KARL JASPERS FORUM

N69

Editorial question :

PUBLICATION, CITATION, DISCUSSION

by Herbert FJ Müller

16 August 2006, posted 19 August 2006

The KJF is intended to be a discussion Forum for a wide variety of topics. But over the years it has become evident that some authors are reluctant to discuss what they propose (one can see that looking at the KJF table of contents). The following is a brief reflection on this point, and I would be interested in opinions and suggestions by others.

‘Publish or perish’ is a well-established guideline for those who want to pursue an academic career. In recent decades this has been supplemented by citation analysis : ‘get quoted if you want to be promoted’.

There is, however, no similar incentive for discussion. Indeed, there appears to be a conflict between the needs of various scientific (and other) fields, which require discussion in order to progress, and the interests of individual authors who want to publish and be quoted (and admired) but some of whom, for various reasons, may feel uncomfortable with free discussion of their work by others and even by themselves.

One might address this constellation as a task, and ask by which means one can stimulate discussion on questions of wider interest. One possible way may be to have questions formulated and published in a journal, and then invite several workers in this field to address them; this could be followed by a spontaneous discussion by others.

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Herbert FJ Müller