Journals under Threat : A Joint Response from HSTM Editors

We live in an age of metrics. All around us, things are being standardized, quantified, measured. Scholars concerned with the work of science and technology must regard this as a fascinating and crucial practical, cultural and intellectual phenomenon. Analysis of the roots and meaning of metrics and metrology has been a preoccupation of much of the best work in our field for the past quarter century at least. As practitioners of the interconnected disciplines that make up the field of science studies we understand how significant, contingent and uncertain can be the process of rendering nature and society in grades, classes and numbers. We now confront a situation in which our own research work is being subjected to putatively precise accountancy by arbitrary and unaccountable agencies. Some may already be aware of the proposed European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH), an initiative originating with the European Science Foundation. The ERIH is an attempt to grade journals in the humanities – including “history and philosophy of science”. The initiative proposes a league table of academic journals, with premier, second and third divisions. According to the European Science Foundation, ERIH “aims initially to identify, and gain more visibility for, top-quality European Humanities research published in academic journals in, potentially, all European languages”. It is hoped “that ERIH will form the backbone of a fully-fledged research information system for the Humanities”. What is meant, however, is that ERIH will provide funding bodies and other agencies in Europe and elsewhere with an allegedly exact measure of research quality. In short, if research is published in a premier league journal it will be recognized as first rate ; if it appears somewhere in the lower divisions, it will be rated (and not funded) accordingly.

This initiative is entirely defective in conception and execution. Consider the major issues of accountability and transparency. The process of producing the graded list of journals in science studies was overseen by a committee of four (the membership is currently listed at http://www.esf.org/research-areas/humanities/research-infrastructures-including-erih/erih-governance-and-panels/erih-expert-panels.html). This committee cannot be considered representative. It was not selected in consultation with any of the various disciplinary organizations that currently represent our field such as BSHS, HSS, PSA, SHoT or SSSS. Only in June 2008 were journal editors belatedly informed of the process and its relevant criteria or asked to provide any information regarding their publications. No indication has been given of the means through which the list was compiled ; nor how it might be maintained in the future.

The ERIH depends on a fundamental misunderstanding of conduct and publication of research in our field, and in the humanities in general. Journals’ quality cannot be separated from their contents and their review processes. Great research may be published anywhere and in any language. Truly ground-breaking work may be more likely to appear from marginal, dissident or unexpected sources, rather than from a well-established and entrenched mainstream. Our journals are various, heterogeneous and distinct. Some are aimed at a broad, general and international readership, others are more specialized in their content and implied audience. Their scope and readership say nothing about the quality of their intellectual content. The ERIH, on the other hand, confuses internationality with quality in a way that is particularly prejudicial to specialist and non-English language journals. In a recent report, the British Academy, with judicious understatement, concludes that “the European Reference Index for the Humanities as presently conceived does not represent a reliable way in which metrics of peer-reviewed publications can be constructed.” Such exercises as ERIH can become self-fulfilling prophecies. If such measures as ERIH are adopted as metrics by funding and other agencies, then many in our field will conclude that they have little choice other than to limit their publications to journals in the premier division. We will sustain fewer journals, much less diversity and impoverish our discipline.

Along with many others in our field, this Journal has concluded that we want no part of this illegitimate and misguided exercise. This joint Editorial is being published in journals across the fields of history of science and science studies as an expression of our collective dissent and our refusal to allow our field to be managed and appraised in this fashion. We have asked the compilers of the ERIH to remove our journals’ titles from their lists.

Neil Barton (Transactions of the Newcomen Society)
Robert Fox (Notes & Records of the Royal Society)
Michael Hoskin (Journal for the History of Astronomy)
Nick Jardine (Studies in History and Philosophy of Science)
Trevor Levere (Annals of Science)
Bernie Lightman (Isis)
Michael Lynch (Social Studies of Science)
Peter Morris (Ambix)
Iwan Rhys Morus (History of Science)
Simon Schaffer (British Journal for the History of Science)

[editorial note: the protest can be read on this site: http://www.sauvonsluniversite.com/spip.php?article591 (as of July 16, 2008)]

Students around the world are struggling

Students around the world are struggling against neoliberal reforms and the privatisation of education right now.

