11/21/2011: From a Kevin Kiley story in IHE, based on a paper released Friday by the Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein:
“Many professors enjoy their work, finding it rewarding and helpful to their other professional duties, but if their books and essays do not find readers sufficient to justify the effort, the publication mandate falls short of its rationale, namely, to promote scholarly communication and the advancement of knowledge,” Bauerlein wrote in the report. “To put it bluntly, universities ask English professors to labor upon projects of little value to others, incurring significant opportunity costs.”…
The problem is that most of the research is not advancing scholarly communication, because most works are not cited enough to justify the amount of time and money that goes into producing them.
Paper citations fell into patterns. Most papers received only a handful of citations. Of the 17 articles published by the University of Illinois English department, 11 garnered between zero and two citations and four garnered between three and six citations. Two received more than 20 citations. Books followed a similar pattern.
University 0-2 Citations 3-6 Citations >6 Citations University of Georgia 16 4 3 SUNY-Buffalo 11 0 2 University of Vermont 11 3 2 University of Illinois 11 4 2 Bauerlein puts the blame on institutions for crafting positions that emphasize research that, in the end, is not being read. “There is a glaring mismatch between the resources these universities and faculty members invest and the impact of most published scholarship,” he wrote. “Despite scant attention paid to scholarship, a faculty member’s promotion and annual review depends heavily on the professor’s published work. A university’s resources and human capital is thereby squandered as highly trained and intelligent professionals to toil over projects that have little consequence.”
A sportswriter friend once compared our jobs: “I spend 30 minutes writing an article 30,000 people will read. You professors spend 5 years writing an article 25 people will read.”
Dog responds
yes indeed, academic trivia publication abounds (I know, I do that, in spades – publishing mostly in
the Journal of Dogs that don’t know Shit about
Anything).
Indeed, I believe that Dr. UOMatters should deserve professional scholarship credit for this
blog/forum but I imagine, exactly the opposite
is occurring in their home department.
Ossified Professor X: “Why hell are you running
UOmatters which detracts from your time to be more professional”
UOMatters – “uh, like, dude, its more relevant than publishing in the journal of incremental knowledge”
Publishing defensible ideas and cutting edge theory in professional blogs, I believe, is certainly a relevant form of scholarship and outreach and does generate genuine interactions with an interested public. Its time that Academia wakes up to what the concept of “responsible and informative publishing” is, in the year 2011.
Watch it Dog – I may not be a literature professor, but I publish plenty of peer-reviewed articles in journals of incremental knowledge!
This blog is part of my university and community service obligation. And my department, and the Dean’s office, have recognized this work as exactly that, in my performance reviews.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
How long a time period did that citation chart cover? The thing about basic research especially in the humanities as opposed to the sciences is that it takes time, sometimes quite a lot of time, for the ideas to find their way into the literature. The point is not just to communicate ideas as but also to get them into the storehouse where someone, sometimes, might find them useful.
What’s the point of quoting a sportswriter?
I skimmed the paper… the 11 books in the Vermont study were published in 2004.
Dogs are always Watchful
The dog is relieved that your departments supports
Dr. UOmatters. This is important.
I remember a time in the early 1990’s when the Dog
was fooling around with stuff rather than doing serious research – my department most definitely did not support me. The thing I was fooling around with as an educational and outreach vehicle was something called a Web Browser or some such.
Fortunately, the Dog was able to fully publish in the Journal of incremental Knowledge and its companion Redundant Research Express and you
can imagine what the peer review standard for dogs is ….
Perhaps Professor Bauerlein could work on subject-verb agreement before he gives the knock (“promotion and annual review depends”; “resources and human capital is thereby squandered”).
It’s absolutely the case that humanities research takes a long time to sink in and be cited — centuries in some cases — so humanities researchers need protection from silly metrics. That said, many traditional humanists shoot themselves in the foot by cleaving to the peer-reviewed article and the university press monograph as the be-all, end-all of what counts as scholarship. The humanities will survive, and thrive; humanities professors are another matter.
A sportswriter? Talk about writing something that is useless the day after it’s published. Why is that relevant? Humanities scholarship has a long-term readership.