Response to “Outside the Margins: Promotion and Tenure with a Public Scholarship Platform”
As I hold the position of lecturer, a non-tenure track faculty position, I found myself dispassionately engaged with this week’s readings. My work is to teach and advise, and I do not share the same publication pressure of my colleagues. At the same time, coming from a laboratory and field research background, publishing (once upon a time) in ‘sexy’ journals for my field, and generally supporting a participatory mode of teaching, I find myself looking for ways to engage in farther-reaching scholarship with my students.
Open scholarship advantage is mine when the stakes are low- any proprietary data I accumulate will be for the sole benefit of my students, and the nature of environmental science provides a foundation for long-term, multi-variable field studies that can be supported by multiple students over time (as long as the data are open). My position allows me a great deal of flexibility in this regard, with minimal fear of ‘wasting time’ on unpublishable data – as the goal any scholarly endeavors I take on comes solely from a teaching perspective. Over the course of the FLC thus far, I’ve seen the debunking of the idea that open scholarship is less rigorous, valuable, or reliable. Indeed, the transparency of open scholarship is invaluable, as it allows for more risk-taking and creativity. It could allow for the sharing of failed experiments, for sound hypotheses that did not hold up, methodology that might have functioned brilliantly or failed miserably. “The Journal of Failed Experiments” and “The Journal of Insignificant Results” are concepts that might be warmly embraced by the open scholarship community.
Along the same vein, open scholarship might be one of the only spaces for non-tenured faculty to actively engage. Without having time or money allotted to research endeavors, my best option to engage in research with students is through student-driven independent study and summer research experiences. While these short-term projects (or contributions to longer-term, collaborative studies) might not fit the framework (or rigor) of scholarly journals, if we create the space for them to share their work, they too can gain from an evolving framework of valuable output. This concept is more eloquently stated by Boyer (via Hutchinson) in the statement “The scholarship of discovery includes research that “contributes not only to the stock of human knowledge but also to the intellectual climate of a college or university.” In this sense, the process of research is every bit as valuable to the student as publishable results, and an open environment might be a great platform for students to work without a similar ‘publishing’ pressure
Karen, I love this. This is exactly why I wanted to run this FLC. I honestly had not seen how fitting openness is for a lecturer. Thanks for this!
I agree with Ben and I’d like to know how we value digital scholarship at Berg. Are some department more open to viewing it along MLA guidelines than others? As an adjunct or lecturer, and more importantly, a scholar, these opportunities should not be overlooked or minimized.
Karen, I love the idea of journals of failed/insignificant research. I think that they can be important resources for student researchers and, hopefully, result in failed methodologies not being repeated over and over again. Definitely a key opportunity of open scholarship!
[…] Karen notes that open access journals provide an opportunity to publish failed research. In a way, the fact that for-profit journals are not publishing this kind of information is evidence of a flawed system; one that researchers are already invested in participation. Reforming the real-world scientific process through Team Science, as discussed by Patrick, is a great idea. Academics, or administrators in higher education, are setting the standards for what we value from each other and, also, how we value it. It’s a cycle that could use some reformation, which is an interesting to think about on this 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. While we remember Luther (in all of his mythical splendor), we might also remember Aaron Swartz and Alexandra Elbakyan – leaders in the open scholarship movement. […]
I really enjoy the thought of a journal titled “The Journal of Insignificant Results.” 🙂
Unfortunately, this has been tried, and hasn’t worked very well. One such journal has folded, and two others still exist but publish rather infrequently:
Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis: http://www.jasnh.com/
Journal of Negative Results: http://www.jnr-eeb.org/index.php/jnr
Because of the existing problems in the sociology of science, Nosek et al believe that “Defining a journal based on negative results or replications is self-defining it as a low importance outlet.” Even if it’s an open journal, it will likely have a low impact factor, causing most junior faculty at research universities to steer away from it. Likely the incentives and institutional practices themselves need to be changed in order to change the behavior of researchers.
But I’m intrigued by the thought of lecturers who engage in research being relatively immune to these issues. I’ve often wondered too if researchers at undergraduate colleges might be better positioned to conduct high-risk long-term research than our university colleagues given the lower risks of failure.
[…] Karen notes that open access journals provide an opportunity to publish failed research. In a way, the fact that for-profit journals are not publishing this kind of information is evidence of a flawed system; one that researchers are already invested in participation. Reforming the real-world scientific process through Team Science, as discussed by Patrick, is a great idea. Academics, or administrators in higher education, are setting the standards for what we value from each other and, also, how we value it. It’s a cycle that could use some reformation, which is an interesting to think about on this 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. While we remember Luther (in all of his mythical splendor), we might also remember Aaron Swartz and Alexandra Elbakyan – leaders in the open scholarship movement. […]