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]