Progressive Geographies

Clare replies to my reply, here.

My remarks were of course provocative. As a former journal editor myself I agree very strongly that it matters a great deal who reads the articles and my statement: ‘who cares who reads the articles’ was perhaps too ambiguously ironic. It was intended to criticise certain institutional interests in quantity at the expense of any interest in the actual content of what is being written.

What worries me is academic writing that is published but not read. In this case one could argue that this work is not serving its social function and that forms of quasi censorship are in operation by requiring too hermetic a form. Some forms of journal article writing can close down the impact of academic work, rather than opening it up In this sense they operate like a closed club – or in Foucault’s terms ‘a society of discourse’ whose rules are only accessible to a very restricted few.

Of course one needs specialist discussion to advance knowledge – but if this is not being read even by other specialists then there is a problem.

Editors certainly care who reads material, because no-one wants to be the editor of a journal that no-one reads. But how can we tell? We try to keep an eye on what measures we have that can give an indication of that. Two of these are the number of times articles are downloaded, and the number of citations they receive. Neither of course is an indication that they have actually been read, though you’d hope they had been in the last case at least. But I think that the same argument about how editors try to gauge how much stuff is read is more broadly shared. For promotion and hiring decisions, citation rates can actually play quite a big role. Numbers of articles does matter, but not (I think) at the expense of what is in them. Where they are published is much more important. This is often driven by the impact factor of journals, itself a product of citation rates. (There are problems with this of course, but they are rather different from those Clare raises.)

There has been a struggle in the British system, certainly in the humanities and social sciences, not to move to a wholly metric driven system for evaluation of research outputs. The last Research Assessment Exercise panels put quite an emphasis on the reading of the submitted material before its grading. This is surely the right way to continue – rather than grading on the basis of where it was published, citation rates etc. For those outside the UK, the RAE – now replaced by the REF (Research Excellence Framework) – is basically the means by which research funding, other than grants for specific projects, is determined. What this is requires is that over a specific period (the last one ran from 2001-07) all submitted academics have to list the four pieces they have produced in that time that they/their department think represent their best work. Those pieces can be books, articles or chapters. Now, I’m not defending every aspect of this system, but four pieces in that time period puts the emphasis squarely on quality, not quantity. The model of splitting the research into more and more pieces and thereby spreading it thin to increase the volume actually counts against the academic and their department.

At Refracted Input, Clare O’Farrell replies to my posts on publishing and writing.

This may not necessarily be where Stuart’s comments were leading, but my own personal view is that journal publishing is not really where it’s at if you want to make a real contribution to the field that people actually read – at least in the humanities area. Many journal articles I find turgidly unreadable and not tractible for use as lecture or teaching fodder either.

Journal articles are something the institution has fixated on as being a quantifiable measure of academic performance. Who cares whether anybody actually reads them? I would argue that those who measure such things are in the rear guard in relation to new developments in how academics actually do their work as academics (as opposed to their work as employees of an institution). It’s rather like Bourdieu’s point that those who are not part of the educated elites think that impressionism is great modern art and a sign of culture – whereas the educated elite are all looking at bleeding edge contemporary art..

It’s a different situation in science – well perhaps not – as the publishing lead times are too long and scientists are resorting to online publication to get their work out before somebody else beats them to it in their chosen research areas.

Journals articles are, in my view, the impressionist art of academe for those not quite in the cultural know.

Thanks Clare. That’s not where my comments were heading – nor would I agree! From my perspective, journal articles and books accomplish different things. I prefer books, and see those as my major outputs. But as preparatory works that feed into books, collaborative ventures, or side-projects, articles have also been important to me. I have prioritised books (and will continue to do so), but wouldn’t want to have chose one entirely over the other.

I was debating recently the idea of not writing anything to do with a book for a year – I’ve written my books to date almost back-to-back – and just write articles and other shorter pieces. I’m not sure I will accomplish this – I know the next two books I want to write after The Birth of Territory…

I should also add that as a journal editor, I do think it matters who reads articles! Nonetheless, I definitely agree on the problems of quantification of outputs.