Hi everyone,
I’m picking up in a new thread something Melissa noted:
As a librarian, I need to be able to stand in front of a class of freshmen, as I am about to do tonight, to explain what peer-review is and why it's the gold standard for what they cite in their papers, and to be able to say it with a straight face without feeling like a liar. For those of you who know what a "one-shot" is, you know we do NOT have time to explain the intricacies of the scholarly publishing industry, its good and bad financial incentives, etc., even if we understand them fully ourselves. We don't even have time to explain all that to graduate students.
This is a really good point for discussion.
How do people approach this type of explanation? I am thinking there is a parallel with the difference between what is written in textbooks and what is happening in the scholarly literature. Textbooks tend to present information as ‘decided’, information published in the literature is the ongoing debate. Textbooks change perspective and ideas slowly, a paper can get shot down in weeks/months.
So, do we provide the ‘textbook' version to students: “This is how science works, a research team find something out, write it up, send it to a journal, it gets sent to experts in the field, they comment, amendments are made and then it is published”.
Or do we bring in some of the broader picture: “Researchers don’t get paid to publish. Publication is the way researchers get ‘prestige’ - the better their paper and (more commonly) the place they publish it in ‘counts’ towards their academic standing. There are systems that count how many papers people have published, where they have published and how many other people have subsequently cited their work. These numbers are fed into most decision making in research - whether someone gets a promotion, whether they get a grant, how an institution fares in national ‘research excellence’ exercises and how universities get ranked."
Or do we lay it down: “The very narrow focus on what constitutes 'success’ in research has unfortunately resulted in some very poor behaviour…..”
I am conscious that when this is new to people it can seem overwhelming. A comment at last year’s AIMOS conference (which consisted of multiple presentations about research on research, uncovering a swathe of issues) was that it was very depressing and it meant it was hard to believe anything that was published. To be honest when you read articles like these https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/03/the-situation-has-become-appalling-fake-scientific-papers-push-research-credibility-to-crisis-point (which is referring to activity all over world) you can get depressed.
My response is that it is good we are lifting the lid on this - these are the steps we make towards fixing the problems.
But we want our community to ‘be alert not alarmed’.
How do people approach this discussion in their own institutions?
Danny
Dr Danny Kingsley
Scholarly Communication Consultant
Visiting Fellow, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science <https://cpas.anu.edu.au/people/dr-danny-kingsley>, ANU
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
Member, Board of Directors, FORCE11 <https://force11.org/info/people-at-force11/>
Member, Australian Academy of Science National Committee for Data in Science <https://www.science.org.au/supporting-science/national-committees-science/national-committee-for-data-in-science>
---------------------------------------
e: [log in to unmask]
m: +61 (0)480 115 937
t:@dannykay68
b: @dannykay68.bsky.social
o: 0000-0002-3636-5939
########################################################################
Access the OPENCAFE-L Home Page and Archives:
https://listserv.byu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=OPENCAFE-L
To unsubscribe from the OPENCAFE-L send an email to:
[log in to unmask]
########################################################################
|
