In the discussion of this entry by Peter Woit on open-access publishing, John Baez writes about the motivations of scientists who write for academic journals. He has some interesting things to say, but I think he’s missing some big issues. Here’s Baez:

So, even as the university library is crying for help, struggling to pay the ever-growing costs of journals run by the big media conglomerates, the science faculty continues to publish in these journals, because their careers depend on it.

The science faculty also work as editors for these journals, typically for no pay – just for the prestige of being on the editorial board. They also work without pay refereeing articles for these journals. They write papers that appear in volumes published by the same media conglomerates, again just for the prestige of having a paper in a prestigious volume. And, they write books for presses owned by the same conglomerates.

I [Baez] find these activities to be a bit more craven, because I haven’t seen people getting hired just because they do these things. But, just as millionaires work their ass off to become billionaires, a lot of the most prestigious scientists engage in these activities to polish their reputations to an ever finer sheen. This is especially true of people who have given up trying to do original research.

I [Baez] get lots of invitations to write books and papers for various collections, because people know I can write. These days I almost always turn them down. I’ve learned a key fact: when someone gives me an honor, it’s usually a way to get me to do work for free. I still give lots of talks, because I get free travel out of it, and I really enjoy explaining stuff. But writing review papers for volumes published by prestigious publishers – that’s something I’ve come to really dislike.

Each time I turn such an offer down, I feel a little ache, because I know I’ll miss out on a little piece of prestige. For example, I could have contributed to the forthcoming “Princeton Companion to Mathematics”. I almost did – what a great opportunity! But I didn’t. I’d rather do whatever the hell I want on a given day – usually thinking about math and physics. I’m in an incredibly lucky position where I can afford to do this; it seems insane not to.

In short, to understand what’s going on, you have to realize: big companies care about profits, academics care about prestige.

My comments:

Yes, prestige (buffing our reputations to “an ever finer sheen”) is certainly a big issue, maybe partly because we’ve been trained to do this ever since we were in high school and trying for that perfect grade point average that would get us into the right college, etc. (I imagine it’s even worse in poorer countries where there’s major competition to get into college at all.)

But I think the motivation is more altruistic. I don’t know what’s in the Princeton Companion to Mathematics, but in general I don’t think that much, if any, prestige, comes from writing encyclopedia articles. When I do such things, it’s more out of a sense of service to the community or from some desire to communicate: my thought is, if people are going to read an encyclopedia article on “statistical graphics” or “Bayesian statistics” or whatever, I’d like them to learn the real thing (i.e., my perspective on it). These things take time, though, so I can understand why Baez said no to the invitation to contribute to the volume.

Ultimately the reason that I (and others, I think) do much of our research (and why we give talks) is: if I’ve gone to the trouble of figuring something out, I’d like others to hear about it and make use of it. Basically an altruistic (or evangelical) motivation.

That said, I agree with much of Baez’s criticism of academic publishing. It does seem a bit weird to me that authors and referees provide services for free. Nowadays the role of journals seems to be to give a stamp of approval on research, not to actually “publish,” so it’s not clear why the system should be so expensive. Peer review is another screwed-up system, but that’s another story.

A dermarcation?

A cynic might say, how can we distinguish between “prestige” (Baez’s claim) and “altruism” (my claim). One demarcation would be to consider your reaction if an idea or paper, equivalent to yours, is published by someone else. You get no prestige from this, but the outcome to the scientific field is the same as if you had published it yourself. Thinking about it, I admit that, all things equal, I’d prefer to have the article published under my name (although, still, I don’t think of this as “prestige” but more as “credit”), but I’d still be happy to have it out there. I certainly feel that way about review articles (which is one reason that XIao-Li and I edited a volume of review articles ourselves).