Fourth tier journals

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education included a pernicious, seemingly commonsensical statement about academic production. The claim was that most scholarly articles appear in third and fourth tier journals that no one ever reads so that their contribution to knowledge is basically nil (the context of the claim was the idea that the emphasis on research is misplaced; because they don't actually contribute to knowledge, most academics are a waste of time and money; what they should be doing is teaching). This is wrong for at least three reasons. It is also highly conservative and should be rejected by all left-thinking people.

The first is the long tail argument (originally made by Chris Anderson in an article in Wired) that is the basis for Netflix and Itunes (not to mention blogs). Given the 80/20 rule, most articles, blogs, songs, films will be unviewed, unread, by very many people. But insofar as there are millions and millions of people, even the relatively obscure movies, songs, articles, blogs, may well be read by thousands. For them, the work has some kind of value.

The second is that knowledge is discursive; it is a product of and situated in discursive formations. Multiple second, third, and fourth tier journals play key roles in establishing and undermining discourses; they both constitute the discourse of a field and provide arenas for its testing, strengthening, and undermining. One way they do this is by giving opportunities to hard working scholars (graduate students and junior faculty, scholars in contingent positions, independent scholars) to get their work known and to increase their likelihood of success in a precarious job market. Another way they do this is by promoting work that doesn't easily fit into established parameters, that pushes the boundaries of what counts as good work (this is, by the way, a risky enterprise that sometimes goes awry; not everything that is published holds up over time, or is even necessarily very interesting when it first appears--but this is not necessarily an attribute of the venue in which a piece of work appears). And yet another way they do this is by supporting thematic and partisan work, work oriented to highly specific and detailed inquiry into narrowly defined topics (for example, journals like Philosophy and Social Criticism support work in continental philosophy that often has a difficult even impossible time getting published in the Journal of Philosophy; similarly, Theory and Event will publish an article that Political Theory dismisses as "not political theory;" and, Constellations published myriad pieces on Habermas's work, pieces that argued through details of the theory of communicative action, long before Habermas was as mainstream as Rawls--in fact, some diehards might still claim that he is not).

How exactly are the tiers determined? What exactly constitutes the rank? The supposition of the notion of tiers is that fields (including the humanities and social sciences) have clearly accepted hierarchies rather than multiple sites of conflict and struggle for hegemony/impact. The third reason the supposition that most academic work is useless (and therefore not actual work) is wrong is that presumes that the top journals are understood to be the top journals and hence that the value of their contributions is generally accepted as the standard of knowledge in the field. In fact, journals are sites of struggle to determine what counts as knowledge and what should be regarded as excellent (at the risk of repeating what might simply be apocryphal, a book review published in the American Political Science Review had high praise for Mein Kampf).

If one thinks that my third point is wrong, then one is committed to the view that the best journals publish the best work.  But how is best determined? If the answer is peer review, then second and third and fourth tier journals are also generally peer reviewed, so that isn't enough. If the matter is reputation, then again we are left with 'to whom?' If the matter then is referred to the most prestigious institutions, one ends up in a highly conservative position: the most prestigious institutions are the ones most entangled with government, corporate science, and elite interests. They tend not to celebrate radical, contestatory, risky, experimental work. The work is fringe for a reason--it's outside the mainstream.

And, as long as fourth tier journals are published, they provide opportunities to challenge and even change the mainstream, to fragment and divert it, maybe produce new ones, and counter them. This multiplicity is the lifeblood of academic work. Knowledge doesn't come ready made. It's fought for. To claim otherwise is to stop the process of its production, to conserve ways of thinking, habits of mind, and articles of faith deeply antithetical to the idea of the university. Of course, the right has had this goal for some time now. The argument against fourth tier journals is thus a weapon in its arsenal, part of its attempt to produce a compliant, non-critical population hungry for entertainment and authority.

Which side are you on?

Comments

[Unemployed Negativity]

Very well put, and your argument is especially interesting to me because although I have not seen the piece in question I have already heard the argument. It is an argument that seems to be gaining ground as state universities in particular attempt to get more work out of the teaching staff.

[Jodi]

U.N.--thanks. You are absolutely right about how the argument is being used to increase teaching labor time. A friend of mine was once teaching at a place with a 4/4 load. A colleague saw him working on a book review. He asked him why even bothered.

[c25]

It is most funny the idea that what is in top tier journals (which i imagine is determined by survey or number of citations?) is of any reliable quality.
More often it feels like it is precisely useful for the opportunity it affords us to work against it.

[Thivai]

I'm an editor for Reconstruction, I guess what would be considered a fourth tier journal? and I find it ridiculous that what we do is not work, is not important, and should simply be dismissed. As cultural activists we started our journal as an alternative to more mainstream cultural studies journals that lacked serious political critique and acted as consensus filters. We wanted to provide a forum for people who had new theories. These "minor" (in the D & G sense) serve as the counter to the critical mainstream and thus serve a very important role! For instance, I'm currenting developing a special topic issue on Religion & Culture. I'm a radical skeptic (pantheist and anti-theist) community college film professor and my co-editor is a Philosophy of Religion professor at University of San Francisco. This is itself is a unique academic collaboration and most likely would be unusual for "top tier" journals.

The dismissal of fourth tier writing sounds similar to the mocking dismissal of knowledge-production done through blog writing...?

Thanks!

PS: the Religion and Culture issue is in development and we are accepting submissions until may (see link above)

[Thivai]

Link for the Religion & Popular Culture CFP: http://dialogic.blogspot.com/2008/12/cfp-religion-and-popular-culture-may-15.html

[Nate]

hi Jodi,
Do you mind saying what the article was in the Chronicle? I'd like to read it. I find myself pretty sympathetic to the argument that a lot of academic work is useless (most work under capitalism is useless, substantively speak, or worse), but the idea that useless=not really work is ridiculous as is the idea that more famous=better quality.
cheers,
Nate
ps- happy new year!

[Jodi]

Hi Nate--I don't recall the name of the article or the author but it was on the website and it was available sometime between Christmas and Jan 3. The title was probably something economic/financial. There may have been something like predictions for the next year.