I agree with Ken's concern but I would not go down the road he follows.
Academic writing and dissemination skills are important but it is much
more important is to keep a limit on the amount of research that is
published. Serious journals restrict themselves to publishing work that
is new and significant, they need to retain the attention of the
community which will not read vast amounts of unimportant material.
In the natural sciences there may be a case for incremental publishing
of small additions to knowledge as long as it is relevant, in the arts
and humanities there is no such case.
My answer is to stretch the definition of publishing until it fits. All
postgraduates should disseminate their work in appropriate forms - we
have had students win design competitions, register patents, present
work at conferences or inter-university seminars, present work to
professional organisations (in design and in other disciplines) or
relevant businesses, self-publish on the web, go into batch production,
exhibit in galleries etc etc. It all depends on the student's aims, the
aims of their degree programme (which may be professional rather than
scholarly) and the nature of their practical work.
And I don't share Ken's pessimism. The European Community may be able to
enforce its will on fishermen because maximum fishing quotas are
achievable, even if they drive people into bankruptcy. But it is
impossible to force fishermen to catch more fish than there are in the
sea and it's impossible to force Universities and students to publish
more research than they can produce or the journals publish. If we just
say "don't be silly" they will have to think again, the alternative is
vanity publishing and Ken has already warned us against that.
best wishes
Chris
ps. The native language of Ireland is Irish, English is a colonial
imposition, and the native language of at least part of the UK is Welsh,
most Welsh children today grow up bilingual (and a very good thing it is
too)
|