Keith S. Taber
One aspect of academic life that has never sat easily with me, is having to be a publicity officer and marketing manager for oneself as a scholar. Not only does this involve keeping good records of everything one has contributed that might conceivably count in seeking a post or promotion and so forth, but making a case for just how important one's work is – its supposedly seminal status, and its inconceivably incredible impact – by seeking out and reporting various indicators. Perhaps it is something about being British, but it is one aspect of the role that I am pleased to be leaving behind.
Presentation is important. Yet, of course, one must retain one's integrity. One might need to display one's contributions in the best possible light, but lying is clearly not acceptable. Unlike on TV's 'The Apprentice' where hopeful future entrepreneurs making up achievements or exaggerating beyond any possible justification in their applications is presented as entertainment – a little naughty, but it shows they are committed and enthusiastic – this would (I assume) clearly be unacceptable in the real world of work. If that is idealistic, it is certainly not okay in the Academy.
A confession
Yet I must confess that for some years it seems I have been padding my publications list with an article that, I now find, may never have been published. Inadvertently, obviously.
But how can a scholar seriously claim they thought they had been published, when, actually, they never were? What possible defence can there be?
But ('your honour') it is true: I found out some days ago that one of my 2012 publications [sic] may not have actually been a publication at all – as it may never have been published. So my publications list may have misrepresented the status of this possibly previously* unpublished work. (*I've just 'published' it myself on the website – but of course that would not count for much in the hiring-and-tenure-and-promotions game.)
So how did this situation develop?
The invitation
On the 8th September 2009 I was invited by an esteemed colleague
As Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopledia of the Sciences of Learning (to be published in 2011 by Springer Publ.) and in accordance with strong recommendations of the editorial advisory board I am wondering if you would be interested in joining the Encyclopedia's list of contributors…If you have the time and inclination, the Editorial Advisory Board and I would very much appreciate your support. If you agree to serve as an author on the topic(s) on molecular conceptions of research into learning
Now I was somewhat surprised to be asked to wrote to that topic, but assumed that someone must have spotted a lecture I had given as the Royal Society of Chemistry's Chemical Education Research Group's annual CERG lecture some years earlier on the theme: Molar and molecular conceptions of research into learning chemistry: towards a synthesis.
The files were lost in production
The deadline was in January 21st 2010, and I got the submission completed just before Christmas 2009. I was sent reviewer comments, and completed a revision in June 2010. I assumed all was well.
However, when I saw in May 2012 that the book was published, my article did not seem to be listed. So I contacted the publisher:
Would you be able to give me an update on the current status of this project. On the project website the contribution I was invited to provide is shown as green (manuscript accepted) [see image above], and according to the Springer site the Encyclopedia is now published. However, I cannot see how to access the material (perhaps my institution does not have access (yet?), or pehraps the on-line version is not yet available?), and I cannot see my contribution (Molecular conceptions of research into learning Regular Entry 00394 894/894) in the downloadable contents. Please could you advise?
The publisher responded: "I can´t find the entry either. This is very strange as it should be there. I will check with the production team and the company that runs the website for us."
The next day came the bad news. Well, given the kinds of things that happen in the world it was only slightly bad, but as publications are seen as so important for academics, and given that I'd done the work, it was pretty disappointing!
I´m terribly sorry to tell you that your article was the only one that has not been received by the production vendor team although we sent it to them. That means that we didn't even had a proof of your article. We didn´t notice that before for which we apologize deeply. For the current printed book Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning it is much too late to get your article in. Please accept my apologies.
A second invitation
But I was offered a partial corrective:
We have developed a new publication platform for our Reference Works that launched in August last year. As the Encyclopedia is part of the Springer Reference Works series it is also published as Online Version …The Encyclopedia on that platform can be seen as a living book as authors and editors can add articles or update old ones at any time….Would you be interested to write/update your article on SpringerReference as part of the electronic/online version of the Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning?
