Abstract
Chaime Marcuello-Servós, Monographs Editor 2016-2023
A departure point
If we read the preface to the first issue of Current Sociology published in March 1952, a very different world is perceived. Its contents sound far away from the current global context. UNESCO had sponsored a project that sought to solve ‘the problem of documentation services in the social sciences, and to the desirability of a wider exchange of information among scientists engaged on social research’ (Current Sociology, 1952: 8), and the task was put in the hands of an ISA whose creation had been promoted 4 years earlier by UNESCO itself (Platt, 1998: 13). The disasters of World War II were very close: there was much to build and rebuild, but tensions derived from the confrontation between blocs and the cold war were also growing. Furthermore, access to information and publications of all kinds was difficult. Today, to a certain extent, we face the reverse situation: the Internet has transformed the storage, distribution and access to information and publications, but it has also contributed to expand the logic of commodification to all fields of knowledge, study and research.
Those analogic origins in printed paper have been replaced by a digitalized, hyper-abundant and increasingly infoxicated network (Marcuello-Servós, 2006; Benito-Ruiz, 2009). A new economic paradigm based on ‘extractivism of attention’ (Garcés, 2021: 30) intersects and feeds back with a productivist trend that is often incompatible with slowness, presence and interrelation – three essential conditions for study (Garcés, 2021: 31). However, the need to exchange and share rigorous knowledge remains as a sine qua non condition to make a better social science, a better sociology. And as said in those early years, ‘the term sociology cannot, of course, be defined dogmatically’. This is one of the reasons why a journal like Current Sociology is still needed: ‘to cover as adequately as possible the various fields of research and of theoretical an applied sociology which will normally interest sociologists’ (Current Sociology, 1952: 8). A scientific journal must address this function, even when environmental conditions change – and they have changed!
Publish or perish
Seventy years later, the transformation process of the ‘global university’ is widely deployed. In most countries, publishing in indexed scientific journals has become a necessity for anyone whose aspiration is to access a teaching or research position. Those who want to consolidate their position or improve their salary must also accredit their production and ‘merits’ in this same way. Whether they are journal articles or books, both paying to publish your own work and working for free for the oligopoly of publications, to publish is to exist. In other words: not being able to accredit sufficient ‘merits’ by those means is not existing.
We are trapped, the system has ensured that we are vigilant with ourselves, and we find ourselves in privacy calculating the items that we are missing in order to obtain its approval, the required accreditation just to access a job or remain in it. The desirable thing would be to give us credit beyond what those organizations say. (Fraj, 2021: 102)
Let us take a look at the systems for hiring and selecting teachers and researchers, or the accreditation systems set up by agencies that assess the quality of the universities and their hiring processes. 1 Most solvent higher education institutions look for talent and prioritize CVs that include, in addition to research projects, publications in prestigious journals and publishers of each knowledge area.
The prestige of a publication is measured and ordered through rankings and increasingly sophisticated bibliometric devices, such as Journal Citation Report (JCR) 2 or SCImago Journal Rank (SJR). 3 It is a lucrative business in the hands of a few companies, although there are also other classification indexes adapted to different geographical and linguistic contexts 4 or alternative proposals. 5 Academia, business and industry interpenetrate, operating with the logic of a capitalist market, which is only a description. Some time ago, these companies found out how to identify a need and shape their market niche around it. The selection systems sought to encourage prestige, and instruments were created to measure it. Or perhaps the discourse had to be focused on excellence and prestige to ‘open a great market’ in the field of ‘higher education’? Is it the chicken or the egg first?
This case teaches us that the first and most important thing to understand is how ‘the (chicken) yard’ works, through what order of relations and what form of power organizes this order. Now bibliometric tools modify work strategies and determine what to do – and what not to do – in academia. The main goal is to publish a lot of well-valued material. The product will be ‘good’ if it comes to be labelled as Q1. That is the requirement to improve your position and to demonstrate greater ‘talent’ and ‘excellence’. We have substituted the ‘in itself’ of study and writing for the ‘impact factor’, as many critics have warned. 6 Where does this system lead us? What structural transformations does it contribute to?
In practice, a more or less altruistic disclosure of our studies and research has given way to competition to publish – whatever, too often – in a ‘prestigious’ journal in our knowledge area. Often paying the corresponding fees, as usual in many prestigious research journals. This is how we have created an ad hoc market and industry to achieve more and more merits in an escalation that seems to have no limit, fuelled by the voracity of a ranking-oriented system and by the impetus of ‘self-entrepreneurs’ (Foucault, 2009 [1979]), ‘self-brands’ or ‘individual trademarks’ (López Petit, 2009: 71 ff.) driven by pride: ‘I am better because I have more citations and my H-index is higher’.
