Piracy and academic publishing

We all need to publish. It's part of the job description: The knowledge we, the scholars, are gathering, needs to be distributed. We do quite a bit of that through teaching, but it's not enough. Society not just expects us to publish, it demands it.

This demand is institutionalised through several different structures. The different roads to degrees, jobs, titles and opportunities are all paved with journal articles, the stepping stones are monographies and the embellishments all come in edited anthologies. The Universities are rewarded by the publishing of their scholars, and so they reward us, and the publications are used for public relations and for media attention, which again covers another part of our job: that responsibility to participate in the public debate. Research and learning is ok, but we have to demonstrate that we have done so.

There are of course rules to publishing. This blog doesn't give me any points. I have had (and still have) great pleasure from it. It has brought me in touch with some incredible people over the years, and in a few cases have been immediately useful. But it circumvents the structures that puts value to academic publishing. It's not peer-reviewed, it has no editor, no isbn-number and no rejection rate. It is, in short, not an academic journal. Academic journals is where it all happens, where publishing becomes elitist and important, and, for everybody but the scholars, where the money is. Some of them get paid both coming and going: Universities pay to have the articles of their scholars published, and then they pay to display the same journals (and articles) in the libraries, physical and digital. For a small university the price of journals is through the roof: there's no way we can afford it all.

And so we end up pirating.

When I am in a library with full access, I download like crazy. You can spot the experienced scholars in a big research library or inside a flush university network by the suddenly intense look of a treasure hunter about to download two or three or five years of journal volumes, and on the backchannel of conferences there will be a quiet whisper among friends about who grabs what, while we're still connected. Now, this is a pretty legitimate "piracy" - after all, we are supposed to exchange knowledge. The piracy university libraries targets is the stealing of journals by stealing student emails and passwords, and then grabbing volumes of journals for resale. Considering how extremely expensive it can be to buy one article - Jstore often asks for 25$ or more for 10-12 pages - this quickly becomes very profitable.

I am mostly a law-abiding person, and I couldn't hack Jstor even if I really tried, but I do get a little bit annoyed with the practice of making us pay both coming and going. As it is, scholars and their universities handle all the costs of the initial production. We are talking about years of work in many cases, and decades of education and study. The scholars write the material up, often presenting it at a few conferences on the way, to get feedback. This means it's already been through one or two peer-review processes before a version reaches a journal. This means at least 5 people have been directly involved in creating and editing the materials, before it's even sent to the journal.

Scholarly journal editors often work for free, and the peer-reviewers certainly do. We read and give feedback because we know we are in a loop of favours returned. I read for you, you read for me, and in the end we all get peer-reviewed. The double-blind process stops the most immediate exchange of favours, but there are still levels at which we are mutually dependent. Anyway, the journal itself does more or less decent copy-editing (often lacking, something that skews academic publishing heavily in favour of native English speakers), some design, some legal work as to registering the materials with the relevant libraries or central archives, printing and online publishing, and a minimal amount of advertising. And the sales, of course, where the largest revenues come from libraries, libraries at the universities where the same scholars who wrote the articles have to buy their own material back.

In other discussions about piracy, content producers point to the poor creative souls who try to make a living by writing their souls out, only to be ripped off by the pirates. In academia, pirates just can't steal anything more from us. We already pay, often twice, for content we have produced and the universities and research institutions have financed. And yes, we get something back, but not from the publishers. Hence, I don't hesitate to mail an article to a colleague or a student. I dip into the stored secrets of my hard-disk, and hand articles out, mine and others.

I do feel guilty though, in a looking-over-my-shoulder kind of way, but not because I think I am doing something bad. More in a slightly paranoid fashion, as if I expect Big Brother to look over my shoulder, not in the reality show version, but the Orwellian Science Fiction of 1984.

And now, back to downloading articles.

Blogging - is it journalism?

Accidentally, as I was following up on other topics, I found that there is a wonderful drama playing out in the Norwegian blogosphere, complete with a sobbing bride, nasty, greybearded men and a handsome football-player. OK, the football-player has very little to do with it, but he's a very good-looking accessory.

So, what happened here?

