The politics of publishing

Posted on | August 7, 2008 | No Comments

Tomorrow’s MACS meeting is inspired by the amount of debate that has greeted the announcement of journal rankings in preparation for a new research evaluation initiative in Australia. Most of this online discussion happened while I was overseas, and given my current institutional in-betweenness, I didn’t get involved in the submission processes since coming back. I don’t feel invested in this battle right now. I think it’s to do with the general ambivalence I feel about journals, and publishing, all round.

I am on the editorial board for four journals, but I am only ever asked to peer review regularly for one of them. I’d say on average I get asked to peer review for every second issue of that one, which certainly adds up, and gives a sense of the difference in journal styles. I don’t think I’ve been asked to do anything for the other three, ever. Well, I used to be in on the conference calls for one of them but I wasn’t told about the last one and assume the same has been the case for any since. I declined an invitation to become editor for this journal a while back, and the person I suggested for the role hasn’t made any contact since starting. Actually, maybe they did tell me something in a conference coffee break last year that I wasn’t going to be on the collective any more – I can’t remember. But last time I checked my name was on the inside cover in the same ‘role’.

I regularly peer review for journals I’m sure wouldn’t publish my work, even if I did wait the several years it would take to get something in. And I don’t really know what’s expected of me on an editorial board. It’s not like there are any big issues I get asked to comment on, or duties I am asked to fulfill, beyond what I already do which is suggest people publish there. I’ve published in journals that by the time the hardcopy arrived looked so obviously designed for instrumental purposes that I felt ashamed. I’ve published in places that made me very proud, such as the first time I was in Cultural Studies Review, knowing a little bit about the history of that journal. Everyone in the industry must hear stories about what happens in the name of peer review and scholarship, such as the one I heard this week, about a co-editor of a future journal issue who has left all the work to the junior co-editor (that is, apart from suggesting that they accept an article from someone they knew without sending it to readers). All of this is disappointing, and predictable. Journals are as symptomatic of the workload pressure that academics are under as the research metrics they are taken to indicate. They are intense and chaotic and passionately argued over, and the result of a lot of sacrificial labour that ranking systems will never quantify, let alone reward.

One of the most ridiculous and embarrassing emotional outbursts I have had lately (and there have been a few) was the culmination of being stood up by one of the ACS Board meetings in Kingston and spending the time I was waiting reading a shockingly generous review of my book in CSR. It was a moment of simultaneous delight and frustration that crystallised the complexity of everything I think about academia and its flaws: that being committed to something as abstract as a discipline — or a notion of professionalism — is affective as well as intellectual, institutional as well as quite personal. There are standards I want to believe in and uphold, but people are only human, and life gets in the way.

One of the international journals ranked A* in my field (what is this, primary school? A* is like someone giving my Grade 4 fairy book 11/10) recently asked me to revise and resubmit a paper based on one peer review. When I asked if there was another report, I was told a month or two later–despite having seen this person at a conference on the other side of the world–that ‘for various reasons’ there was only going to be one. Admittedly email is an ambiguous medium, and for all I know this may have been a diplomatic or generous response to my request. But the ‘reputation’ of a journal can in this instance hang on the throwaway communication style of a grad student in summer mode.

My view of publishing is that you do it everywhere you can as often as you feel you have something new to say. This means making a decision (but more realistically, a bet) based on the audience different publishing venues attract, and that takes time to work out. Some academics have more to say than others, which doesn’t mean that quantity trumps quality. What will be of concern in the imminent assessment exercise is if the loudest voices are the only ones that will get heard; if those who already enjoy success in an attention economy gain ever greater encouragement. This currently looks likely.

But the other thing to realise is that publishing begets more opportunities to publish. As does giving presentations and generally contributing to your field in ways that accord with your time and ability. Of course these two commodities are unevenly distributed, and metrics will not deliver us more of either. The ultimate trouble with an ERA, or an RAE, as an article I peer reviewed this week deftly argued, is that the amount of time people are asked to spend demonstrating their productivity is time that could have been spent publishing.

Category: Academia, Publications

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