Which Science in the Times of Academic Pollution?
Language: English, French and Spanish
A large portion of traditional academic publishing is unequal, exclusionary, unsustainable and opaque; nearly 70% of scientific journal articles are locked behind paywalls; the pressure for publication is increasing exponentially, opening a space for publishers seeking easy money and authors that want (just as easily) to increase their productivity, making it increasingly difficult (often for scientists themselves) to tell whether a journal is predatory or not and it is therefore increasingly difficult to establish its reliability. Between “academic capitalism” (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004) and “academic pollution” (Lakhotia 2015), what is the future of scientific research and expertise? Emerging forms of “academic piracy”, academic predatory practices and the platformisation of academic publishing are still aspects that have not been sufficiently explored in academia.
In times of ‘neo-liberal scientism’ or ‘academic capitalism’, what are the trends in science? Priority will be given to empirical works that analyze the development of scientists’ work (in the broad sense: biology, economics, political science, sociology, etc.), changes in the publishers’ policies, also in connection with scientific research evaluation policies.