A young and beautiful woman works part-time as a journalist in an online paper, and is fashion editor and co-owner of an online magasine. At the same time she is making money on her fashion/lifestyle weblog: Fotballfrue - football wife (yeah, that's where the handsome man comes in).

So, somebody reads that she has income from a lot of different sources, and they question her ethics (and they do it while she is on a honeymoon, how rude!) in an article about fashion weblogs.

There are a lot of bloggers who have very high hit numbers, and use this commercially. Fashion blogging is "in" at the moment, and so the companies pay the young and the beautiful to let others know what they wear and use. The principle is nothing new, it's pretty much the same as sponsoring skaters while they were the "cool", or athletes, for that matter. Ohh, again, almost a reference to the handsome husband who never really enters the story!

Anyway: Some fashion bloggers do it to make money, some do it to create a name for themselves, to build their street cred. However, being a good fashion blogger takes a lot of money, in order to keep up their fresh front they need to be seen in the most interesting, newes and fanciest outfits available - and what is better than getting paid to do this, alternatively getting the products directly and free from the producers?

So far so good. But what if you are trying to build not just street cred, but actually become a journalist and an editor of a magasine? What should the smart fashion blogger do? Oh, and by the way, "journalist" isn't a title you get by getting an education and a license, like "medical doctor" or "lawyer," it's something you become if you practice journalism. So if you don't practice journalism, you are not a journalist, no matter how much education you have.

The whole issue with the football wife isn't really that she writes on order for companies. The issue is that she at the same time calls herself a journalist and an editor. She acts as a marketing officer, without making that obvious in the different posts, while also trying to build the trust and reputation she needs in order to be taken seriously as a journalist. And when she is criticised she claims that blogging isn't journalism, and so she can do what she likes.

She is, in a way, right. On "fotballfrue" she is her own editor, owner and writer. As long as she doesn't harass anybody, she can write what she likes. If her business strategy is to promote objects or trends for whoever pays her (are those fake louboutins, or real?) then she can do that to her heart's content on her blog. She will gain a lot of treet cred among other fashion bloggers, and probably among her followers as well. And she is right, her blog isn't journalism.

Does that mean blogging isn't journalism? No, because if she wrote according to the standards of journalism, her blog would be journalism. Again, journalism is a practice, not a license or a stamp put on only some organisations.

Back to the drama.

The pretty young lady is a part-time stand-in for Side2.no. So she is, at best, part-time freelancing as a journalist. It's not really anybody's business how she spends her time when she's not working for them, and Side2.no can stop using her when ever they like.

And that's what really should come out of this story: she doesn't have a job, she has a pretty face, a fashion blog, and ambitions to become an editor. In a case like that, what is the smart strategy?

I find myself firmly on the side of the grey-bearded evil, which isn't so odd, since I am turning pretty grey as well. She should clean up her blogging act, and stop selling her opinions to the highest bidder. People who write commercials for pay are not welcome in the journalism union in Norway, and when journalists change jobs and go into marketing, they need to swap unions. It's how it goes. If she wants to go that way, she needs to adjust to the standards, or she will have no journalistic credibility.

However... she might not want or need it. She's young, she's pretty, and people are paying her to wear beautiful clothes. Why should she worry about journalism? But then I'd recommend that she removes the "journalist" title from her webpage. If you don't practice journalism, you aren't a journalist. If you claim you are, you will be criticised. I am sorry, really, and it's horrible that people are letting you know this while you're on your honey-moon, but that's how it is.

Oh, and have a wonderful time. Your life looks like a slice of marketing heaven.

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Corrected due to Undre's comment, thanks.

Blogging the blogged Ph D about blogging

I just want to point you all towards Lilia Efimova's wonderful thesis Passion at work: blogging practices of knowledge workers, which was submitted last year. It is, of course, online, so: Enjoy!

What's up in Volda?

What's worth blogging, one asks oneself once in a while. And hey, let's admit it, the world won't stop spinning if I don't blog. I do however find that something else stops spinning, and that's those wheels in my brain. I am, as the blog indicates, a person who thinks while writing. Or, that's not true: I am a person who needs to write in order to organise my thoughts.

