$1.4 million grant funds certificate programs for Internet professionals
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Social Work grand opening includes Anita Hill appearance
Environmentalists to speak at UW
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Rhythm of rain not soothing to fish
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‘Oblivious’ academics get
wake-up call at forum
It’s not often that faculty attending a University-hosted event are told that they are ignorant and had better inform themselves, but that’s what happened at a forum last Friday. Scholarly communication was the topic - hardly one likely to raise high passion under ordinary circumstances. Yet the keynote speaker said he had acted out of outrage and declared, “Ignorance is immoral.”
Provost Lee Huntsman was also led to dramatic expression as he welcomed attendees. “Listen up,” he told the audience. “The tectonic plates on which we built the ivory tower have shifted, and we still don’t know whether we’re in for minor temblors or something more cataclysmic.”
The tectonic plates Huntsman referred to are the career tenets academics have traditionally lived by: publish your studies in scholarly journals, which libraries faithfully purchase, which other academics read and cite. But in the last 15 years, the landscape of scholarly publishing has been changed in two ways: the cost of journals has skyrocketed (up 175 percent since 1986), leading to mass cancellation of subscriptions, leading to decreased accessibility. And at the same time, technological innovations have brought new formats for publishing, formats that sometimes seem to break the rules of traditional scholarly communication. These two developments have created both problems and opportunities.
It was problems the keynote speaker, Michael Rosenzweig of the University of Arizona, zeroed in on. Rosenzweig was the editor of a scholarly journal when that journal was sold and then sold again to progressively less scrupulous publishers. By 1998, the costs of producing the journal were $80,000, while subscription revenue was $300,000 - a 275 percent mark-up. Disgusted by what he called “publishing profiteers,” Rosenzweig resigned and persuaded his entire editorial board to resign with him. The group subsequently started a competing journal for which they charge $300 a year, compared to $800 under the old publisher.
Proclaiming himself to be like Moses leading the academics out of the publishing houses of bondage, Rosenzweig brought a handout (see sidebar) with him - a list of commandments with a lot of “thou shalt nots.” His words to the audience were similarly strong. “We must find a way to prevent the world of knowledge from being kidnapped and held for ransom,” he said. “There is a small group of publishers who are so emphasizing the maximization of profits that they are restricting the flow of knowledge.”
Rosenzweig said most academics are “oblivious” to this problem, that publishers claim more rights than they actually have and academics believe them. But he said scholars can no longer afford to remain ignorant. He offered several recommendations for action:
Recognizing that graduate students and junior faculty are under a lot of pressure to publish, Rosenzweig said senior faculty need to lead the charge in regaining control over what is, after all, created by academics in the first place.
Speaking more of the opportunity side of the changes, Arts and Sciences Dean David Hodge addressed promotion and tenure issues, especially as they relate to new forms of scholarly communication. Referring back to the core mission of scholars - to preserve, transmit and increase knowledge - Hodge noted the requirements the academy places on faculty: Junior faculty are to compile a substantial record in both teaching and scholarship in order to get tenure, while those with tenure are to exhibit outstanding mature scholarship as evidenced by national recognition.
“We say that we value the quality of scholarship more than the quantity,” Hodge said, “but we don’t have definitive ways to measure quality. We tend to fall back on the selectivity of the journal and, after publication, on the number of cites. Both of these methods are less favorable to new publishing outlets.”
Hodge described a number of changes impinging on this traditional means of evaluation: The increasing number of venues, especially on the margins of fields and at the intersections between fields, the decreasing time between study completion and publication (thanks to electronic journals), and the increasing use of graphics.
In response to these and other changes, Hodge called for new forms of evaluation that would be less cut and dried than noting the number of articles published in prestigious journals. In particular, he said, academics must evaluate each other, and when necessary call in external experts to evaluate the work in terms of what contribution it makes to knowledge. He acknowledged the difficulty of what he was asking for, but said, “If we can get there, we will be better for it.”
Rosenzweig and Hodge were only two of the speakers in the daylong forum, sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the Faculty Senate, the Faculty Council on University Libraries and the University Libraries. Others focused on copyright issues and new initiatives in scholarly communication. The entire session was videotaped, and the tape is available at Odegaard Undergraduate Library’s media center. There are links to relevant articles and publishing alternatives on the forum Web site, http://www.lib.washington.edu/Schol/Comm. And packets of handouts from the sessions are available via e-mail from Scholarly Communication Librarian Linda Gould, ljgould@u.washington.edu. ¶
Nancy Wick
An Academic’s Guide to Publishing Ethics
by Michael Rosenzweig
I am the Word, the Truth as best you know it.
Spread me diligently on the printed page and widely on the Internet.
In exchange for an academic editorial position,
Do not promise to give notice of resignation in advance
Or to refrain from editing for another publisher.
Keep your copyrights.
Ignorance is immoral. Pay attention to what is happening.
Deal not with publishing profiteers.
Do not submit to their publications.
Do not review for them.
Do not edit for them.
Do not read them.
Do not cite them.
Do not allow your academic societies to do business with them.
Encourage your academic editors to divest them of their journals.
University Week
The faculty and staff publication of the University of Washington
uweek@u.washington.edu
March 9, 2000