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. 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@st-andrews.ac.uk via 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 stakeholders, 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]
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@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@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 ; JMLR ; Journal_of_Topology ; others) , 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@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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