i wonder if that keeps researchers from developing economies from becoming impactful, because $3k is like 15 months of a minimum wage in brazilian reais, and more than entire month’s wages for 99.9% of our professors
edit: for the humanities this seems especially bad, it kind of makes it sure that western social thought remains dominant since only you guys can actually pay for it
Oh absolutely. It’s a huge issue, especially in humanities and social sciences, where the barrier of entry makes it so that almost all published research is conducted by certain populations on themselves. Some people call it “WEIRD” populations, meaning western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (though that “weird” terminology is a bit stinky… I’m looking at the “E” and “D”). Interestingly, China has now overtaken the US in publishing the most highly cited research of any country, though I think their advances are mostly in natural sciences and engineering.
There are also issues with how we qualify good quality or *academic * research. Again, this is especially the case in social sciences and humanities where the standards have been set by colonial researchers who had the means to run expensive studies on large samples. As a result, a lot of research methodologies and ways of knowing that don’t align with the western colonial standards (e.g., qualitative research, narrative analysis) get discounted or written off entirely
Yup, I’ve got a paper that’s just about ready for submission, and if the journal accepts it for publication, we pay ~3k USD, so about $4k CAD.
i wonder if that keeps researchers from developing economies from becoming impactful, because $3k is like 15 months of a minimum wage in brazilian reais, and more than entire month’s wages for 99.9% of our professors
edit: for the humanities this seems especially bad, it kind of makes it sure that western social thought remains dominant since only you guys can actually pay for it
Oh absolutely. It’s a huge issue, especially in humanities and social sciences, where the barrier of entry makes it so that almost all published research is conducted by certain populations on themselves. Some people call it “WEIRD” populations, meaning western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (though that “weird” terminology is a bit stinky… I’m looking at the “E” and “D”). Interestingly, China has now overtaken the US in publishing the most highly cited research of any country, though I think their advances are mostly in natural sciences and engineering.
There are also issues with how we qualify good quality or *academic * research. Again, this is especially the case in social sciences and humanities where the standards have been set by colonial researchers who had the means to run expensive studies on large samples. As a result, a lot of research methodologies and ways of knowing that don’t align with the western colonial standards (e.g., qualitative research, narrative analysis) get discounted or written off entirely