Lots of academic writing is done for free. By 'for free,' I mean that the authors do not get (directly) paid. Rewards come in other guises such as respect of colleagues, contribution to the body of knowledge (and the greater good), recognition that may lead to invitations to conferences, fulfillment of job obligations to research and disseminate same, etc. This includes both journal articles and book chapters. Prior to my full time entry into academics, I think that this never occurred to me; I probably assumed that people were paid when they wrote things that were published. Of course, there are worse things than writing for free. Some journals, especially open-access ones, charge authors to publish. This makes writing for free not seem quite so bad unless your university is forthcoming with the publication bribe money. (The word 'bribe' is meant as a joke. Sort of.Kidding, ha, ha.)
When you publish in academic journals (or textbooks), you generally sign away the copyright - so no longer own your article. However, there are and have been people who post these articles online - on personal websites, blogs, and places like ResearchGate - in order to increase exposure. You get a score for being looked at on ReserachGate - and some academics have argued that this should be used in evaluations - and I have to think that articles that someone can download on demand may have better chances of being cited - because, after all, this is faster and easier than doing actual systematic research. Of course, I am so old that systematic research used to require a green book called "The readers' guide to periodical literature." The idea that I can access about 75% of what I need electronically with the remaining 25% either coming from bound journals (that I can scan, now that our campus library has a terrific new scanner!) or via interlibrary loan (which also means electronic access, just with a slight delay) makes, for me, online research seem like a breeze. And I am enough of a control freak to want to know 'what all' is out there before I settle for what is convenient. But, enough of that. I bring this up because I realize that the publishing industry thrives on $. I have to assume that academic journals get a lot from institutional subscriptions; they also charge non subscribing institutions when 'borrowing' via interlibrary loan. When authors (who are not owners, by the way, by virtue of the copyright issue mentioned above) start posting their own things and make them widely available for free, what will happen to publishers? On the other hand, when authors post citation information that requires an interested researcher to access the article (for free, if his/her institution has a subscription, or for a charge, if it is borrowed), then it seems like the publishers still win. It will, I think, be interesting to see how this goes given the changes in music that have happened and continue to happen due to the nature of electronic files and file sharing. Additionally, ResearchGate encourages authors to post data. This is considered a good thing for transparency. I see it as very questionable as far as IRBs and (!) participants are concerned. Needless to say, I cannot imagine posting qualitative data, even anonymous, on a website - even one that you need to have a password and account to access. I have questions about some quantitative data - between the article, the location of the researchers, and the type of study, it might not be that hard to reason out who participants were, especially for a small n study. And certainly the consent form did not cover publication of the data themselves. There is also the tricky question of ownership of data (who owns data for research done at a university?)
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AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
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