India
2004–14
The Taylor & Francis News Bulletin
ZEN AND THE ART OF JOURNAL PUBLISHING
Dr David Green, Global Journals Publishing Director, Taylor & Francis Group Heraclitus of Ephesus can truly be considered the Publisher’s philosopher. He elaborated the doctrine of change being central to the universe. Change does indeed seem to have been endemic in the publishing and research communication worlds since the beginning of the technological and industrial wave based on the invention of the microprocessor in 1971. For the past twenty years or more, every time publishers have gathered together, the talk has been of nothing but change – changes in technology, economic and political context, library finances, the legal context around intellectual property, and sociocultural change. Although there is a real tradition and continuity in our industry, we can take another image from Heraclitus, that even though a person steps in the same river, those who step into it are always washed by different waters: “each individual atom of water, does not constantly change; the totality of things constantly changes” (Roger A. Shiner (1974) “Wittgenstein and Heraclitus: Two RiverImages,” Philosophy, 49, 191–197). This period since 1971 has also witnessed the current industrial wave based on information and communication technologies (ICT), initially leading to process revolutions in our industry, and increasingly now, as we truly enter the deployment phase in the 2010s, to new products emerging. This digital revolution has driven a paradigm shift in our industry from print-based manufacturing to online service provision, causing major disruptions for both markets and products. As with any technological revolution, there are both threats and opportunities which arise from these “waves of creative destruction.” If one
area of publishing has responded to the challenges of digital active in that field through journals; technology, and embraced many opportunities offered, it has researchers read and cite the work, been journals publishing. citing papers of most relevance, and Since the year 2000, it is estimated that the journals industry so create a hierarchy of importance has invested over £2 billion in technological systems, as well as for papers, journals, and authors; in innovated in areas such as electronic online editorial systems, turn, this influences future submission behavior, creating a strong author tools, production workflow, plagiarism checking, content positive feedback loop. Put another way, there are huge volumes management systems, online content platforms, global sales of communication between researchers about their work. management, and many more elements (“Access to Research Publishers convert this into formal, version-of-record papers – which are the building blocks of future science. Outputs: A UK Success Story,” PA, STM, ALPSP, London, 2010).
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The world has changed, business models are changing, and the social, economic, and political context of research information publishing is changing, but the fundamentals haven’t. The other major philosopher who employs a river image is Wittgenstein. He distinguishes between the movement of the waters on the riverbed and the shift of the bed itself; and he states that the bank of the river consists partly of hard rock subject to no alteration or to only an imperceptible one, and partly of sand, which may get washed away, or perhaps more sand will be deposited.
The journal age was launched by Henry Oldenburg, Secretary of the Royal Society, in 1665, establishing the four principles of registration, peer review, dissemination, and archive. These have been the constants, the unchanging immutable bedrock of scholarly communications – yet are there signs, for example, in the rise of the scientist’s blog and phenomena such as “peer review lite” in some new publication venues, that they represent a riverbed which is eroding? Together these 350-yearold principles provide the basis of scientific authority – the definitive, authenticated version of the material output from a scholar’s research. It provides a context in which information and knowledge claims can be elaborated, disseminated, and brought into the broader academic and scientific realms. Citations are a positive act of further engagement with that material, and are seen as one of the best proxy measures of a work’s quality.
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For our purposes, the moving waters could be seen here as representing the changing journal content and its surrounding context and technologies, and the riverbed as the basic structure of scholarly communication with the solid rock and the more mutable sand. Will the rocky riverbed itself change, with some of the river banks getting swept away – a true paradigm shift heralding a new age of scholarly communication – or is it all just To these principles should now be added further key publishing the sand and shingle moving around with the flow of the waters? requirements which a resourceful publisher is best placed to provide, namely discoverability, visibility, and access – and which Scholarly publishing involves groups of researchers judging what can be characterized as representing a new, more permanent is worthwhile work through conference presentations, sharing deposit on the riverbed and river banks. This involves steering drafts and research outputs, informal discussion and ultimately a publication’s audience to the right content and conversely to peer review; publishers then convert this material into readable ensure that that content reaches the right networks. This will and/or functional form and distribute it to groups of researchers
BRIDGING THE POLICY-RESEARCH DIVIDE
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Dr. Uttam Kumar Sinha, Managing Editor, Stragetic Analysis Strategic Analysis is a bimonthly peer-reviewed journal of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, a leading policy think tank based in New Delhi with a 50 year legacy. The institute and the journal are quite inseparable – the former creates the environment for debate, discussion and interface between policy makers and analysts, and the latter offers the intellectual space for expression for public dissemination. The journal lives because the institute exists. But despite the progress and acceptability to strengthen the national security thinking, there continues to be a gap between research and policy, and the syntheses of ideas into policy action. We of course don’t live in a perfect world where crucial policy decisions would be informed by timely and relevant research inputs and enriched by effective dialogue between academia and policy. Theoretical concepts once they travel to real life practices are far less comforting than when conceived. In a messy world of policy process, conceptual underpinnings often fall like ninepins.
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