I find that I ramble more and more to my students. Their stunned looks when I pause in an attempt to trace down the core of the thought I had, the idea I want to communicate to them, indicates that I have been off on some totally undisciplined tangent, and bombarded them with apparently unrelated facts. This happens because I have deliberately stopped writing out my lectures. There was a day when I refused to face students without 20 pages, double space, 12 points. That's 45X45 minutes of pretty steady talking, in case you wondered. But no more. I put down the most important facts, I find some ways to illustrate those, and then I try to connect the dots. It's those connections that occasionally get a little - fragile.

But I am still writing. I am just about to finish up an article I write with Luca, Rene and Kristine. I have to download and bring with me the material from my project this spring, in order to write it up, not yet in article form then at least in a form that lets me access the material easily. I have to rewrite an article for a collection Esther asked if I could contribute to. I have a research grant sketch on my machine. I have a plan for a much larger research grant based off the material from the "Gamer's Space" project. Basically, I can spend the time from now until Christmas writing, and still not be done. I have two weeks in which to do it.

And in the mean time, I write and play other stuff. Last night I made an experiment to see if people would/could come to my farm-town toons' wedding. I had a few guests, it was, as Rene stated, an intimate wedding. Which is just as well, as they revealed quite a bit of the future development of the drama on the farm. Yes, I am creating a drama on there, and I am trying to track the use of the game in order to do it. Right now, for instance, I need to gain a new level before I can get on with the story, because I need a greenhouse. Once that is in place betrayal, tragedy and the final plot twist will follow.

Also, I have been asked to reveal the secrets of my aubergine, tomatoes and cheese course from last week's game researcher dinner. But that deserves a blogpost all of it's own.

Electronic Frontier foundation

I am a little late to the party for blogging about this, as Electronic Frontier Foundation has been around for ten years. But the website is an extremely interesting resource for anybody interested in online freedom of speech, and I particularly recommend their list of legal cases.

About research blogging

This autumn there was a slight stir in the Norwegian blog arena, as the forskning.no, the web site associated with the Norwegian Research Council, started a blogg with invited guest bloggers. Jill criticised the style and approach, while I said "yes please, and can I bring some friends?" when I was approached and asked if I wanted to blog for them.

It's the "bring some friends" part I am the most happy about, and it's also starting to spread on the blog. At first we (Ragnhild Trondstad, Kristine Jørgensen and me) were the only ones who blogged under a common name - spillforskerne, "the game researchers." Now there are more groups popping up, such as the sports researchers and the welfare researchers.

At the beginning, the blogs were an odd mix of too long and too heavy articles which could just as well have been printed in a journal, and too light articles which looked like "sex-in-the-city-goes-to-university." Now, a few months into the project, most of the bloggers have learned. Today's blogger is a typical and very good example. He's the dean of the medical faculty in Trondheim, but just before Christmas he slipped on the ice, fell, and broke 4 ribs. This leads to reflection on his field - medicine. A personal experience combines with his expertise to a process of contemplation and reflection which leads to sharing with others.

While this is not exactly blogging about ongoing research, it definitely communicates research. He links to other people's research, he puts it into a larger context, and he personalises it through sharing his thought process. By doing this he also describes how integrated research and reflection is in the life of researchers. He opens up to the process. Instead of spending his time dwelling on his considerable pain, he searches for a distraction through his job. Most researchers recognize this feeling. It's why we work until we get repetitive stress injuries, until we burn out, or until we are numbed with pains from the neck to the butt.

Also, he answers the question "when do you get time to work?" We get time to work all the time. Most of the researchers who publish regularly, who search for new projects and are active in their fields display a deep and abiding interest in the field, and can work while having a conversation with their children, going for a walk, or reconvalescing after accidents.

Of course, this means that we never really get to work. When you have the job pulling at you constantly, you're also constantly interrupted. The child does not want to listen to your lecture, your partner needs to talk about his own things while walking, the painkillers takes away your ability to really focus. Not to mention the distractions during the work hours. Students, lectures, meetings, colleagues, phones, assessments, reviews, deadlines, budgets, equipment - where are the ivory towers when we need one?

All of this is very nicely displayed on forskning.no. The system used for blogging is still not the best, and the approval process is comparably slow. But it has a good balance between the personal and the professional, it presents the people behind the research, and it's the most popular page on an already quite popular website.

