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
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]