Abstract
We reflect on peculiarities and challenges we increasingly encounter in academic publishing with book presses and journals. First, we assess decreasing professional standards among commissioning editors with presses and managing editors with journals, including editing avoidance and peculiar reviewing practices. Second, we examine problems that result from the profit motivation of corporations that own and operate most of today’s presses and journals. These include problems stemming from lowest-bid, outsourced copy-editing and introduction of journal manuscript software that assigns not only more digital labor to scholars upon submission, but also more responsibility to manage risk. Third, we reflect on possible remedies and alternative strategies, including recognizing and rewarding presses that are holding out against these trends. We hope to suggest to (especially junior) scholars that their similar experiences are not unique or random and that these trends are mostly recent inventions of a corporatized academic publishing industry and are not without alternatives.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Our observations are based on publishing some 133 refereed articles (29 together) mostly in international journals, 62 book chapters (10 together), and 17 books (5 together) (monographs and edited volumes) since 2004. We have served as editors of special issues of five journals and eight collections, as journal board members, as international editorial board advisors, and as book review editors.
References
Archambault E, Larivière V. History of the journal impact factor: contingencies and consequences. Scientometrics. 2009;79(3):635–49.
Baker T. An evaluation of journal impact factors: a case study of the top three journals ranked in criminology and penology. Criminol. 2015;40(5):5–10.
Barranco R, Jennings W, May D, Wells M. What journals are the most cited journals in criminology and criminal justice’s big three journals? J Crim Justice Educ. 2016;27(1):19–34.
Bartlett T. The journal that couldn’t stop citing itself. Chron High Educ. 2015;62(5):14.
Beall J. Essential information about predatory publishers and journals. Int High Educ. 2016;86:2–3.
Beverungen A, Bohm S, Land C. The poverty of journal publishing. Organization. 2012;19(6):929–38.
Bohannon J. Who’s afraid of peer review? Science. 2013;342:60–5.
Bose P. Faculty activism and the corporatization of the university. Am Q. 2012;64(4):815–8.
Brownlee J. Academia Inc: how corporatization is transforming Canadian Universities. Halifax: Fernwood; 2015.
Brownlee J. Contract faculty in Canada: using access to information requests to uncover hidden academics in Canadian Universities. High Educ. 2015;70(5):787–805.
Carli G, Tagliaventi MR, Cutolo D. One size does not fit all: the influence of individual and contextual factors on research excellence in academia. Stud High Educ. 2018. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2018.1466873.
Chan AS, Fisher D, editors. The Exchange University: corporatization of academic culture. Vancouver: UBC Press; 2009.
Cinnamon J. Social injustice in surveillance capitalism. Surveill Soc. 2017;15(5):609–25.
Cohn E, Farrington D. Changes in scholarly influence in major international criminology journals. Aust N Z J Criminol. 2017;40(3):335–59.
Dadkhah M, Borchardt G, Lagzian M, Bianciardi G. Academic journals plagued by bogus impact factors. Publ Res Q. 2017;33(2):183–7.
Davidson C. The university corporatization shift: a longitudinal analysis of university admission handbooks, 1980 to 2010. Can J High Educ. 2015;45(2):193–213.
Davidson C. The futures of scholarly publishing. J Sch Publ. 2004;35(3):129–42.
Dean M. Governmentality: power and rule in modern society. London: Sage; 1999.
Dorenkamp I, Ruhle S. Work-life conflict, professional commitment, and job satisfaction among academics. J High Educ. 2019;90(1):56–84.
Edington M. Losing our modesty: the content and communication of peer review. J Sch Publ. 2018;49(3):287–304.
Ericson R. Crime in an insecure world. London: Polity; 2007.
Fleck C. The impact factor fetishism. Arch Eur Sociol. 2013;54(2):327–56.
Giroux HA. Selling out higher education. Pol Futures Educ. 2003;1(1):179–200.
