5 ms·

> You forget the editorial boards. They can mass resign, start their own journal, and ask that this successor be considered the legitimate heir. That would act

by nuerow 5y ago

> You forget the editorial boards. They can mass resign, start their own journal, and ask that this successor be considered the legitimate heir. That would actually be completely irrelevant. Performance evaluation in academia is tied to the ability to post X papers in well respected established publications with a high impact factor. This requirement is generally imposed by legislation and regulation. Thus what matters is a publication's impact factor, it's reputation, and whether they are already in the acceptable list or not. If a mass protest led an entire editorial board to leave an established high-impact factor journal to start their own journal from scratch, said new journal would fail to meet any of the criteria that makes a journal an acceptable publication. > Because, again, these folks don't care if anyone can read their research outside of colleagues who might cite them. Thus assertion is also wrong. There are researchers who put together their own journals and use them to circle-jerk their way into relevance. This has been happening for years, and I even know of a case where said researcher even ties his papers to his own congress. However, these journals do tend to have a piss-poor impact factor, thus they don't count for performance reviews.

rwl 5y ago
> Thus what matters is a publication's impact factor, its reputation, and whether they are already in the acceptable list or not. This makes me wonder if there's room for a kind of legal hack that could carry these things over to a new journal. A journal's reputation is essentially tied to its name; and the name is what goes on people's CVs and on the lists of approved journals and so on. It seems like the name is really the only asset of a journal that could not very quickly be duplicated elsewhere if the editorial board decides to move together. I assume these names are protected by trademark law and that the publishers will fight to the death to protect them. But in the scenario where the editorial board jumps ship, is there some kind of legal argument they could use to either (a) effectively steal the name from the publisher or (b) piggyback on the name and reputation of the old journal, for example by naming the new journal "The Journal Formerly Known As X", so that it's clear to everyone that this is the journal X in all but name, and thus should be treated like X for the purpose of performance reviews etc.? Anyone know how far an editorial board could go in this direction, if they made up their minds to do so?
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  IANAL, but I don’t think the law accounts for “ship of Theseus” situations. If a majority of the company resigns to a brand new one, the trademark is still owned by the old company.
civilized 5y ago
> Performance evaluation in academia is tied to the ability to post X papers in well respected established publications with a high impact factor. This requirement is generally imposed by legislation and regulation. "Legislation and regulation"? This is an astonishing claim. As far as I know, universities decide their own performance evaluation processes. How on earth did you get the impression that legislators passed laws dictating that academics publish in high impact factor journals?
- nuerow 5y ago
  > "Legislation and regulation"? This is an astonishing claim. As far as I know, universities decide their own performance evaluation processes. Not necessarily. In some countries, public research institutions are governed by regulations that cover organization aspects, funding, and performance evaluation. > How on earth did you get the impression that legislators passed laws dictating that academics publish in high impact factor journals? By the fact that I spent close to a decade working as a research engineer and as a PhD candidate, and I had to learn how my research group was funded and evaluated in order to remain a research engineer.
  - civilized 5y ago
    Ok, I don't know about most countries, but in speaking with US and UK and EU academics I have never heard of such laws. I would question if the places where most meaningful research occurs have these laws. I wouldn't be surprised if, say, China did, but China doesn't dictate the way research is done globally.
    - nuerow 5y ago
      > Ok, I don't know about most countries, but in speaking with US and UK and EU academics I have never heard of such laws. I suspect you didn't spoke to a lot of UK and EU academics then, because that's how things are ran in here. The EU has been, for the past two decades or so, reforming their research institutions to introduce performance-based funding, which include and are not limited to tracking relevant and meaninful research output in a competitive environment[1]. These include bibliometrical indicators, which takes into account "publication type and the rank or citation impact of the publication channel". At the member-state and and institutional level this involves whitelists of acceptable reference publications. [1] https://academic.oup.com/spp/article/46/1/105/5037253 https://academic.oup.com/spp/article/46/1/105/5037253
avs733 5y ago
>Performance evaluation in academia is tied to the ability to post X papers in well respected established publications with a high impact factor In the US at least, that evaluation is performed by faculty not by a system. If three schools (say MIT, Harvard, and Stanford) said 'we will no longer consider any work published in non-open source journals in the award of tenure' the system would flip very very quickly. Institutions could do the same with REF in the UK. It is a system of social norms and conventions that are treated as inherent while also constantly shifting...but no one will admit are shifting or socially constructed.

