The Game of Academic Publishing

Autor(en)

Nathalie Ann Köbli, Luisa Leisenheimer, Teresa Kucera, Mira Achter, Cornelia Schadler

Abstrakt

In the last decades, academic publishing in the Social Sciences has experienced a shift toward research management by non-academic stakeholders and performance-based funding systems (PBFSs). The resulting conditions of knowledge production and dissemination are increasingly described with “game” metaphors. This article provides a literature review of research concerning publishing in the Social Sciences and discusses how gamification becomes a key element. Quantifying publication outcomes to assess and financially incentivize research performance results in a highly competitive playing field where access to goods and services is denied to those who play the game poorly. The pressure to publish leads to unethical behavior and predatory publishing which are two side-effects of gamified practices. The reviewed literature also shows unequal starting conditions in terms of gender and language inequalities, as well as the dominance of the Global North. We conclude that the gamification of publication practices in the Social Sciences leads to stressful and dreadful environments.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Bildungswissenschaft

Journal

Frontiers in Communication

Band

9

Seiten

1-11

Anzahl der Seiten

11

ISSN

2297-900X

Publikationsdatum

01-2024

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

508016 Wissenschaftskommunikation, 503018 Hochschuldidaktik

Link zum Portal

https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/the-game-of-academic-publishing(1ebcfb5e-dfe0-4176-b065-94e0a4963b80).html