In 2007 alone students in over 30 countries staged partly massive protests against exploding tuition fees and turning of universities into business and corporate entities.
Check out this list of protests:
fading-hope.blog-city.com/international_student_protests_2007.htm

A truly democratic society needs emancipated citizens. And for that we need emancipating - instead of privatised and commercialised - education!
The following Group is for Free and Emancipating education worldwide. Join the “International Students Movement for Free and Emancipating Education”:
www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=24722765003

If we unite in our struggle against the commercialisation of education, then we stand a chance!

Demos debate: Is public science a public good?

Is public science a public good? - A debate on the future of university
science

Thursday, 15th May 2008, 4pm- 6pm

Portcullis House, London, SW1A 2LW

Panellists:

* Philip Moriarty, Professor of Physics, University of Nottingham
* Ben Goldacre, writer of the Guardian's Bad Science column
* Terence Kealey, Vice Chancellor, University of Buckingham
* John Pethica, Chief Scientist, National Physical Laboratory
* Phil Willis MP, Chair, Innovation, Universities and Skills Select Committee
* Ian Gibson MP, Member, Innovation, Universities and Skills Select Committee
* Jack Stilgoe, Demos

Should we be worried about companies funding university science? Does it
boost innovation or poison science and blacken our ivory towers? Should
science aim to change the world or fuel the economy? Join us for a
debate on the future of science in universities.

This event is hosted by Ian Gibson MP and Phil Willis MP, with the
support of the Institute of Physics.

Spaces are limited. RSVP to science [at] demos.co.uk

Demos
Building everyday democracy
www.demos.co.uk
to subscribe to free email updates:
www.demos.co.uk/emailupdates
weblog:
www.demosgreenhouse.co.uk

Call for Papers: Universities and Corporatization

New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry
http://newproposals.blogspot.com/
http://www.newproposals.ca

Call for Papers for Volume 2, Issue 1.

The Editorial Collective invites submissions for Volume 2 of New Proposals.
We encourage the submission of papers that take a politically engaged
stance. We are interested in full length articles (3,000 to 5,000 words) as
well as shorter commentaries (up to 2,500 words).

Papers should be no more than 3,000 - 5,000 words. References and citations
are to be kept to the minimum required to advance your argument. Articles
can be based in original research, synthetic reviews, or theoretical
engagements. We look forward to -in fact expect- a diversity of
perspectives and approaches that, while they may disagree on the
particulars, they will share with the Editorial Collective a commitment to
an engaged scholarship that prioritizes social justice.

New Proposals is a transnational peer-reviewed journal hosted at The
University of British Columbia in collaboration with the UBC Library
Journal Project.


Call For Papers, Volume 2, Issue 2 (Fall 2008)

Universities and Corporatization

What is the role of the university and the meaning of education at the
beginning of the twenty first century? How are corporate money, influence
and ideology shaping the face of the university? How do crushing debt loads
constrain student choices and shape the kind of education they seek and
receive?

Over the past few decades, people in many countries have experienced a
steady corporatization of their universities. University administrations
are increasingly structured on a corporate model and academic success is
defined by profit. For this upcoming special issue of New Proposals, we are
interested in articles and commentaries that analyze this situation in
different countries and regions. We welcome contributions that ask the
following kinds of questions: How is the privatization of the university
expressed and experienced in diverse settings? How do ‘audit culture’
governance systems exacerbate bureaucracy and influence the allocation of
resources? Has the debate about this issue been framed differently in the
case of public versus private universities? To what extent have faculty,
staff, and student unions and organizations intervened? How have public
intellectuals responded to this issue in different countries in the past
and present? Have various countries and different systems of education been
more or less successful in resisting this corporate model?

For this special issue, we welcome shorter commentaries (up to 2,500 words)
as well as full length articles. In particular, we are interested in essays
that develop a comparative perspective.
________________________________________________________________________
New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/newproposals

Freedom of inquiry

University World News this week introduces a new fortnightly column reporting on how academics in countries around the world endure attacks on their freedom to conduct research, to speak out publicly on political and social issues, and to teach students through their own example how to become independent-minded.