Yes, I would. The next day I was formally invited to write my article, once more:
Thank you very much for taking part in Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning…With this e-mail we invite you to SpringerReference.com as author of the following topic(s): Molecular Conceptions of Research into Learning…
At SpringerReference.com, we offer an extremely innovative way of publishing that allows authors to keep articles constantly updated and make their writing efforts immediately visible online. … When the article is complete, simply click 'Submit' to submit your content. By doing so, your contribution will become immediately visible on the site for other users to read and cite–you do not need to wait until the deadline is reached should you have been given one.
The article was (now) due on July 17th, 2012. There were some technical issues using the on-line submission system, but an assistant at the publisher helped sort the problems relating to an image file and cross-links with other contributions. Finally, by the 9th July, the files were uploaded and some formatting issues were sorted, and I was told by the publisher's assistant: "You can confirm it and click on the ACCEPT button".
I did not have access to an accept button, but was able to reply "Thank you – I have clicked the submit button."
Looking back now, I am wondering if perhaps I did need to click on the accept button – except I did not have such a button on my screen. Perhaps the publisher did have an accept button at their end, and the production assistant did not realise that I did not, or had intended to accept the article later and for some reason…
However, as I could see the article on line (see below), I assumed all was well. After all, I had been told that "When the article is complete, simply click 'Submit' to submit your content. By doing so, your contribution will become immediately visible on the site for other users to read and cite…"
As I am retiring from teaching, I have been building up this website as a central point for various things I've worked on, and have been reviewing the publications I've written over the years (some of which I have no files for, as the manuscripts were typed and submitted in hard copy in those days). When I came to check the current location of this reference article, I could not find it on line, nor indeed any reference to it in a search. Well, that is not absolutely true: I found it was referred to in a list of my publications, but nowhere else. So I reached out to the publisher:
The files were lost (again) in a migration
The publisher could not find my article, nor indeed any record of it.
I'm sorry to say that after scouring our repositories and email we've failed to find your entry "Molecular conceptions of research into learning". Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning was developed on older platforms we decommissioned years ago, and email archives go back only so many years, I am sorry to say. (16th June 2020)
It seems the publisher had decided the original system, a wiki-based platform, did not fully meet their needs, and that something more sophisticated was needed, a "a file- and book-based publishing workflow" that worked better for academic publishing. That is perfectly understandable.
I can also understand that if the publisher had never accepted the submission at their end, then it might be quite possible that the files would be missed completely when the published materials were transferred to a new platform. It seems the files were lost in that process.
A Schrödinger publication?
On the other hand, if it was true that "by [clicking submit], your contribution will become immediately visible on the site for other users to read and cite" then it is not obvious to me why the files were not transferred – unless the transfer was based on a list of the files at the time of the original publication. If that is the case then the "living book [where] authors and editors can add articles or update old ones at any time" died, and reverted to the state of the initial 2012 publication, when the transfer took place.
I am not sure what the moral of this story is. After writing, submitting, and revising an invited article, having the publisher lose it; resubmitting it, a lot of back and forth sorting format issues…it is disappointing to know all that effort may have came to nought.
In retrospect, perhaps when I emailed to say "I have clicked the submit button" I should have written "I have clicked the submit button as I do not have an ACCEPT button, so if an ACCEPT button needs to be clicked please advise, or otherwise confirm no further action is needed at my end". Usually I tend to be pedantic and explicit – and so, I suspect, annoying. Annoyingly, on one of the few occasions I let my guard down, being my usual annoyingly pedantic might have stopped the article being lost a second time.
On the other hand, perhaps my article WAS published on-line in 2012 (when I could access it), but then lost some years later when the resource was transferred to a new platform. That would be a bit like having a chapter in an edited book that has gone out of print (which would not stop an academic including it on a publications list) – except that the only copies of my article which would have survived would have been any downloaded onto individual computers whilst the original platform was live.
Perhaps I should label this a Schrödinger publication – and consider it as an entanglement of two states – ⎮published but no longer available ⎮ / ⎮ accepted for publication but never published ⎮ – as there does not seem to be any observation I can make now which would collapse the wave function.
So I am not not entirely sure if my entry in the encyclopaedia actually never was a real publication (given the publisher has no record of it), or is just not a currently available publication (given that it was submitted according to the instructions that were supposed to make it live immediately). That makes keeping an accurate publications list quite challenging.
