Capital – What Impact is Worth
While many content management systems that hold academic work track people’s downloads and clicks, quantitative measurement may not be the only understanding of how your work has been used. Discoverability through Google Scholar or other pre-print platforms (platforms where researchers can upload papers that have not been officially published yet) can help track the number of downloads and perhaps even where those downloads have occurred in the world; however, downloads do not necessarily equate to impact — they do not even confirm the material has been read. Keeping this in mind is important when assessing what impact means to you.
What is “using” academic work? Is it simply via citation? Is it through keeping a PDF? Is it printing out an article to mark all over it? While a wide range of scholarship has begun to point out how quantitative assessment is simply data-driven drivel, pulling away from quantitative measurements of impact has been less popular. True “impact” of an author’s work may be impossible to measure.
The publisher Elsevier recently released a pamphlet titled: How to get your research published… …and then noticed. Take a look at pages 23-25 in particular — what do you notice about the language used? This publisher, which considers itself an information analytics business, has a stronghold on the academic publishing system, publishing at least a fifth of the scientific journals in the academy with huge profit margins. Their high fees have led to many universities rethinking their contracts. Therefore, considering Elsevier’s suggestions to be the only ones could unfairly limit you. Instead, consider making different choices and imagine how ethical dissemination can look a little different than how this company prescribes.
Of course, we all understand we live in a system where perhaps it is necessary, or there is no choice but to publish and work with large academic publishers. Understanding your own local context, networks, and intentions will be helpful to identify potential alternatives. Ask librarians at your own institution if there is emphasis or support for using particular digital tools that assist scholarly networks like ORCiD (a researcher index where you can control your work through a numerical ID) or Altmetrics (a data company that offers a variety of quantitative assessment measures). Find out more about the publishing ecosystem on your own campus by seeking out scholarly communications The ecosystem that exists where research and other kinds of scholarly information is created, evaluated, disseminated, and preserved for the scholarly community to use now and in the future. librarians, the people who work for your university press and institutional repository, and OER librarians.
Exercise
Complete the following exercise in your LPOL Workbook. This exercise will help you check for learning, engage with the material, and work through new ideas.
Use the 4.3.4: Post-Publication Promotion Plan worksheet in your LPOL Workbook or answer the following prompts elsewhere:
Create a post-publication promotion plan for your published work in which you address what tools/resources, if any, you will use to increase readership and engagement (e.g., social media, Mendeley, Academia.edu, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, an institutional repository (IR), etc.).
- What are your promotional “goals,” and how will the resources you have elected to use help you achieve those goals?
- Which tools will you not use and why?
- Under the policies of the publication you’re submitting your work to, what rights do you have as an author? How will you exercise those rights?
- Does open access factor into your plan and if so, how?
- How will you maximize the potential impact of — and engagement with — your publication? Will you make it (or portions of it) available — both in terms of readability and access — to people outside of academia? If so, how?
Adapted from Amanda Makula’s (2022) Power, Profit, and Privilege: Problematizing Scholarly Publishing.
Topic 4 References
Fazackerley, Anna. “Too ‘Greedy’: Mass Walkout at Global Science Journal over ‘Unethical’ Fees.” The Guardian. May 7, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/07/too-greedy-mass-walkout-at-global-science-journal-over-unethical-fees.
Makula, Amanda. Power, Profit, and Privilege: Problematizing Scholarly Publishing. 2022.
Swoger, Bonnie. “Is Elsevier Really for-Science? Or Just for-Profit?” Scientific American Blog Network. December 12, 2013. https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/information-culture/is-elsevier-really-for-science-or-just-for-profit/
Zhang, Sarah. “The Real Cost of Knowledge.” The Atlantic. March 4, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190306043402/https:/www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/03/uc-elsevier-publisher/583909/
Capital – What Impact is Worth
While many content management systems that hold academic work track people’s downloads and clicks, quantitative measurement may not be the only understanding of how your work has been used. Discoverability through Google Scholar or other pre-print platforms (platforms where researchers can upload papers that have not been officially published yet) can help track the number of downloads and perhaps even where those downloads have occurred in the world; however, downloads do not necessarily equate to impact — they do not even confirm the material has been read. Keeping this in mind is important when assessing what impact means to you.
What is “using” academic work? Is it simply via citation? Is it through keeping a PDF? Is it printing out an article to mark all over it? While a wide range of scholarship has begun to point out how quantitative assessment is simply data-driven drivel, pulling away from quantitative measurements of impact has been less popular. True “impact” of an author’s work may be impossible to measure.
The publisher Elsevier recently released a pamphlet titled: How to get your research published… …and then noticed. Take a look at pages 23-25 in particular — what do you notice about the language used? This publisher, which considers itself an information analytics business, has a stronghold on the academic publishing system, publishing at least a fifth of the scientific journals in the academy with huge profit margins. Their high fees have led to many universities rethinking their contracts. Therefore, considering Elsevier’s suggestions to be the only ones could unfairly limit you. Instead, consider making different choices and imagine how ethical dissemination can look a little different than how this company prescribes.
Of course, we all understand we live in a system where perhaps it is necessary, or there is no choice but to publish and work with large academic publishers. Understanding your own local context, networks, and intentions will be helpful to identify potential alternatives. Ask librarians at your own institution if there is emphasis or support for using particular digital tools that assist scholarly networks like ORCiD (a researcher index where you can control your work through a numerical ID) or Altmetrics (a data company that offers a variety of quantitative assessment measures). Find out more about the publishing ecosystem on your own campus by seeking out scholarly communicationsScholarly communications The ecosystem that exists where research and other kinds of scholarly information is created, evaluated, disseminated, and preserved for the scholarly community to use now and in the future. librarians, the people who work for your university press and institutional repository, and OER librarians.
Exercise
Complete the following exercise in your LPOL Workbook. This exercise will help you check for learning, engage with the material, and work through new ideas.
Use the 4.3.4: Post-Publication Promotion Plan worksheet in your LPOL Workbook or answer the following prompts elsewhere:
Create a post-publication promotion plan for your published work in which you address what tools/resources, if any, you will use to increase readership and engagement (e.g., social media, Mendeley, Academia.edu, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, an institutional repository (IR), etc.).
Adapted from Amanda Makula’s (2022) Power, Profit, and Privilege: Problematizing Scholarly Publishing.
Topic 4 References
Fazackerley, Anna. “Too ‘Greedy’: Mass Walkout at Global Science Journal over ‘Unethical’ Fees.” The Guardian. May 7, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/07/too-greedy-mass-walkout-at-global-science-journal-over-unethical-fees.
Makula, Amanda. Power, Profit, and Privilege: Problematizing Scholarly Publishing. 2022.
Swoger, Bonnie. “Is Elsevier Really for-Science? Or Just for-Profit?” Scientific American Blog Network. December 12, 2013. https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/information-culture/is-elsevier-really-for-science-or-just-for-profit/
Zhang, Sarah. “The Real Cost of Knowledge.” The Atlantic. March 4, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190306043402/https:/www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/03/uc-elsevier-publisher/583909/