IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2018 - 5

EDITORIAL

Jeremy Pitt

Publish or Impoverish

t can be glibly asserted that technology
makes accomplishing various activities
easier. But it is not
always obvious for whom it makes it
easier to accomplish what. For example, the Internet has had a profound
impact on academic publishing, and
the transition from printed paper to
digital format has ostensibly made
it "easier" for academics to put their
work in the public domain and, if
they can actually get attention in a
social-media sound-bite distracted
world, reach a wider audience than
ever before. However, if this transition
coincides - by luck or judgement -
with other societal changes, then
it can also make it easier for some
enterprises to deploy business models that enable them to accomplish
their objectives. In an ideal world, this
would create a "win-win-win" scenario: a win for the academics, a win for
the enterprises, and a win for society.
Thinking first of some ongoing
societal changes, it is widely recognized that information and communication technology, the knowledge
economy, the digital economy, etc.,
are profoundly important economic drivers, and that a well-educated
population, as well as being a benefit
in and of itself, is a prerequisite for
nation states to compete in a supranational market for electronic goods
and services. For such reasons, then,
a country such as the United Kingdom (U.K.) sets itself a target for 50%

Academic Publishing and
the Platform Economy
of its 18-year olds to go to University
to study for a higher degree.
Leaving aside the thorny issue of
who is actually "paying" to achieve
this target, which involves a considerable expansion of the sector,1 one
consequence of more students2 is
that more academics are required to
teach undergraduates3 and to "train"
postgraduates. That could be seen as
a beneficial outcome: after all, this is a
sign surely of a well-educated population. On the other hand, it also means
more academics seeking funding for
their research, more academics and
their students seeking publication
of their research - and more protoacademics pursuing careers. Therefore the expansion has had (arguably)
some less beneficial outcomes: for
example, a subtle change in the nature
of a Ph.D. that makes it more adversarial between supervisor and student
1
Hint: the answer includes the students and the
academics themselves; but not some of the primary beneficiaries of a well-educated workforce
for whom tax avoidance on a, literally, industrial
scale is routine.
2
Together with legislation that practically obliges
academic institutions to compete with each other
to attract students, another consequence is an
inexorable rise in the proportion of university
budgets being spent on marketing and administration in relation to the actual teaching budget.
3
At least until the technology of the massive
open online course (MOOC) renders all but one
of the teachers redundant.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2018.2826058
Date of publication: 31 May 2018

JUNE 2018

∕

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

(rather than a co-production of supervisor and student against a research
question), and a diminution of the
difficult transition from absorber of
knowledge to creator of new knowledge,4 the cornerstone of any Ph.D.
judgement. Most unfortunately, the
academics themselves have been victims of their own success, and have
produced new academics in greater
numbers than are needed to service
this increase in demand, and to supply their own replacement. This has
created an excessive pool of well-qualified and cheap labor, employable on
short-term temporary or even "zero
hours" contracts.
Another consequence of this expansion has been the corresponding
enlargement (and indeed self-empowerment) of management and administration. In particular, there is an
increased use of metrics for measuring academic contribution, and being
used in appointment and promotion
panels. 5 Such metrics include the
4
The pressure on completion rates shifts the burden of risk from student to supervisor, and provides less experience of "training for failure" - not
every experiment will prove its null hypothesis, but
that's not what one might believe if one only read
Ph.D. theses.
5
This has been referred to as the "McKinseyisation
of academia" - i.e., everything can be measured,
and if it can be measured then it can be managed.
See also [9].

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2018