Harland T, McLean A, Wass R, Miller E, Sim KN. An assessment arms race and its fallout: high-stakes grading and the case for slow scholarship. Assess Eval High Educ. 2015;40(4):528–41.
Hartman Y, Darab S. A call for slow scholarship: a case study on the intensification of academic life and its implications for pedagogy. Rev Educ Pedagog Cult Stud. 2012;34(1–2):49–60.
Hirsch PM. Cultural industries revisited. Organ Sci. 2000;11(3):356–61.
Jennings WG, Higgins G, Khey D. Exploring the stability and variability of impact factors and associated rankings in criminology and criminal justice journals, 1998–2007. J Crim Justice Educ. 2009;20(2):157–72.
Johnson MJ. What is a book? redefining the book in the digitally social age. Publ Res Q. 2019;35(1):68–78.
Khey D, Jennings W, Higgins G, Schoepfer A, Langton L. Re-ranking the top female academic ‘stars’ in criminology and criminal justice using an alternative methods. J Crim Justice Educ. 2011;22(1):118–29.
Kurt S. Why do authors publish in predatory journals? Learn Publ. 2018;31(2):141–7.
Kyvik S, Aksnes DW. Explaining the increase in publication productivity among academic staff: a generational perspective. Stud High Educ. 2015;40(8):1438–53.
Larivière V, Haustein S, Mongeon P. Big publishers, bigger profits: how the scholarly community lost the control of its journals. MediaTropes. 2016;5(2):102–10.
Larivière V, Haustein S, Mongeon P. The oligopoly of academic publishers in the digital era. PLoS ONE. 2015;10(6):1–15.
Larivière V. The decade of metrics? examining the evolution of metrics within and outside LIS. Bull Am Soc Inf Sci. 2012;38(6):12–7.
Lash S. Risk culture. In: Adam B, Beck U, Van Loon J, editors. The risk society and beyond: critical issues for social theory. London: Sage; 2000. p. 47–62.
Lincoln YS. The political economy of publication: marketing, commodification, and qualitative scholarly work. Qual Health Res. 2012;22(11):1451–9.
Lipscombe T. Burn this article: an inflammatory view of peer review. J Sch Publ. 2016;47(3):284–98.
Long H, Boggess LN, Jennings WG. Re-assessing publication productivity among academic “stars” in criminology and criminal justice. J Crim Justice Educ. 2011;22(1):102–17.
Lopez-Cozar E, Robinson-Garcia N, Torres-Salinas D. The Google Scholar experiment: how to index false papers and manipulate bibliometric indicators. J Assoc Inf Sci Technol. 2014;65(3):446–54.
Lyall Nelson E. Subsidy landscapes and the organizational sociology of scholarly publishing. J Sch Publ. 2018;49(2):166–74.
McDonald DA. Public ambiguity and the multiple meanings of corporatization. In: McDonald D, editor. Rethinking corporatization and public services in the global south. New York: Zed Books; 2014. p. 1–30.
MacLeod I, Steckley L, Murray R. Time is not enough: promoting strategic engagement with writing for publication. Stud High Educ. 2012;37(6):641–54.
Meriläinen S, Tienari J, Thomas R, Davies A. Hegemonic academic practices: experiences of publishing from the periphery. Organization. 2008;15(4):584–97.
Mountz A, Bonds A, Mansfield B, Loyd J, Hyndman J, Walton-Roberts M, Curran W. For slow scholarship: a feminist politics of resistance through collective action in the neoliberal university. ACME Int J Crit Geogr. 2015;14(4):1235–59.
Neumann R, Guthrie J. The corporatization of research in Australian higher education. Crit Perspect Acc. 2002;13(5–6):721–41.
Newson J. Academic Feminism’s Entanglements with University Corporatization. TOPIA Can J Cult Stud. 2012;28:41–63.
Newson J, Polster C, Woodhouse H. Toward an alternative future for Canada’s Corporatized Universities. ESC Engl Stud Can. 2012;38(1):51–70.
