5. Why Even Scholars Don’t Get a Free Lunch in Cyberspace
5.2. The Publishing Industry as the Cyberscapegoat
Those with a sincere interest in making the Internet “the great equalizer” would spend their time wisely by participating in the discussions already underway with the representatives of the information and communication conglomerates, corporate lawyers, government regulators, and high-level university administrators, in whose hands the future disposition of the Internet ultimately lies.
These are the people who need to be convinced that it would be in their interest to allow both affiliated and unaffiliated scholars to surf the net with impunity. Simply appealing to its “low cost” is not a particularly strong argument when the pricing mechanism is still up for grabs and the target audience may not be convinced that so much scholarly communication is really necessary in the first place (or who might want to manipulate the pricing mechanism so as to get schol- ars to communicate in other ways and about other matters).
brilliance or profundity—should be seen as the result of combining ideas that are, in principle, available to everyone, by virtue of the ideas corresponding to the structure of reality. Thus, from a legal–economic standpoint, it made most sense to reward inquirers for being the first to solve some well-defined problem, as that would capture the element of chance involved in one person rather than some other equally capable person arriving at the correct solution.
However, this sporting image of scientific inquiry, though suitable for a period when most science was still conducted by non-academics, was eventually eclipsed by the sober 19th-century image of Wis- senschaftas a “vocation” that was justified in terms of inquiry being a noble pursuit, regardless of its consequences (Weber 1958).
However, a vestige of the old spirit of gamesmanship survives in the priority disputes that continue to punctuate the scientific enterprise.
Designed as it was to maximize the spread of ideas, the Enlight- enment ideal of authorless inquiry took seriously the Platonist quest for a frictionless medium of thought. However, almost as soon as it was proposed, the ideal was met with two lines of resistance, one from publishers and the other from authors. Here it is worth recall- ing that before the end of the 18th century, the “author” of a book most often referred to the impresario who organized and compiled other people’s work—little more than the first moment in the book production process.
On the one hand, publishers supported strong copyright laws, as they were beset by chronic book piracy, which often forced them to cut authors’ commissions and even replace them with cheaper scribes.
(The replacement of authors was quite common, given that publish- ers commissioned most books, though authors—who would other- wise eke out a living as part-time lecturers or private tutors—were quite prepared to perform such contract labor.) One might say that in this case the ideas were spreading too freely.
On the other hand, authors whose ideas were not spreading freely enough also demanded stronger copyright laws, partly to retaliate against publishers, but also to protect themselves from an increas- ingly fragmented market. Authors argued that the quality of their ideas could not be measured by their sales, or even by their recep- tion more generally, but rather by the originality of their expression.
This was a quality that could be recognized immediately (as stylistic distinctiveness) but whose significance could be fully fathomed only
through years of reflection. In short, the print may belong to the pub- lisher, but the words are the author’s own. A cynic might say that modern copyright laws were thus designed to insure against low demand by upgrading the quality of what the author supplies. In any case, from this came the Romantic image of the “misunderstood genius” whose works appeal only to an esoteric clique. Though it first applied to poets, philosophers and scientists soon refashioned this image for their own purposes.
The connection between the unmarketable Romantic author and the self-policing of academic life known as “peer review” may seem remote, but one way to understand the latter’s ascendancy is as sim- ulating a market environment—one where peer citations replace sales figures—for work that would fail to survive in the conventional mar- ketplace of ideas. Peer review was designed, not to allow academics to hide from their sponsors in esoteric splendor, but to dictate the terms on which academics accounted for how they used their spon- sors’ resources. Instead of letting novel scientific ideas be directly evaluated by those who paid to have them generated (and hence risk immediate rejection for being too difficult or counterintuitive), the peer-review process would forward only those ideas that had already received the stamp of approval of the scientific society: i.e., a version of the “we shall hang together so as not to hang separately”
strategy.
Besides promoting a positive public face, there was also the need to erase any latent divisiveness within the peer group. Thus, when the first scientific journals were founded in 17th-century Britain and France, editors were cast in the role of trusted correspondents with the leading scientific minds, whose letters they would edit for gratu- itous metaphysical jargon and personal nastiness. In this way scien- tific writing was first standardized (Bazerman 1988). Eventually the single correspondent was replaced by the editorial board and more specialized referees we have today. Although standardization is often said to be a prerequisite for genuine knowledge growth, a more press- ing historical reason for disciplining scientific communication was to ensure that the scientists’ aristocratic patrons were not unnecessarily confused or offended. The aristocrats supported scientific societies in order to be amused, edified and, in some cases, technically empow- ered. Peer review instituted the decorum needed to persuade patrons that their money was well spent. This brief history should serve to remind us that if there is, indeed, a “Faustian bargain” in the life of
the mind, it is the one that academics strike with their sponsors that buys them the leisure to collectively pursue their studies.
Throughout the ascendancy of the peer-review process, publishers have often functioned as correctives to the protected markets that constitute academic specialties. They have traditionally encouraged academics to write books that are suitable for either students or general audiences. Of course, publishers have also expedited the spe- cialization of academic journals. But that would not have become such an attractive financial proposition, had academics not been allowed to set their own paths of inquiry in the first place, and hence settle into ever narrower domains whose state-of-the-art is defined by one or two journals. Once academic specialists agree that a certain journal is “essential reading” for their field, they deliver a captive audience to publishers that is too good to resist. The resulting higher subscription prices should perhaps be treated exactly as they are felt, namely, as penalties for scholars veering toward esoterism. However, the ease with which such “penalties” can be imposed has benefited publishing only as a business, but not as an art. Indeed, it has placed at risk the future of the most creative aspect of publishing: market- ing(Horowitz 1986). Academics tend to ignore marketing altogether, seeing publishing instead as a matter of editing manuscripts, on the one hand, and printing books and journals, on the other. Such dual- istic thinking breeds the kind of “Us versus Them” rhetoric which infects tunnel-visionary thinking about publishers.
Nevertheless, the main reason most academics cannot muster the attention of their colleagues to read their works has more to do with the fact that they write too much that interests too few. When publishers increase the price of specialist journal subscriptions, they are merely holding up a mirror to this academically generated prac- tice. In that sense, the rhetoric of “universal access” into which Cyberplatonists tap is little more than false consciousness. Moreover, in their search for new markets, publishers have enabled non- specialists to locate relevant works that have often served to alter their home fields, thereby contributing to cross-disciplinary fertiliza- tion and innovation. Thus, one should think twice before asserting that specialists have any better sense of the ultimate constituency for their work than authors oriented to a broader, less differentiated market. In addition, publishers have helped give voice to groups whose interests cut against those of the established academic fief- doms. Prominent recent examples include women’s studies and cul-
tural studies, two fields that received considerable attention from publishers before receiving formal academic recognition. For all its shortcomings, the publishing industry has operated with standards sufficiently orthogonal to academia’s to provide the only consistent check of the “business as usual” attitude fostered by the peer-review system. The offer—some would say “temptation”—of fame, glory, and royalties has periodically succeeded in drawing out scholars, especially in the natural sciences, on what they perceive to be the larger significance of their research, which has then enabled the public to sympathize with work it barely understands. The names of Richard Dawkins, Steven Hawking, Lewis Wolpert, and Steven Wein- berg leap to mind in this context.
5.3. Adding Some Resistance to the Frictionless Medium