Re: [Air-L] The connection between "alienated labor" and "whether to name reviewers"
Hi all: I find interesting that no one seems to realize that the two seemingly "unrelated" topics we are discussing (see below) are actually the same issue! If there is performing "alienated labor" it is academic referees of articles, editors of journals, etc -- who are not compensated for their work! Why shouldn't an academic, COMMERCIAL journal (one that demands payment from subscribers -- institutional and individual), PAY article reviewers, the journal editors etc for their reviews? If they did that, then the reviewers would feel a lot more obligated to devote serious attention to their refereeing review. In my opinion, paying for article review (even if it's $100 or so per article) would solve most of the problems mentioned here regarding unprofessional (or no-show) reviewers -- and perhaps also sensitizing them a bit more to the whole issue of "alienated labor" in other spheres. Sam Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig Deputy Director School of Communication Bar-Ilan University 52900 Ramat Gan ISRAEL (office) +972-3-5317651 (office secretary) +972-3-5317060 (cell) +972-52-3410163 (fax) +972-9-9744441 Sam.Lehman-Wilzig@biu.ac.il<mailto:Sam.Lehman-Wilzig@biu.ac.il> website: www.ProfSLW.com On Sep 9, 2013, at 1:00 AM, air-l-request@listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l-request@listserv.aoir.org> wrote: Send Air-L mailing list submissions to air-l@listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l@listserv.aoir.org> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to air-l-request@listserv.aoir.org You can reach the person managing the list at air-l-owner@listserv.aoir.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Air-L digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: to name reviewers or not (Barry Wellman) 2. Compiled Reading list on Alienated Labor (Alan Bilansky) 3. Re: to name reviewers or not (Johann H?chtl)
Sam Lehman-wilzig <Sam.Lehman-Wilzig@biu.ac.il> schrieb am 11.09.2013 um 14:28 in Nachricht <12CC0190-5EE2-41B7-BB59-F30F1D1A6004@biu.ac.il>: Hi all: I find interesting that no one seems to realize that the two seemingly "unrelated" topics we are discussing (see below) are actually the same issue! If there is performing "alienated labor" it is academic referees of articles, editors of journals, etc -- who are not compensated for their work! Why shouldn't an academic, COMMERCIAL journal (one that demands payment from subscribers -- institutional and individual), PAY article reviewers, the journal editors etc for their reviews? If they did that, then the reviewers would feel a lot more obligated to devote serious attention to their refereeing review. In my opinion, paying for article review (even if it's $100 or so per article) would solve most of the problems mentioned here regarding unprofessional (or no-show) reviewers -- and perhaps also sensitizing them a bit more to the whole issue of "alienated labor" in other spheres. Sam
I am sceptical concerning your reasoning. 1. Money, as a hygiene factor, will not rise quality of reviews for a long time and can even have adverse effects (cf. http://thefilter.blogs.com/thefilter/2009/12/the-israeli-childcare-experimen...); 2. Now we need someone verifying the work of reviewers (as money will have to be paid upon successfull completion of work), thus quality control for quality control; and 3. as reviewers will have to be paid, publishers have another argument to raise prices from 100$ to 120$. Disclosure: I believe in Open Science Thus I see the relation between these two topics, yet they call for a different solution. Johann
Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig Deputy Director School of Communication Bar-Ilan University 52900 Ramat Gan ISRAEL (office) +972-3-5317651 (office secretary) +972-3-5317060 (cell) +972-52-3410163 (fax) +972-9-9744441
Sam.Lehman-Wilzig@biu.ac.il<mailto:Sam.Lehman-Wilzig@biu.ac.il> website: www.ProfSLW.com
Sam, Aside form demanding money, as a way to address alienation in academic labor, I would first advocate only reviewing for publications with open access policies. (Currently I don't have the bargaining power to make either demand. . . .) Best, Alan On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 8:46 AM, Johann Hoechtl < Johann.Hoechtl@donau-uni.ac.at> wrote:
Sam Lehman-wilzig <Sam.Lehman-Wilzig@biu.ac.il> schrieb am 11.09.2013 um 14:28 in Nachricht <12CC0190-5EE2-41B7-BB59-F30F1D1A6004@biu.ac.il>: Hi all: I find interesting that no one seems to realize that the two seemingly "unrelated" topics we are discussing (see below) are actually the same issue! If there is performing "alienated labor" it is academic referees of articles, editors of journals, etc -- who are not compensated for their work! Why shouldn't an academic, COMMERCIAL journal (one that demands payment from subscribers -- institutional and individual), PAY article reviewers, the journal editors etc for their reviews? If they did that, then the reviewers would feel a lot more obligated to devote serious attention to their refereeing review. In my opinion, paying for article review (even if it's $100 or so per article) would solve most of the problems mentioned here regarding unprofessional (or no-show) reviewers -- and perhaps also sensitizing them a bit more to the whole issue of "alienated labor" in other spheres. Sam
I am sceptical concerning your reasoning.