Research blogging and blog norms

Forskning.no, the news portal associated with The Research Council of Norway, has just started a blog. It's a site where researchers contribute to a national project of making research easier accessible and visible in Norway. Apart from their normal journalistic work, they have cooperated in many different ways with research and educational communities in universities and colleges. My own students have for instance in many different periods written for forskning.no, and had their articles edited, commented on and published by specialists - an extremely useful exercize for students of Public Information.

Jill Walker Rettberg, probably the most highly profiled blogger in Norwegian academia, is however not happy with the blog as it's organised. She wants technical changes, more specialised blog-tools and different behaviour from the bloggers. I agree with her comments on form (we agree on a lot of stuff, as long-time readers of our blogs know), and have already communicated much the same to forskning.no, making it clear that our blog will not look quite like what they have published so far. But it's going to take a little while yet until I get on with blogging there and get to see how much of her criticism of the tool and of NFR's policy of blogging that is too-the-point, and how much is just a matter of letting a new group and a new publisher get some time to settle into their role.

As for the comments on payment - one of the responsibilities of a publicly paid academic is to participate in the public debate. Yes, there should be ways to register blogging in a way that would give us "points" when counting publications, and I am certain this would propel Norwegian academics into a blogging frenzy all over the country. However, we are already paid to be part of a public exchange of thoughts and ideas. No, I wouldn't turn down the money if forskning.no paid me for this. But yes, I am willing to do it because it's part of what I am supposed to do.

And what am I going to do?

What is taking a little time to organise is a group-blog within the framework of forskning.no. Three other Norwegian game researchers are joining me, and we will be blogging on game research. The first post on this blog is circulating among the bloggers as we speak. I promise, the first blogpost will be about establishing the blog, its topic and style, as well as introducing the bloggers and saying a fw words about game research. After the first post it's free for all: to engage with the field of game research according to the preferences of each blogger. We will produce at least one post every second week, which means a minimum of one post every two months as we are four. This is not an unreasonable amount of text. Most likely we will produce more, long and short posts, and forskning.no will pick a post to feature on the front page when they see something they like.

Will we adhere to Jill's style demands? Sometimes. Will it be a brilliant blog by experienced bloggers? Sometimes. But blogging is about more than one style. Blogging is about freedom of expression, of the potential of the writer and the tool, and about the choices made in a process, not according to some already set norm. If it was not about breaking norms of publishing and experimenting with form, blogging would not have developed much in the first place, would it?

Articles this year, so far so good

I wondered where I was when I got my copy of our lovely WoW book, Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft® Reader, since I didn't blog it. then I remember - I was travelling, Umeå, Volda, Copenhagen, New York, and too much was lost in transit. No not physically, but things to which I should have paid attention.



The book is a wonderful object to hold, both because it's packed with work from people I know and respect, and because it know so much about the rest of it. I was there in that taxi in Copenhagen when we came up with the idea of the book. I read the early drafts of applications and suggestions that Jill and Hilde sent off, I was there while we discussed it in the different lists, in game, out of the game and when the call for paper went out to more than the guild I felt still involved in the process.

Not to take the glory from Jill and Hilde, they did an incredible job in getting the book out, but I feel like this is my baby too. And the baby of Lisbeth, Charlotte and the other authors as well as the ones who were somehow inside the process but never got to present their work here. This is a book that comes from a game researcher's community, not a collection of strangers who happened to write something relevant, and so it carries with it an odd flavour of nostalgia.

Another anthology I was represented in this year is written by exactly such a collection of (to me) strangers: Handbook of Research on New Literacies.

This is a very different beast. It's a huge brick of work which can easily compete with Lord of the Rings in size, and it sprawls all over the place. I did find the articles of some friends here too though, and it looks like it has the potential of being a very useful reference work for the topics in new media research in this decade. I do have some fondness for it. Not because the articles make me remember great conversations and happy moments, frankly, I have not been able to take in all it contains, but because this book too has led me to meet great people. Interesting, sharing and generous people - in a way those people are more important to me than the stack of books and journals that is accumulating on my CV. I like doing this work. I just need to see a physical result once in a while to remember why.