Academics themselves are the ones who have fed the trap. We act like hamsters running on a wheel, most of the time without looking at maps or compasses. This system has a life of its own: you can accept its logic and play the game, and then perish if you didn’t publish enough. Including a second-order look would help us ask the necessary, questionable questions, even if they are impertinent. For example, what is contributed by what is published? What kind of benefit does it provide for society? Who reads what we write?
The relevance of the contributions is difficult to describe and measure. Valuing the social benefit is even more complicated. This can also be applied to the readings: we assume that whoever cites us did read us, and we receive updated information through the algorithms created to feed the industry. Different record systems – Google Scholar, ResearchGate . . . – warn us every time an article has been cited, but these records do not necessarily come from an in-depth reading beyond the abstract (the abstract, the synthesis, the teaser). A simple consideration is enough to raise the question: days do not have enough hours for a calm reading of everything that is published. It is not possible to stop the clock and read forever. 7 Digitalization has multiplied the surplus of pages and words, but this exponential increase does not show any correlation with our individual and collective ability to metabolize the results. Furthermore, there is a risk of falling into the ‘echo-chamber effect’ (Jamieson and Cappella, 2008) and even forgetting that there are other parts of the world where other – and multiple – layers of knowledge can be explored. A global, digitalized and managerial academy governed by excellence indexes is not per se less colonial, classist, sexist, elitist or violent. At all.
All these circumstances can be interpreted from different perspectives (Scott, 2021). What is clear is that they create a system of asymmetric relationships. The position of the institution that promotes a journal, that of scientific editors – responsible for its content and quality; publishing companies – investing resources and earn money; authors – who send their work to be published; evaluation agencies – that order the weight of the publications; Universities and research centres – employers that use publications as selective merits, are not equivalent. The interactions from all these positions feed the processes that chart the course and history of a journal. Efforts and resources are required to keep a quality journal running. Consolidating it takes time, dedication and will. Survival is never assured, but it is possible to transmit to future generations how important is to care for the legacy and to deliver it better than we received it – quite a challenge.
From the inside
In any system, each position has its own field of view and its blind spots. This also happens in the world of scientific publications, whether they are books or journals. Expectations and timings are never symmetric or commutative.
We have been in charge of Current Sociology Monographs since July 2016: 8 two issues a year, in March and July. Processes must be punctual and meet the production deadlines. Calendars neither rest nor forgive. Any delay may affect the internal management and the external evaluation of the publication; hence, the first impression was like jumping on a moving train that does not wait. The second shock is the technological overflow – at least until you master Scholar One. 9 Once the required skills have been trained, the computerization of the processes facilitates the management – what a verb . . . – of manuscripts. Next step is to take charge of the selection of proposals that come by themselves – sent by individuals or groups that promote an idea to disseminate their research – or previously commissioned to a team or individual.
That is the double function where editors really play their role. Lewin’s (1943) distinction between gatekeepers and gardeners is useful here. Both access and care are in the hands of a journal’s editor and their teams, and those who engage in the peer-review process collaborate with them. The underlying purpose is the contribution to common knowledge in an artisan sense, that of a taste for a well done job, isn’t it? This is what we have bet on. As expected, it has not been easy.
In addition, as far as possible, we have sought to extend, distribute and share the talent of less visible researches and topics outside the trends and dynamics of what was called ‘Invisible College Hypothesis’ (Crane, 1969), a bet to compensate this dynamic described by R.K. Merton, which by extension ends up affecting all institutions: ‘These social processes of social selection that deepen the concentration of top scientific talent create extreme difficulties for any efforts to counteract the institutional consequences of the Matthew principle in order to produce new centres of scientific excellence’ (Merton, 1968: 62). Can ‘excellence’ be sought without leaving victims along the way? It is possible to build up mechanisms of mutual help by recalling the origin of our Current Sociology? – read ‘a wider exchange of wider information among scientists engaged on social research’.
As always, the key question is how our desires and ideals struggle with the limits of everyday life and, in this case, to the annual number of pages and issues. Along with that, applying a second-order perspective, the challenge is to overcome – however defined – this hamster syndrome to which contemporary academic dynamics lead us. To identify the problem is a relatively simple task, much easier than building an alternative, but many things depend on that alternative: very important things, much more relevant than our last article’s index.