[Fis] Scientific Communication and Publishing

[Loet Leydesdorff]

Dear Mark, Moises, and colleagues, 

I agree that this is a very beautiful piece of work. The video is impressive. 

My comment would focus on what it is that constructs reality "by language" (p. 2). I agree with the remark about the risk of a linguistic fallacy; but how is the domain of counterfactual expectations constructed? The answer in the paper tends towards a sociological explanation: "status" for which one competes in a new political economy. However, it seems to me that the selection mechanism has to be specified. Can this be external to the communication? How is the paradigmatic/epistemic closure and quality control brought about by the communication? How is a symbolic layer shaped and coded?

One cannot reverse the reasoning: the editorial boards follow standards that they perceive as relevant and can reproduce. The standards are not a convention of the board since one would not easily agree. Reversing the reasoning would bring us back to interests and thus to a kind of neo-marxism a la the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK). In actor-network theory (ANT) the emergence of standards happens historically/evolutionarily, but is not explained. 

I don't have answers on my side. But perhaps, the strength of anticipation and the role of models needs to be explored. Models can be entertained and enable us to reconstruct a knowledge-based reality.

Best,
Loet 


Loet Leydesdorff 
Professor, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
loet at leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 
Associate Faculty, SPRU, University of Sussex; 
Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC, Beijing;
Visiting Professor, Birkbeck, University of London; 
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en


-----Original Message-----
From: Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Moisés André Nisenbaum
Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2016 1:45 AM
To: Mark Johnson
Cc: fis
Subject: Re: [Fis] Scientific Communication and Publishing

Dear Mark.

Thank you for the excelent video and article. It is very important to discuss this and, if you agree, I will use your video with my students (can you send me the transcription?).
No doubt we are in a changing world and we have to fight against abusive processes, like publication industry.

In Rafael's article, the question “what is a scientific journal in the digital age?” I understand that we must think outside the box. I think it would be great if some group invent a kind of "Uber" of scientific production. Something that connect directly authors and readers at feasible rates.  arXiv does this connection in some way, but it is not universal. E-science is also a good initiative.

Related to this discussion, UNESCO will do an event on Wednesday
(sep/28th) at Museu do Amanhã (Rio de Janeiro) called International Day for Universal Access to Information (http://en.unesco.org/iduai2016).

But the fact is: we are human and the worry about "reputation" is the real reason of today's organization of scientific communication (about this, this book chapter is very good: VAN RAAN, Anthony FJ. The interdisciplinary nature of science: theoretical framework and bibliometric-empirical approach. Practising interdisciplinarity, p.
66-78, 2000.)

Kind regards,

Moisés



2016-09-26 4:55 GMT-03:00 Mark Johnson <johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com>:
>
> Dear FIS Colleagues,
>
> To kick-start the discussion on scientific publishing, I have prepared 
> a short (hopefully provocative) video. It can be found at:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Bh3vqM98-U
>
> (if anyone's interested, the software I used for producing it is 
> called 'Videoscribe')
>
> I have also produced a paper which is attached.
>
> I hope you find these interesting and stimulating!
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Mark
> --
> Dr. Mark William Johnson
> Institute of Learning and Teaching
> Faculty of Health and Life Sciences
> University of Liverpool
>
> Phone: 07786 064505
> Email: johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com
> Blog: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Fis mailing list
> Fis at listas.unizar.es
> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>



--
Moisés André Nisenbaum
Doutorando IBICT/UFRJ. Professor. Msc.
Instituto Federal do Rio de Janeiro - IFRJ Campus Rio de Janeiro moises.nisenbaum at ifrj.edu.br

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