The Academic Hustler Meets Forensic Academics

I recently wrote a piece for the Sociological Review blog entitled The Rise of the Trump  Academic . It is hardly a new phenomenon, but in that piece I was claiming that there is a lot of poor academic practice going on in the world of research, from p-hacking, to confirmation bias, to excessive self-promotion. All of this is incentivized in a world of increasing competition for funds, reputation and university rankings.

Much less common on campus is what I call the academic hustler (after Tressie McMillan Cottom). I’ll attempt species identification. You know when the hustler is due on campus because their mail starts arriving several weeks before they do. They moment they appear they start cultivating the institutional hierarchy. Sabbaticals, travel money and conference bursaries are granted with few of the usual formalities. Before any serious obligations, such as teaching a new module or position of responsibility fall due – they are gone. Not that their profiles lack evidence of ‘leadership’ though. There will be journal editorships, conferences organised and international networks assembled. Their colleagues breathe a sigh of relief at their departure. In their short tenure the hustler will have divided departments and activated volcanic resentments over their sequestering of departmental resources.

I was reminded of this phenomenon when I read a blog post from Luděk Brož, Tereza Stöckelová and Filip Vostal which mourns the withdrawal of Jeffrey Beall’s online list of possible predatory publishers which he alleged corrupt scholarly communication. Featured on the list were several journals patronised by a scholar whose academic practice they claim has been discreditable.

The charges detailed by Brož et al are that Dr. Wadim Strielkowski, who describes himself as ‘bibliometrics expert, prolific author and a globetrotting entrepreneur’ has:

• published in dubious journals that were nevertheless featured in SCOPUS and Web of Science’s databases,
• recycled the same content in different publications,
• indulged in authorship trafficking (very similar texts are variously co-authored by different people, and some appear to be fake identities),
• offered advice to others on how to get published in journals listed in SCOPUS and Web of Science,
• delivered courses in becoming a MAW – Master of Academic Writing.

Strielkowski’s response is summarised in the title of his reply:  “It is easier to write a blog than a paper in a journal indexed in Web of Science or Scopus”. This was not the response you might expect if he wanted to dismiss the charges. There is no line-by-line rebuttal. Instead Strielkowski unwarrantedly denounces the publishing records of his accusers. Additionally, he asserts that blogging is the refuge of those who are avoiding peer review, which latter activity is exactly what his accusers allege against him. It is an attempt to undermine the usual purpose of this sort of scholarship which most of us recognise enables a dialogue pre-publication.

I would guess that most people will, over the course of their careers, meet a few individuals who display these professional behaviours. They thrive in certain quarters of academia, often private ‘providers’ of their own creation. They have been vitalized by three recent developments: the move towards open access publication which is now mandatory as a kind of gold standard for the Research Excellence Framework; the annexing of all subjects to the science model of metrics, citations, journal impact factors, etc.; and league tables which are reliant on these metrics. Everything necessary is in place to reward the ultimate game-player, especially when performance-related salary increases are factored in.

When the hustler lands in a conventional university, it is usually seniors in the hierarchy who part the waters to promote them, so beguiled are they by the glitzy innovations of ‘academic entrepreneurs’. You will see the professed achievements of these people being exalted over those of more careful and deliberate scholars. The hustler’s vigorous industry makes everyone else look like a slacker. What the managers don’t always realise, however, is that they will be fully implicated in the hustler’s dodgy deals and most likely left carrying the can for any loss of institutional reputation. Not that anyone ever apologises for running after these scams, though. They will never turn back to the scholars with integrity and admit they were duped. They are more likely to save face by limiting everybody’s access to sabbaticals, conference money etc. and they will increase monitoring of academic ‘productivity’ of a very tightly delimited kind – exactly along the lines of the metrics gamed so plausibly by the hustler.

UK academics should shudder at what they wished for; I was always cautious about the rush to the supposed gold standard of open access, fearing that it would blur the demarcation between respectable peer-reviewed publication and the cowboy kind – witness the controversy over online journal PLOS One. I knew academics would end up paying for it, sometimes literally. Brož et al capture this crisply:

“Importantly, careful reading of Strielkowski’s story shows that his academic-trickster business model worked in synergy with dominant indicators of scientific quality integral to many evaluation and rankings systems….Considering this case, it seems that the current globally shared obsession with “exact” bibliometric measurements of research productivity and impact is a source from which predatory/parasitic publishing spawns, rather than a remedy for it.” [https://derivace.wordpress.com/2017/01/26/predators-and-bloodsuckers-in-academic-publishing/]

When the supposed objectivity of ‘metrics’ can be so easily subverted and held up as a kind of insignia of respectability  it truly is parasitic publication. As we know, parasites have their hosts, and both parties benefit from the arrangement. Brož et al seem to have founded an academic service which is even more necessary than replication studies to expose sloppy science. Welcome aboard to forensic academics. I recommend we all adopt their vigilance.

Advertisement