State of the Federation, pt. 2

(I've got in mind to update this blog about once a week (probably on Saturdays), but as I'll be leaving tomorrow morning for a brief jaunt in Toronto, I'll post this now instead. Last week I wrote the first part of my report on the Humanities and Social Science Congress. It brought up a bit more bile and venom than I had expected, so I decided to break it into parts. Here's the second.)

After hearing the Governor General give his talk about the present high water mark we're seeing in the life of the Canadian scholar, I went to a panel discussion on the topic of community-engaged scholarship. I'd only ever heard of this once before, when I attended a workshop on the subject specifically treating the issue of establishing such ties with community groups. Community-engaged scholarship is research that involves specific communities in carrying out academic research. The communities themselves are involved in the research itself, their input used in the formation of everything from assessing relevant research questions to gathering data.

Often in these relationships, the scholars involved provide professional expertise, bringing knowledge and understanding of (and thereby access to) scholarly research pertinent to the problems at issue in the community. In other words, the scholars involved serve as a liaison or bridge between a community on the one hand, and on the other hand a body of scholarly literature relevant to issues pertaining to that community.

What makes that literature inaccessible to the community at large in the first place? There are two factors at work here. The first is that the majority of cutting edge research is published in peer-reviewed journals. In Canada, and specifically in the humanities and social sciences, the vast majority (read: almost all) of the papers published in these journals are written by university researchers. University researchers, of course, are funded by public tax dollars. So public tax dollars are used to produce the content of these journals. Those journals are also edited by the prominent academics in the relevant field. However, they are privately published (mostly online these days) and subscriptions are prohibitively expensive. University libraries must subscribe to a good number of such journals simply to facilitate the research of its scholars, but lavish indeed would be the public library that could afford any such subscriptions.

Let's take stock. The production of this research is funded by public money, as is the reviewing and editing process. But the final product is handed to a private enterprise, which then turns around and charges publicly-funded universities for access to content that they themselves produce. Why would any academic with a conscience publish in such a venue? Because tenure and promotion dictates that only certain types of publication can count towards fulfilling their research expectations: publications in these journals are a linchpin in that process of getting the job security (and salary, and status) of a tenured professorship.

Luckily, peer-reviewed journals are starting to offer the option to keep the work publicly accessible. If the author indicates that they would like anyone to be able to download their writing for free, many journals will honour their request. The only hitch is that the author must then pony up $3 000 per article from their own pocket. At a time when up and coming scholars are harder and harder pressed for money (see last entry in my blog), it isn't feasible for most academics, even the conscientious and well-meaning ones, to make their work freely accessible to the public that has actually already paid for it.

The first hurdle in the trek towards accessibility is that the research is just too expensive for the average person to afford. The second is, in my mind, even more serious: even if the research were made available gratis, these primary texts are written in a technical jargon that just locks out the average reader. Not only is the average reader locked out by this technical jargon; other academics, even ones in nearby and related disciplines, often have considerable difficulty fighting their way through the primary texts of their colleagues in different departments. Sadly, the jargon barrier actually stands strongly between researchers even in the same discipline! The current academic situation is one of hyper-specialization. The ivory tower is tall, perhaps taller than ever before.

Getting back to community-engaged scholarship, the role of the professional researcher as a liaison between expensive, technical, jargon-filled primary sources and practical community applications is an important role. There are other liaison efforts: for example, the SnapShot program that puts out occasional snippets about research currently underway at particular universities in Canada, letting the population know what their researchers are up to. There is also a conference series called "Philopolis" that explicitly seeks to provide discussions of cutting edge philosophical research in a manner (financially and technically) accessible to the public, while explicitly engaging that research with issues of public interest.

In the question period that followed this panel on community-engaged scholarship, I couldn't help myself from raising one that burned in my mind: given that such liaison efforts are only necessary because the primary form of this research is inaccessible to the public, would our efforts not be better served to just make that research accessible in its primary form? Why not just make research financially and technically accessible from the get go, and forget the need for some translation between professional and public?

There are two possible reasons that academics might not want to do that: the first is that making their research exclusive gives it a certain caché. Making their research accessible would erode the elite status of our academic researchers. That's a very cynical way to look at things: hopefully we're above such petty concerns. The second is that writing advanced research in an accessible language, avoiding getting bogged down in jargon, finding a way to cash those terms out in a way that most people would understand, these are all things that require particular skills. As a fellow philosopher remarked when I suggested to her that we move to a more accessible model of scholarship: "But you know, it's a pretty special person who's able to make such complicated ideas simple to understand." Damn right it's a special person that's able to do that! But that is absolutely no reason to throw up our hands in despair. That is no reason to avoid putting extra value on those skills. It is a deeply concerning state of affairs indeed if we are willing to accept that the difficulty of a task is a sufficient reason not to undertake it at all.

Efforts to liaise between technical and expensive primary literature and the communities that stand to benefit from it (and have already paid for it) are important and laudable efforts indeed. But why do we never seriously consider an ideal of scholarship according to which such liaising is not even necessary? Does it require structural change in our institutions; does it require a set of skills currently undervalued in academia; would it require an awful lot of effort? Yes, yes, and more yes.

The move toward accessibility is a project I would be unbelievably proud to see undertaken as a nation; perhaps nothing would stir in me greater feelings of pride in Canadian scholarship. And I'm willing to work for it. Work like hell, in fact.