
Rudy
On 23 March 2018 at 10:20, Andrea Zanni <zanni.andrea84(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hello everyone,
sorry for the shameless plug, but few days ago I published a long
overdue blogpost:
https://medium.com/@aubreymcfato/academic-publishing-sci-hub
-and-the-ring-that-rules-them-all-f8a12c29ef9f
I'm sharing this here because I'd welcome feedbacks on it: I spent a lot
of time trying to figure out *why* we're in this situation, and why we
can't get out of it.
I tried to frame academic publishing in terms of power, but I'm not sure
I succeeded.
My question always is: what are the power relationships that leads us to
the status quo? Why can't we change them?
Criticisms/feedbacks/suggestions are welcome.
Cheers
Andrea
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