Nicholas D, Herman E, Xu J, Boukacem-Zeghmouri C, Abdullah A, Watkinson A, Rodríguez-Bravo B. Early career researchers’ quest for reputation in the digital age. J Sch Publ. 2018;49(4):375–96.
Nkomo SM. The seductive power of academic journal rankings: challenges of searching for the otherwise. Acad Manag Learn Educ. 2009;8(1):106–21.
O’Hara K, Shadbolt N, Hall W. A pragmatic approach to the right to be forgotten. Global Commission on Internet Governance, [online]. 2016; Paper Series (26) https://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/gcig_no26_web_1.pdf. Accessed 23 Apr 2019.
O’Malley P. Uncertain subjects: risks, liberalism and contract. Econ Soc. 2000;29(4):460–84.
Osterloh M, Frey B. Ranking games. Eval Rev. 2015;39(1):102–29.
Paasi A. Globalisation, academic capitalism, and the uneven geographies of international journal publishing spaces. Environ Plan A. 2005;37(5):769–89.
Padmalochanan P. Academics and the field of academic publishing: challenges and approaches. Publ Res Q. 2019;35(1):87–107.
Polster C. Reconfiguring the academic dance: a critique of faculty’s responses to administrative practices in Canadian Universities. TOPIA Can J Cult Stud. 2012;28:115–41.
Polster C. The nature and implications of the growing importance of research grants to Canadian Universities and academics. High Educ. 2007;53(5):599–622.
Reuter T. New hegemonic tendencies in the production of knowledge: how research quality evaluation schemes and the corporatization of journals impact on academic life. J Workplace Rights. 2011;16(3–4):367–82.
Sallaz J. Your paper has just been outsourced. Global Dialogue Newsl Int Sociol Assoc, [online]. 2013;3(4). http://isa-global-dialogue.net/your-paper-has-just-been-outsourced/. Accessed 23 Apr 2019.
Shu F, Mongeon P, Haustein S, Siler K, Alperin JP, Larivière V. Is it such a big deal? On the cost of journal use in the digital era. Coll Res Libr. Forthcoming.
Sorensen J. An assessment of the relative impact of criminal justice and criminology journals. J Crim Justice. 2009;37:505–11.
Sorensen J, Snell C, Rodriguez J. An assessment of criminal justice and criminology journal prestige. J Crim Justice Educ. 2006;17(2):297–322.
Stack S. Measuring the relative impacts of criminology and criminal justice journals. Justice Q. 1987;4(3):475–84.
International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers. The STM Report. 4th ed. The Hauge: International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers Prins Willem Alexanderhof 5; 2015. p. 180 Available at: http://www.stm-assoc.org/2015_02_20_STM_Report_2015.pdf. Accessed 23 Apr 2019.
Taylor ZW. The hunter became the hunted: a graduate student’s experiences with predatory publishing. Publ Res Q. 2019;35(1):122–37.
Van den Brink M, Benschop Y. Gender practices in the construction of academic excellence: sheep with five legs. Organization. 2012;19(4):507–24.
Xia J, Harmon JL, Connolly KG, Donnelly RM, Anderson MR, Howard HA. Who publishes in ‘predatory’ journals? J Assoc Inf Sci Technol. 2015;66(7):1406–17.
Zhang S. The real cost of knowledge. The Atlantic, [online]. 2019. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/03/uc-elsevier-publisher/583909/. Accessed 23 Apr 2019.
Zuboff S. Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. J Inf Technol. 2015;30(1):75–89.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Joanne DeCosse, Crystal Gumieny, and Bilguundari Enkhtugs for their assistance.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Walby, K., Lippert, R.K. Academic Publishing and Corporatization: Reflections on Professionalism, Profits, and Peculiarities of Today’s Presses and Journals. Pub Res Q 35, 362–376 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-019-09668-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-019-09668-2