1. Money, as a hygiene factor, will not rise quality of reviews for a long time and can even have adverse effects (cf. http://thefilter.blogs.com/thefilter/2009/12/the-israeli-childcare-experimen... ); 2. Now we need someone verifying the work of reviewers (as money will have to be paid upon successfull completion of work), thus quality control for quality control; and 3. as reviewers will have to be paid, publishers have another argument to raise prices from 100$ to 120$. Disclosure: I believe in Open Science
Thus I see the relation between these two topics, yet they call for a different solution.
Johann
Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig Deputy Director School of Communication Bar-Ilan University 52900 Ramat Gan ISRAEL (office) +972-3-5317651 (office secretary) +972-3-5317060 (cell) +972-52-3410163 (fax) +972-9-9744441
Sam.Lehman-Wilzig@biu.ac.il<mailto:Sam.Lehman-Wilzig@biu.ac.il> website: www.ProfSLW.com
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-- Alan Bilansky alanbilansky@gmail.com (201) 743-8670
The topic of free labour in academic work is interesting and an important one. For me the issue really is that publishing corporations derive profits from a) commodifying academic knowledge and b) using the labour of reviewers, editorial boards, editors etc that are to a specific degree not paid by the companies that derive these profits. Open access is a step forward, but one should bear in mind that there are different open access models, some of them introducing author fees and being run by commercial companies that make monetary profits. So open access does not equal "non-commercial" and non-profit. And a lot of the commercial open access models are predatory, see: http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/ We need to differentiate between different models of open access, there are good ones and bad ones. What needs to get more attention besides OA journals are open access book publishers. There are many arguments for why non-commercial non-profit open access journal publishing is the best model available. I have together with a colleague made this argument recently here: http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/502 And concerning academic politics and policies, I think we need urgent change so that a) all public research funding is based on the condition that it is published in non-commercial OAJs only, b) public funding is introduced for non-commercial OAJs (e.g. in the form of open access councils, to which non-commercial OA publishers and journals can apply for funding) and c) all senior academics should c1) stop publishing in commercial journals and publish in non-commercial OAJs only, c2) consider stop being editors and editorial board members and reviewers for commercial journals or reduce their engagement step by step as far as possible and c3) provide support for non-commercial OAJs. d) the role of (Social) Sciences Citation Index in research evaluations, tenure reviews etc is dismantled and substituted by publications in journals listed in the DOAJ etc The viable future of academic publishing is in my view what I like to term the "diamond model of open access" - it is not about open access in general because as anything in capitalism also open access can be commodified (and has already been) - it is about using open access as a means for decommodifying academic knowledge, which requires non-commercial academic publishing and an alternative model. Persons having provocative thoughts on these issues or being involved in non-commercial open access publishing themselves, are welcome to contribute thought-pieces to this debate section on open access: http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/announcement/view/16 Best, Christian On 11/09/2013 19:07, Alan Bilansky wrote:
Sam,
Aside form demanding money, as a way to address alienation in academic labor, I would first advocate only reviewing for publications with open access policies. (Currently I don't have the bargaining power to make either demand. . . .)
Best,
Alan
On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 8:46 AM, Johann Hoechtl < Johann.Hoechtl@donau-uni.ac.at> wrote:
Sam Lehman-wilzig <Sam.Lehman-Wilzig@biu.ac.il> schrieb am 11.09.2013 um 14:28 in Nachricht <12CC0190-5EE2-41B7-BB59-F30F1D1A6004@biu.ac.il>: Hi all: I find interesting that no one seems to realize that the two seemingly "unrelated" topics we are discussing (see below) are actually the same issue! If there is performing "alienated labor" it is academic referees of articles, editors of journals, etc -- who are not compensated for their work! Why shouldn't an academic, COMMERCIAL journal (one that demands payment from subscribers -- institutional and individual), PAY article reviewers, the journal editors etc for their reviews? If they did that, then the reviewers would feel a lot more obligated to devote serious attention to their refereeing review. In my opinion, paying for article review (even if it's $100 or so per article) would solve most of the problems mentioned here regarding unprofessional (or no-show) reviewers -- and perhaps also sensitizing them a bit more to the whole issue of "alienated labor" in other spheres. Sam
I am sceptical concerning your reasoning.
1. Money, as a hygiene factor, will not rise quality of reviews for a long time and can even have adverse effects (cf. http://thefilter.blogs.com/thefilter/2009/12/the-israeli-childcare-experimen... ); 2. Now we need someone verifying the work of reviewers (as money will have to be paid upon successfull completion of work), thus quality control for quality control; and 3. as reviewers will have to be paid, publishers have another argument to raise prices from 100$ to 120$. Disclosure: I believe in Open Science
Thus I see the relation between these two topics, yet they call for a different solution.
Johann
Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig Deputy Director School of Communication Bar-Ilan University 52900 Ramat Gan ISRAEL (office) +972-3-5317651 (office secretary) +972-3-5317060 (cell) +972-52-3410163 (fax) +972-9-9744441
Sam.Lehman-Wilzig@biu.ac.il<mailto:Sam.Lehman-Wilzig@biu.ac.il> website: www.ProfSLW.com
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participants (4)
-
Alan Bilansky -
Christian Fuchs -
Johann Hoechtl -
Sam Lehman-wilzig