Is ‘Open Access’ good or bad? (Actually, it is doublespeak, using the language of ‘freedom’ to mask the creation of a scientific aristocracy)

It’s suddenly all so clear…

‘Open access’ — this strange idea which sounds so innocuous, or so empowering even, and which has been propagated by certain powers that be so that suddenly gullible academics everywhere are talking about it as though this is an inevitable development– is doublespeak.  It pretends to ”open access” to science publications… to whom?  To a ‘larger public.’  (How many members of the public need access to highly technical/specialized knowledge at this level?)   But it’s actually a move by savvy players to create a ‘knoweledge aristocracy’.  Or, if you like, it is a deliberate use of the language of the free market, by a group of power players who are attempting to mask a monopolistic power grab (This is a favorite tactic of marketers working for large, monopolistic companies).

To explain, some background.

So a U Kansas distinguished professor (A. Townsend Peterson) writes in the Huffington post about the ‘good and the bad’ of open access journals.

The bad:  an obviously flawed article was sent to 304 open access journals by the journal Science, and it was accepted by over half of them.  So duh, this reveals that a lot of open-access journals are for-profit scams.  This seems screamingly obvious.

The good:  A. T. P. then tells us that ”the serious open access journals are very likely an important part of the future of academic publishing, so we should nurture them.”  His direct quote is this:

“These journals likely represent an important element in the future of academic publishing, so we should do our best to protect them and nurture them, while discouraging the predatory and shoddy editorial practices on the part of some. After all, let’s keep our eye on the prize: an open, inclusive, and effective system of scientific communication.”

Who paid A.T.P. to suggest that ‘we should protect and nurture them?’  For goodness sake, shouldn’t we be nurturing, say, our young faculty members?  The future generation of scientists?  How often do senior professors publicly say that?  But back to the main point.  Do we really need these OA journals that are so in need of nurturing?

First of all, some people seem to forget that what makes good science prestigious, is that it is reviewed by top peers, at top journals.  The whole function of journals is to winnow the chaff from the wheat, and provide us with the wheat.  If we wanted the chaff, we could just do a google search!  And no real science would get done – every tom, dick, and henrietta could voice their opinion, and with no editorial function, no one could tell the noise from the music.  

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Have American standards of living gone into irreversible decline?

There is much hoopla at the moment about the decline of the American middle class.  I know all about it, since I have been close, but not quite managed to grab one of those hallowed academic jobs which would make my life finally comfortable after years of deprivation.   The numbers in the faculty are getting worse by the year; when I began graduate school in the late 90s, about 75 percent of all teaching was still done by full-time faculty, with benefits, but by the time I was a serious contender on the job market, in 2008, this had shifted to 75 percent part-timers.  Now, only 20 percent of teaching at U.S. colleges and universities is done by full-time faculty.  The profession has literally disintegrated out from under me.  We were told by our professors:  hey, the baby boomers are about to retire, so now’s a great time to be on the job market!  As it turned out, the MBA-efficiency people had figured out that they could downsize everything, and pay everyone virtually nothing, for the same work.  Great idea, right!  Except that the U.S. professoriate has been gutted; there are many geniuses with Harvard PhDs now waiting years to get a tenure-track job, if ever.

The real issue here is the disentegration of the American middle class.  It is now far harder to become a professor, something like 4-5x harder, than 20 years ago; so that the Chronicle of Higher Ed is running ads saying “Don’t to go graduate school.”  And the example of the professoriate is typical of a number of other former ‘professions.’  Most of the writing, editing, architecture, creative design, journalism, etc., fields, in which there used to be an ok number of permanent jobs with benefits available, have been similarly gutted.  Same with teaching high school or even elementary school.  Often the only places hiring are inner-city schools where there is no teaching to be done, but one has to be more of a warden than a teacher, and one is literally in danger of one’s life!  Hardly a middle-class lifestyle.  How many business people go into work fearing that their colleagues may pull out a gun… teachers have to put up with way too much stress, especially urban teachers.  And elementary schools on ‘lockdown’ all the time, because the stupid arse NRA has so much leverage, and has convinced half the populace that they will be safer when packing a pistol?  What is that, the wild west?  In England, almost no one has guns, and somehow, they don’t shoot each other.  In the wild west, everyone had guns, and they all shot each other.  The logic there is pretty plain.

So, the main point being, that many avenues into the middle class which were once mainstays of the populace, are now closed.  Being a professor is not possible, being a teacher is not possible.  Being an office person is about the only career path left.  And yet downsizing has made this much much more stressful than ever before.  Now, to keep a job, you have to literally work 70 hour weeks?  And get ulcers and the like?  Doing what?  Often, incredibly meaningless, tedious work, for no reasonable purpose.  

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Don’t go to graduate school in the humanities (unless you don’t need a job at the end, that is).

It is with some sadness that I feel I must write this, but, the situation has gotten so dire that people need to realize what’s going on in the humanities job market.  Although I’ve written about the value of degrees in history and english, and I’ve also written in my “Who am I?” section, about how much my wife and I have enjoyed being graduate students in the humanities, I must also say that all of those things are only fun if you know that you have a decent job waiting for you at the end of it all.  Even through the 1990s, when I entered grad school, the job market was desperate, but, still, if you were actually talented, you could expect to get a job within a year or two of graduating.  Only losers had to be ‘adjuncts’ for more than a year, and only true losers stayed being adjuncts for more than 3-4 years. 

Unfortunately, the adoption of the business efficiency model by MBA-trained administrators in universities throughout the western world, which began in the 1980s and has reached a cresendo in the mid 2000s, has meant that the ‘human’ spaces in the university job model have quite rapidly been squeezed out by professional ‘efficiency maximizers’ who have been hired to minimize cost and maximize revenue.  While that is a great idea in theory, what it means is that people, and their lives, have basically been squeezed out of the profession.  In sum, while up to 80% of university teaching was done by tenured full-time faculty through the 1970s, by the mid-2000s, something like 25% of teaching was being done by full-time tenured faculty.

Why is this? 

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