{"id":24,"date":"2011-10-10T20:48:31","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T20:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rulesofreason.wordpress.com\/?p=24"},"modified":"2011-10-10T20:48:31","modified_gmt":"2011-10-10T20:48:31","slug":"the-present-and-the-future-of-academic-publishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=24","title":{"rendered":"The present and the future of academic publishing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Academic publishing remains one of the most mysterious industries to me even after being caught in its web for a while. I have found no better presentation of the idiocy of the whole system than this video:<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe class='youtube-player' width='640' height='360' src='https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GMIY_4t-DR0?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent' allowfullscreen='true' style='border:0;' sandbox='allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation'><\/iframe><\/span><br \/>\nmore <a href=\"http:\/\/alexholcombe.wordpress.com\/2011\/09\/22\/scientist-meets-publisher-explaining-the-video\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, recent development (at least in social science journals) do not make me very hopeful about the future. Economic journal are abandoning double-blind review (see for example <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeshighereducation.co.uk\/story.asp?storycode=416353\">here<\/a>) and\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/pan.oxfordjournals.org\/\">Political Analysis<\/a><\/em>, which prides itself to be the number one political science journal, recently announced that it will do the same (there does not seem to be an official announcement yet on the site of the journal). According to the new policy, the identity of authors would be revealed to the reviewers (who remain anonymous). The main argument for doing so is that in many cases the reviewers can guess the authors anyways. It is puzzling that economists and analytical political scientists of all people would fall for this argument &#8211; even if many reviewers can guess\/google the identity of the authors, double-blind review is still a Pareto improvement over single-blind review: while it may not work in all cases, it doesn&#8217;t hurt in any.<\/p>\n<p>I would rather encourage more accountability on the side of the reviewers. Anonymous or not, manuscript reviews should be public documents. Why not attach them to the digital copies of the articles when published (or even better, when rejected)? I can see no harm in making the reviews publicly available by default. \u00a0Instead, after serving as a reviewer for a paper submitted to the <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wiley.com\/bw\/journal.asp?ref=0021-9886\">Journal of Common Market Studies<\/a><\/em>\u00a0I was denied a request to see the other reviews after the editorial decision was made. I can see how concealment can be beneficial for the discretion of the editors, but I fail to see how it improves genuine academic discussion and the advancement of knowledge which, to my mind, is the objective of the \u00a0entire system of academic publishing.<\/p>\n<p>To end on a bright note, last month Princeton University <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cs.princeton.edu\/~appel\/open-access-report.pdf\">decided<\/a> to ban researchers from giving the copyright of scholarly articles to journal publishers. Hopefully, that would not remain an isolated incident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Academic publishing remains one of the most mysterious industries to me even after being caught in its web for a while. I have found no better presentation of the idiocy of the whole system than this video: more here Unfortunately, recent development (at least in social science journals) do not make me very hopeful about the future. Economic journal are abandoning double-blind review (see for example here) and\u00a0Political Analysis, which prides itself to be the number one political science journal, recently announced that it will do the same (there does not seem to be an official announcement yet on the site of the journal). According to the new policy, the identity of authors would be revealed to the reviewers (who remain anonymous). The main argument for doing so is that in many cases the reviewers can guess the authors anyways. It is puzzling that economists and analytical political scientists of all people would fall for this argument &#8211; even if many reviewers can guess\/google the identity of the authors, double-blind review is still a Pareto improvement over single-blind review: while it may not work in all cases, it doesn&#8217;t hurt in any. I would rather encourage more accountability on the side of the reviewers. Anonymous or not, manuscript reviews should be public documents. Why not attach them to the digital copies of the articles when published (or even better, when rejected)? I can see no harm in making the reviews publicly available by default. \u00a0Instead, after serving as a reviewer&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=24\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The present and the future of academic publishing<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[2,44],"tags":[53,55,152,189,364,491,598],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g3hj-o","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":455,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=455","url_meta":{"origin":24,"position":0},"title":"Review the reviews","date":"April 26, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Frank H\u00e4ge alerts me to a new website which gives you the chance to\u00a0review the reviews\u00a0of your journal submissions: On this site academic social science researchers have the opportunity to comment on the reviews they have received, and the process of decision-making about reviews, affecting articles submitted for publication, book\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Academic publishing&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":282,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=282","url_meta":{"origin":24,"position":1},"title":"Writing with the rear-view mirror","date":"February 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Social science research is supposed to work like this: 1) You want to explain a certain case or a class of phenomena; 2) You develop a theory and derive a set of hypotheses; 3) You test the hypotheses with data; 4) You conclude about the plausibility of\u00a0the theory; 5) You\u00a0write\u00a0a\u00a0paper\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Academic publishing&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":123,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=123","url_meta":{"origin":24,"position":2},"title":"Academic fraud reaching new heights","date":"November 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Academic \u00a0fraud is reaching new heights lows. Dutch social psychologist Diederik Stapel (Tilburg University)\u00a0 is the culprit this time. A commission looking into the issue came up with a report [in Dutch] on Monday saying that \"the extent of fraud is very significant\" (p.5). Stapel fabricated data for at least\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Academic publishing&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":471,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=471","url_meta":{"origin":24,"position":3},"title":"Proposal for A World Congress on Referencing Styles","date":"May 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I have been busy over the last few days correcting proofs for\u00a0two forthcoming articles. One of the journals accepts neither footnotes nor endnotes so I had to find\u00a0place in the text for the >20 footnotes I had. As usual, most of these footnotes result directly from the review process so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Academic publishing&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":724,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=724","url_meta":{"origin":24,"position":4},"title":"The failure of political science","date":"March 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week the American Senate\u00a0supported with a clear bi-partisan majority a decision to stop funding for political science research from the National Science Foundation. Of all disciplines, only political science has been singled out for the cuts and the money will go for cancer research instead. The decision is obviously\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Science politicisation&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":193,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=193","url_meta":{"origin":24,"position":5},"title":"Social science in the courtroom","date":"December 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Everyone who is interested in\u00a0the sociology of science, causal inferences from observational data,\u00a0employment gender discrimination, judicial sagas, or academic spats should read the latest issue of Sociological Methods & Research. The whole issue is devoted to the Wal-Mart Stores,Inc. v. Dukes et al. case - \"the largest class-action employment discrimination\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Observational studies&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}