Cultural Identity Politics in the (Post-)Transitional Societies

Cultural Identity Politics in the (Post-)Transitional Societies
thus subsumed into the capitalist economy through monetary dependence, since market
mechanisms only provide some kind of subsistence to the authors and it is through them
that the author has access to his or her readership.
Authors, for this reason, are probably inclined to adapt to a publisher’s expectations
or market records which certainly influence his or her decisions in writing. But the most
far reaching social effect of authors’ monetary dependence is that the field of culture
cannot create an alternative system of production and circulation as an alternative to
and/or in opposition to the market economy. As a consequence, market mechanisms
isolate individual authors; they inhibit attempts at cooperation and collective work.
They also inhibit possible self-reflection and the questioning of the social impact of
artistic practice.
Academic e-journals
We will illustrate the argument on monetary dependence with an absurd example for
all parties involved except publishers. On the list of the world’s largest publishers, if
we look at their turnover, we find three (Reed Elsevier, Thomson Reuters, and Walters
Kluwer) which publish academic journals that are among the top five. 4 They manage
several hundreds of journals each. Their lucrative business model is based on voluntary
and free of charge work on the part of authors who submit articles and on the part of their
scientific colleagues who do peer-review. Articles present research work, predominantly
funded by public money, but authors must nevertheless pass all rights related to the
articles on to the publishers. They, as the only right holders, have a right to fix prices,
to determine the accessibility terms for e-journals and selection criteria of journals or
articles, as well as the use of methodologies for citation indexes and impact factors. This
is the reason that academic publishing corporations have authors in the hollow of their
hand: publications in journals with the highest impact factor and citation index rates
are the main criteria for the evaluation of a particular scientist, so university careers and
research funding depend on them. Given that it is also a terrain of interstate comparison
and competition among national scientific communities, research founders additionally
urge scientists to publish in journals with the highest impact factors. Founders thus
entrust sheep to the wolf, but they too do not come off with a small loss.
The same group of authors, peer-reviewers and editors is also the target readership
of these journals which exceed the comprehension skills of most of the general public.
Subscriptions are often too expensive for individuals: in 2007 the annual subscription for
one chemistry journal cost 3,490 USD, for a physics journal 3,103 USD, for an engineering
journal 1,919 USD and for a geography journal 1,086 USD (Cope and Kalantzis, 2009:
23). University libraries subscribe to these journals for which national founders mostly
4
The list of world’s largest book publishers, published by Publishers Weekly, is accessible on the
web page: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/international/internationalbook-news/article/43564-global-publishing-rankings-2009.html
(4 January 2011).
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