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I don't really agree. I'm not an academic, but it's my understanding is that academia's function is to advance human understanding of various topics. I would
by DashRattlesnake 10y ago
I don't really agree. I'm not an academic, but it's my understanding is that academia's function is to advance human understanding of various topics. I would think injecting "professional civil servants and administrators" into the process would simply push the focus away from scholarship and towards more quotidian things that the government and the administrators are interested in.
Lists like Beall's seem like the way it ought to be done. The academic identify and compile lists of shoddy publications and their peers can treat those journals an as persona non grata.
- stinkytaco 10y agoWhat, exactly, are the quotidian things that the government and administrators are interested in? My point is that academics are already absurdly political, both internally (the fight for tenure and academic domain) and external (budgets and priorities). The people who run academia are already basically professional administrators, once you've set on an administrative path, research is very hard to undertake. Why continue with the charade? In my experience, most administrators just want to do their job. I think it's easy to underestimate the number of workaday government administrators that run water treatment plants, streetlights, engineers, etc, that just want to do their job efficiently.
- dragandj 10y agoThe point is that scientific process requires personal integrity and independence. The role of scientist is more similar in that regard to the role of a judge that to the role of a water treatment engineer.