Morning routine, one Monday, a few weeks ago: Drinking hot, black tea (with honey and lemon) and reading the daily briefing from The Chronicle.
I’m glancing at the articles, when I spy this nugget: “An attempt to make light of cultural-studies scholarship was met with disdain and acclaim from other scholars. An article published in Cogent Social Sciences was published as a hoax and drew plenty of attention.”
Gulp.
And it gets worse. The hoax article in question, titled “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct,” was designed to show flaws in cultural-studies scholarship and expose “the complex problem of pay-to-publish journals with lax standards that cash in on the ultra-competitive publish-or-perish academic environment.”
Why do I care? Well, mainly because one of my articles is published in Cogent Social Sciences. Now, that esteemed platform of intellectual activity is being described in The Chronicle as a “pay-to-publish vanity journal.”
Thankfully, none other than expert hoaxer (and physicist) Alan Sokal came to the defense of Cogent Social Sciences. After a cursory review of some recent articles, he declared that “none of them seemed to be utter nonsense.” It’s the kind of phrase that really shimmers in a tenure application.
If Sokal’s defense of Cogent Social Sciences seems somewhat tepid, the response from Cogent Social Sciences is more robust: https://www.cogentoa.com/article/10.1080/23311886.2017.1330439.
In general, I believe that the open access model of publishing has potential, but this episode is an embarrassment.
Meanwhile, if you are interested in the impact of Big Data on architecture, go here http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311886.2016.1198218. The article is guaranteed penis free, conceptual or otherwise.
Original Chronicle story of the hoax:
Alan Sokal’s analysis:
http://www.chronicle.com/article/What-the-Conceptual/240344