Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy and Politics (Dec 2012)

Drowning by numbers: On reading, writing and bibliometrics

  • Ylva Hasselberg

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3384/confero13v1121207a
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 1, no. 1
pp. 19 – 44

Abstract

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The purpose of this text is manifold. The primary purpose is to look into the effects of marketization of academia on the reading habits of academics, which also demands a problematization of reading and its role in the process of creating new knowledge. The second purpose is to discuss and problematize the citation as a sign of intellectual debt. And the third, but not least important, purpose is to write a text that demands the reader to read in a manner that is necessary to learn, instead of writing it in a manner that is adapted to promoting "citability". And so of course, what I would like more than anything to teach the reader is that the only possible way forward, the only method of reproducing real scholarship in a commodified setting, is to live it yourself. This way of writing a text is my way of living eal scholarship. If this does not agree with you - don't bother citing me.