Surplus and Indicator

Bibliographic Data

ID19574668
AuthorsKatie Vann (Society for Social Studies of Science, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume3
Pages92-107
Publication date2017-02-17
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEngaging Science Technology and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2413-8053 • E-ISSN: 2413-8053
PublisherSociety for Social Studies of Science (4S) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.17351/ests2017.113
OpenAlexW2588204934
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited4

This essay offers a perspective on journal impact factor (JIF) centrism in academic evaluation from the vantage point of academic publishing in an increasingly data-driven scholarly environment. The political implications and orientations to the JIF are thought through with respect both to commercial publishing industry consolidation and to the reliance of public-sector scholarly communities on (oligopolistic) commercial academic publishing houses. The author proposes that centrism to the JIF as a legitimizing indicator and incentivizing norm leads to two diametrically opposed forms of “surplus”: for academic communities, surplus emerges in the form of layers of scholarly knowledge effects/impact and labor, which, because they remain foreclosed to formal professional recognition, are inadvertently reconstructed as dispensable (waste); for private sector publishing companies––whose contribution to the publishing process consists foremost in providing scalable content management/distribution platforms and in transforming unique manuscript content into standardized digital objects that are amenable to indexing, aggregation, and comparative calculation––surplus emerges in the form of monetary surplus (profit). The essay describes the inner workings of these phenomena

Economics · Impact factor · Political science · Public relations · Publishing · Sociology · Academic Publishing and Open Access · Law · Publishing and Scholarly Communication · scientometrics and bibliometrics research · Accounting

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