The articles can be found on www.universityworldnews.com

The Perils, Rewards and Delusions of Campus Capitalism

From a review of:
Science for Sale: The Perils, Rewards and Delusions of Campus Capitalism
by Daniel S. Greenberg
University of Chicago Press

reviewed by: Michael M. Crow
“Daniel Greenberg is widely considered the premier journalist of science policy, having written extensively on the subject over the course of its 60-year evolution in the United States. Science for Sale is his latest offering. It provides an intriguing, if idealistic, review of the issues surrounding the funding of science in the twenty-first century. Greenberg posits that science was once, and should be again, driven by the pure curiosity of scientists and not by motives influenced by the stress of external funding and the negative forces of capitalism. Unfortunately, science past did not really exist in the way he spends so much time describing in the book.
Greenberg’s idyllic views — in particular that the academic scientist and the university are best motivated by curiosity alone — are interesting. But they run counter to history, to how organizations operate and, perhaps most importantly, to the understanding that ‘the university’ itself is an idea, not an ideal or an ideology.” (...)


Comment to the review in:
NATURE, Vol 452, 13 March 2008
How academic corporatism can lead to dictatorship

SIR — Michael Crow’s Book Review of Daniel Greenberg’s Science for Sale (Nature 449, 405; 2007) calls for a response because it reflects a worsening philosophical divide in US academia between those who regard universities as analogous to corporations and think they should be run that way (mostly career administrators) and those who see universities as primarily intellectual enterprises governed by academic core values (mostly line faculty). Asserting that the university is an idea — not an ideal or an ideology — Crow, who is president of Arizona State University, plays down or ignores most of the dangerous consequences of campus capitalism.

Faculty members would generally hold that universities represent ideals as well as ideas. These are manifest in a value system that is among the first casualties of academic corporatism. Derived from political corporatism, academic corporatism is an administrative strategy that is antithetical to the spirit that academics hold dear — including openness, transparency, collegiality, meritocracy, rule-governed procedures, balanced curriculum, a level playing field for probationary faculty and participation by faculty in governance. Like its political counterpart, academic corporatism often results in dictatorships, with ideas originating only from the top and nothing going the other way. Academic assemblies, unions and senates are eviscerated, neutralized or eliminated altogether. Faculty members are disenfranchised. There is a chilling effect on free speech and the notion of an open marketplace for ideas. This can wreak havoc with a university’s curriculum, jeopardize its intellectual and educational missions and compromise its future. As former Harvard president Derek Bok said: “The end to which this process could lead is not a pleasant prospect to behold.”

G. A. Clark
Department of Anthropology, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287-2402, USA

Threatening academic freedom at European University at St Petersburg

"Part of the Putin government's long-term campaign to consolidate an increasingly tight system of authoritarian control, while maintaining some of the outward forms of representative democracy and constitutional government, has been a systematic and wide-ranging effort to shut down, suppress, or marginalize independent institutions, organizations, and associations - especially, though not exclusively, those with any western or other international ties." writes political sociologist Jeff Weintraub on his blog February 22. "So far, this campaign has largely spared the academic world. But that is no longer the case. The European University in Saint Petersburg has been the object of strident public attacks, and now it has been shut down on the basis of what looks to everyone like a transparently fraudulent pretext." (see his follow-up).

David Pescovitz made this comment of February 26: "Late last year, the European University at St. Petersburg in Russia launched a project to study how elections in Russia could be protected from rigging. That line of inquiry pissed off Russian President Vladimir Putin. Feeling the Kremlin's thumb, the university's academic council killed the project on January 31. Yet just two weeks later, the St. Petersburg court shut down the school as a "fire risk." Coincidence? Unlikely. And now today, it's come out that the university has lost its license to operate. The Rector of the school says that if it isn't granted a new license within a month, the institution will be closed for good. A dear friend of mine, who emigrated from Russia in the 1980s, comments that this whole situation "is becoming so reminiscent of the old Soviet Union.""

Toda you could read at EUSP's own website, "On February 22, the EUSP signed a contract with the “Institute of Economics and Finance” to provide the EUSP with the premises necessary to conduct education until July 1 of this year. The premises meet all requirements of the State Fire"; and a press release of February 27 stating "There are no teaching activities in the University due to the suspension of the license. "

Founded in 1994, the European University at St Petersburg is one of Russia's top universities, with close links to leading higher education institutions in the UK and US. Launched at the initiative of St Petersburg's liberal mayor Anatoly Sobchak, the graduate university is known for its progressive views and western-educated teaching staff. It currently has 120 Russian graduates and 10-15 western students studying for an MA in Russian studies. Uniquely, the university attracts students from Europe to study in Russia. Its aim is to integrate Russian scholarship with scholarship in Europe and America, at a time when Russian scholarship is becoming increasingly isolated from the west.