Scholarly Communication: A Devil's Dictionary | Peer to Peer Review 

Photo by Debora Miller

I've been following a rather intriguing series of blog posts on what's wrong with journal publishing by pmr (who, I finally realized, is Peter Murray-Rust - his blog does not have the typical author information one usually finds in those fossilized records of research, the academic article). As a result of thinking about his rousing questions, I felt a bit of Ambrose Bierce coming on. You can find a more optimistic and useful glossary of scholarly communication terms and acronyms provided by Bucknell University. For a snarkier approach to defining our problems, carry on.

Publish: 1) The transformation of knowledge into property. Using funding provided by one's employer and/or a grant, a researcher writes up results and submits them to a corporation (sometimes called a "scholarly society") for consideration; the corporation recruits volunteer researchers to read, comment on, and judge the worthiness of the findings, a rigorous vetting process that, when done well, creates value (also called "prestige") for the publication. If the research passes muster, the author agrees to sign over copyright so that research findings can become the intellectual property of the publisher. 2) Formatting marketing material to mimic freely-donated research findings, sometimes recruiting respected scientists to stand in as authors.

Perish: The stick that prods scholars to write up their research and give it to corporations. Scholars who are unsuccessful in giving their research to corporations, either because corporations don't want it or because scholars choose to share it through other channels, forfeit jobs, promotions, and/or grants.

Intellectual Property: The product of intellectuals rendered into property by the legal action of corporations through assumption of copyright.

Copyright: A limited monopoly on the expression of ideas. The U.S. Constitution has given Congress the full authority to grant short-term monopolies to intellectual property owners. As these owners are increasingly corporations, the incentives to publish no longer bear any relationship to the progress of science and the useful arts (see Perish), and members of congress represent not just citizens, but corporations (see Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission), the definition of "short term" has led some to speculate whether this situation illustrates a new feature of special relativity in which inertia exerts an unusually strong effect on time.

Impact Factor: A formula that calculates the potential impact that being associated with a particular publication will have on a career, including the awarding of tenure, grants, and promotions. Not to be confused with impact on the advancement of knowledge, which has little bearing on careers because it is more difficult for committees to measure.

Basic Research: 1) "What I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing" (attributed to Werner Heisenberg); exploratory research without a known outcome; 2) research into fundamental scientific questions typically funded by taxpayers in order to set the stage for corporations to engage in much more profitable applied research.

Open Access: 1) A new revenue stream created when a small number of idealistic scientists pay publishers to set their freely-donated research findings free in a boutique service; 2) an insignificant fringe movement that distracts scientists and libraries from a problem they actually don't have; 3) a terroristic threat against peer review, high quality science, and life as we know it.

The Republic of Science: (archaic; sometimes called "academic science") A self-regulating system governing the creation of new scientific knowledge through the "spontaneous coordination of independent initiatives" in which members share knowledge in order to advance our common understanding of the world. This decentralized and dynamic system of governance by scientists has been supplanted by a market-based system of competitive reputation-building by scientists coupled with corporate management of new scientific knowledge as a commercial asset.