Posted on Oct 4, 2018
Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship - Areo
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Renegade academics stick it to cultural studies, academic rigor, and peer reviewed journals. I wonder what the ripples on the pond will be. I hope that the article itself is not a hoax. SSgt GG-15 RET Jim Lint LTC Kevin B.
Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship - Areo
Posted from areomagazine.com
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Posted 6 y ago
Responses: 1
I wouldn't call them "renegade academics". They sound more like con artists who had a political goal. I looked through a number of those journals and their articles. The journals where they published included open access journals without an impact factor, hardly what I'd call "respected peer-reviewed journals" (i.e. pay a fee, get a pub). Many of those publications wouldn't even count towards tenure, if they were professional academics who were trying to establish a legitimate career in academe. Plus, I also found retractions. So, at best, this is more of an indictment of a small sliver of the publishing process (the disreputable publish-for-a-fee journals), rather than a broader indictment of cultural studies in general. The only one of the authors who appears to be an academic is Boghossian, and even then, he appears to be at a very early stage in the process (an Assistant Professor).
I found a related article about these authors that sums it up nicely:
"The new scam is a lot more impressive: Seven hoax papers accepted for publication is a lot. This raises legitimate concerns about the academic publishing process, and much of the ridicule the "grievance studies" attract is deserved. But it's also true more generally that if you work very, very hard at fooling people, you will often succeed—and not just in academia."
I found a related article about these authors that sums it up nicely:
"The new scam is a lot more impressive: Seven hoax papers accepted for publication is a lot. This raises legitimate concerns about the academic publishing process, and much of the ridicule the "grievance studies" attract is deserved. But it's also true more generally that if you work very, very hard at fooling people, you will often succeed—and not just in academia."
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LTC Jason Mackay
LTC Kevin B. what was concerning for me was a couple things
- retooling swaths of Mein Kampf as feminist and white privilege pieces that received praise from reviewers.
- the general praise from reviewers
- invented personas and organizations that flew
So the authors assertion that they would not pay for a journal submission was not correct?
- retooling swaths of Mein Kampf as feminist and white privilege pieces that received praise from reviewers.
- the general praise from reviewers
- invented personas and organizations that flew
So the authors assertion that they would not pay for a journal submission was not correct?
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LTC Kevin B.
LTC Jason Mackay - I am not saying explicitly that they paid a fee to get their papers published. However, they do appear to have been pushing the envelope by playing on the periphery of the pay-to-publish journals. For instance, a number of those journals had no impact factor, which means the journals are not generally accepted as being reputable to the larger, research-intensive institutions. Impact factors are based on citation counts, which indicate how influential other authors view the research within that journal. Article within these lower-tiered journals may count for promotion and tenure at directional schools or liberal arts colleges, but not at the large universities that routinely have researchers publishing in the better journals. Plus, if you're publishing in a journal that also has a large open access fee that allows your paper to be available on the Internet for free, that implies the journal is seeking alternative revenue streams for authors who are willing to pay a price to make their research more broadly available (which is not altogether different than paying a fee to have it published in the first place). Plus, they mentioned that one article was rejected, along with a solicitation to submit it to another journal (where the authors subsequently had their paper accepted). Often times, this happens when a more established journal is standing up a new journal, and needs articles to fill the pages. This indicates that the mainstream journal rejected their paper, but was willing to publish it in a startup journal without a track record.
On a related note, the reviewers for these lower-tiered journals often times reflect the middle to lower echelon of academics as well. I have been solicited to serve as a reviewer for some of these lower-tiered journals (paid and unpaid), and I turned them down. Primarily, I did so because of the lower quality of the papers and the low value placed by my institutions on that type of service to the academic community. The bottom line is that the higher up you go in academia, the less value is placed on engaging in the types of journals where are these people were publishing their articles. So, their assertion is not really an indictment of academia overall, but more so an indictment of the lower echelons of research outlets (paid and unpaid).
On a related note, the reviewers for these lower-tiered journals often times reflect the middle to lower echelon of academics as well. I have been solicited to serve as a reviewer for some of these lower-tiered journals (paid and unpaid), and I turned them down. Primarily, I did so because of the lower quality of the papers and the low value placed by my institutions on that type of service to the academic community. The bottom line is that the higher up you go in academia, the less value is placed on engaging in the types of journals where are these people were publishing their articles. So, their assertion is not really an indictment of academia overall, but more so an indictment of the lower echelons of research outlets (paid and unpaid).
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