From: JJE Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2019 11:04:09 -0400

Rick,

One last comment and I will leave this alone. I am not saying that people
"misrepresent" things, which implies a moral failing of some sort.  I am
saying that they don't know.  Consciousness ain't all it's cracked up to
be.  For anyone who thinks this is worth considering further, I refer you
to Daniel Kahneman's book, "Thinking Fast and Slow":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

Joe Esposito

On Sun, Jun 2, 2019 at 10:00 AM LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 31 May 2019 02:24:49 +0000
>
> Joe, I’m not saying that in general, people never misrepresent their views
> or their behavior. I’m saying that in the particular case of researchers
> reporting on why they choose particular journals, I would need to see
> evidence for the proposition that either a) they don’t actually know or b)
> they do know but they’re performatively dissembling in some way.
>
>
>
> I’m absolutely open to seeing such evidence, but I’m not trusting enough
> to just take that assertion as given and thereby discount or dismiss the
> survey results.
>
>
>
> ---
>
> Rick Anderson
>
> Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication
>
> Marriott Library, University of Utah
>
> Desk: (801) 587-9989
>
> Cell: (801) 721-1687
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>
>
> From: JJE Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 30 May 2019 21:10:40 -0400
>
> You are all too trusting, Rick.  Did you see that recent survey that
> claimed that 45% of college students go hungry? Here is the link:
>
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/nyregion/hunger-college-food-insecurity.html
>
> Mind you, this is in a nation where the biggest health problem is obesity.
>
> I know it's cheating, but this exchange makes me think of the famous, and
> perhaps apocryphal, quotation attributed to Henry Ford:
>
> “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster
> horses.”
>
>
> Joe Esposito
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 30, 2019 at 8:50 PM LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Thu, 30 May 2019 04:16:45 +0000
> >
> > Joe,
>
> >
> > Eh, I don’t know.
> >
> > If there’s a compelling reason to believe that researchers really don’t
> know why they choose one journal over another, I’d be interested to hear
> it. Otherwise, I think I’m willing to assume that they have at least that
> much insight into their own minds.
> >
> > As for whether they’re answering questions performatively, which I
> assume would mean “in the way that they think they’re expected to, or that
> they should”—I guess maybe they are. But the danger of seeing every survey
> response as a performance is that it turns the survey into a Rorschach test
> for the person conducting it. Again, in this particular context I think
> we’d need evidence for the proposition that researchers are somehow
> misrepresenting their own motivations; we can’t just assume that they are
> because human communication includes a performative aspect.
> >
> > ---
> > Rick Anderson
> > Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication
> > Marriott Library, University of Utah
> > Desk: (801) 587-9989
> > Cell: (801) 721-1687
> > [log in to unmask]
> >
> >
> > From: JJE Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Tue, 28 May 2019 20:18:43 -0400
> >
> > Rick,
> >
> > I don't think we can assume that people know why they do things or how
> they think about things simply by asking them. People perform when asked
> questions; they even perform in private for imaginary audiences. Without
> taking into account the performative aspect of human communications, we
> miss the meaning.
> >
> > Joe Esposito
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, May 28, 2019 at 8:09 PM LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Tue, 28 May 2019 02:41:05 +0000
> >
> > So this (to me) points to the issue of why people publish.  It is not,
> and hasn’t
> > for some time, been primarily to communicate the work.  That happens
> through
> > multiple other fora such as conferences, discussion pieces etc. A
> significant
> > reason for the high publication rate of those employed in academia is
> that is
>
> > what ‘counts’ for grants, for promotion, for league tables etc.
> >
> > And yet when Ithaka S+R recently asked faculty to rank the criteria by
> which they select journals in which to publish, advancement criteria (“The
> journal has a high impact factor, with an excellent academic reputation”)
> came in third, after two communication-with-colleagues criteria (“The
> journal’s area of coverage is very close to my immediate area of research”;
> “The current issues of the journal are circulated widely, and are well read
> by scholars in your field”).
> >
> > So it sounds like communicating their work _and_ academic advancement
> are important factors for authors when they make publishing decisions. But
> if this survey is accurate, their primary concern when selecting journals
> is to make sure their work is communicated to their disciplinary peers and
> colleagues, even though informal channels of communication are also
> available to them.
> >
> > The study is at
> https://sr.ithaka.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/SR-Report-US-Faculty-Survey-2018-04122019.pdf
> .
> > ---
> >
> > Rick Anderson
> > Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication
> > Marriott Library, University of Utah
> > Desk: (801) 587-9989
> > Cell: (801) 721-1687
> > [log in to unmask]
>
> > [SNIP]
>