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Re: jobs and the review process
wilkr (wilkr@INDIANA.EDU)
Fri, 10 Jun 1994 13:15:04 -0600
Cameron Laird -
Yes. Yes. Yes. As a political economist I would say that the culture of
academia flows from the system of power & control of rewards. Look at
tenure and what it values. Look at promotion. Do many graduate students
know how raises are awarded for the professors at their institution? I
never did. But I have worked under 3 different systems and I can tell
you it has direct affects on how professors allocate their time. What is
the salary differential between full and assistant profs? How much of
the teaching is done by untenured people?
Who pays for the jounrals? Well, look at this:
Universities pay faculty to write the stuff.
Universities pay libraries to buy the stuff.
Universities often subsidize the editing & production work.
But who makes money? Not the professors and not the Universities. The
private companies that publish so many scientific journals, and who are
out there helping them proliferate.
Who ultimately pays? Why, taxpayers, students and faculty.
We all pay for the priveledge of buying back from the publishers what we
produce in the first place! And guess who owns the copywrite, and
collects $$$ every time the paper is used in a course reading packet?
Yikes! You get to buy it a FOURTH time. Why, my students have to pay
Pergamon press $2 A pop to read something I WROTE that the University of
California and the NSF paid to have researched!
What a cool deal! And you know what happens with new electronic rights?
Why the PUBLISHER gets to keep them, so if my article ever ends up on a
CD-ROM, guess who makes money off it? Not me. Not the people who paid
for the research. Not the people who peer reviewed it. Gosh, maybe I
will get to buy it back from them a FIFTH time! Like I do if I want
reprints of my own paper - and the journal chages about $2 a copy for
those too! At least we don't have PAGE CHARGES like they do in the
biochem and medical journals - you have to pay them for every page....
All this to produce articles to fill CVs and tenure files....what a system!
Rick "red" Wilk
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