[Air-l] on journals ...

James Whyte whyte.james at yahoo.com
Thu Apr 26 09:39:42 PDT 2007


It is my understanding that post-tenure publication is a very steep slope to the negative. This alone could potentially falsify the fact/claim that jobs, tenure, etc are seconday to the desire to speak. Also if this desire is the primary motive then IMHO it would make no difference where it is published or what stature that publication may have.
   
  George Ritzer in "The McDonalization of Society" pp 70-74 presents some compelling arguments against Dr. Wellman's assertions. In it he qutoes Donald Kennedy, the former president of Stanford University, who also speakes to this link between publications and career.
   
  Absent more compelling (less anecdotal) information I cannot get past these fact/claims.
   
  On another note, I have found no Journal that was born full grown. At some point all of them have struggled for acceptance against the cultural forces that are implicit in this thread. It is true of any new scholarly endeavor.
   
  Is there room for another experiment?
   
  James
   
  
Barry Wellman <wellman at chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:
  I am disappointed by much of what I have recently read about journal
writing. I want to provide different ideas.

1. The people I hang out with, small and large, write for journals because
they have something to say. Sure, they'd like jobs, tenure, etc, but that
is a secondary consideration. And the raises post-tenure are small enough
that major publication is a bummer on a cost-benefit basis. We write
because we want to.


       
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