Mohamed Gad-el Hak, Publish or Perish - An Ailing Enterprise, Physics Today 57(3), 61-62 (March 2004). (Issue not yet available online, and will probably be restricted to subscribers.) The author pens a scathing critique of the scholarly publishing enterprise, citing familiar maladies such as excessive publication, cut-and-paste or recycled publications (such as turning a thesis into a book that's little more than the original,or material already published in journal form masquerading as a new monograph,) and shoddily-edited manuscripts. Gad-el-Hak agrees with scholarly publishing's role in the academic merit and promotion process, "if it emphasizes quality rather than quantity." However, he blames the "publish-or-perish" imperative for creating a "race ... to publish en masse. ... Mostly for-profit publishers of books and journals have mushroomed and mediocrity has crept into both venues." Gad-el-Hak sees an excessive proliferation of scholarly journals, using as an example his own speciality fluid mechanics, where he finds more than 200 periodicals and perhaps half a dozen worth reading. While he doesn't mention open access publishing, one wonders if he would consider it a remedy or view the launching of new journals with suspicion. Among his suggestions towards fixing the system, Gad-el-Hak values peer review and impact factors highly, remarking: "Journals should publish their impact factor. The ones who don't may have something to hide." Furthermore, he says libraries should give considerable weight to impact factor when making subscription retention decisions. For the most part, though, researchers should publish less often and libraries and book buyers should be more discriminating and "boycott over-priced books."
Posted by
Garrett at 2/25/2004 01:43:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