by nuerow 5y ago

rwl 5y ago

> Thus what matters is a publication's impact factor, its reputation, and whether they are already in the acceptable list or not. This makes me wonder if there's room for a kind of legal hack that could carry these things over to a new journal. A journal's reputation is essentially tied to its name; and the name is what goes on people's CVs and on the lists of approved journals and so on. It seems like the name is really the only asset of a journal that could not very quickly be duplicated elsewhere if the editorial board decides to move together. I assume these names are protected by trademark law and that the publishers will fight to the death to protect them. But in the scenario where the editorial board jumps ship, is there some kind of legal argument they could use to either (a) effectively steal the name from the publisher or (b) piggyback on the name and reputation of the old journal, for example by naming the new journal "The Journal Formerly Known As X", so that it's clear to everyone that this is the journal X in all but name, and thus should be treated like X for the purpose of performance reviews etc.? Anyone know how far an editorial board could go in this direction, if they made up their minds to do so?

colejohnson66 5y ago
IANAL, but I don’t think the law accounts for “ship of Theseus” situations. If a majority of the company resigns to a brand new one, the trademark is still owned by the old company.

civilized 5y ago

> Performance evaluation in academia is tied to the ability to post X papers in well respected established publications with a high impact factor. This requirement is generally imposed by legislation and regulation. "Legislation and regulation"? This is an astonishing claim. As far as I know, universities decide their own performance evaluation processes. How on earth did you get the impression that legislators passed laws dictating that academics publish in high impact factor journals?

nuerow 5y ago
> "Legislation and regulation"? This is an astonishing claim. As far as I know, universities decide their own performance evaluation processes. Not necessarily. In some countries, public research institutions are governed by regulations that cover organization aspects, funding, and performance evaluation. > How on earth did you get the impression that legislators passed laws dictating that academics publish in high impact factor journals? By the fact that I spent close to a decade working as a research engineer and as a PhD candidate, and I had to learn how my research group was funded and evaluated in order to remain a research engineer.
- civilized 5y ago
  Ok, I don't know about most countries, but in speaking with US and UK and EU academics I have never heard of such laws. I would question if the places where most meaningful research occurs have these laws. I wouldn't be surprised if, say, China did, but China doesn't dictate the way research is done globally.
  - nuerow 5y ago
    > Ok, I don't know about most countries, but in speaking with US and UK and EU academics I have never heard of such laws. I suspect you didn't spoke to a lot of UK and EU academics then, because that's how things are ran in here. The EU has been, for the past two decades or so, reforming their research institutions to introduce performance-based funding, which include and are not limited to tracking relevant and meaninful research output in a competitive environment[1]. These include bibliometrical indicators, which takes into account "publication type and the rank or citation impact of the publication channel". At the member-state and and institutional level this involves whitelists of acceptable reference publications. [1] https://academic.oup.com/spp/article/46/1/105/5037253 https://academic.oup.com/spp/article/46/1/105/5037253

avs733 5y ago

>Performance evaluation in academia is tied to the ability to post X papers in well respected established publications with a high impact factor In the US at least, that evaluation is performed by faculty not by a system. If three schools (say MIT, Harvard, and Stanford) said 'we will no longer consider any work published in non-open source journals in the award of tenure' the system would flip very very quickly. Institutions could do the same with REF in the UK. It is a system of social norms and conventions that are treated as inherent while also constantly shifting...but no one will admit are shifting or socially constructed.