Elsevier's slaves: the Washington consensus in the social sciences?

Abstract

This paper investigates the mechanisms of subordinating the system of science and higher education to the needs of boosting capital in the conditions of a new business model characteristic of neoliberal capitalism. The author uses as a theoretical framework of critical studies of science and higher education systems developed in Poland by Krystian Szadkowski based on political economy (Simon Marginson and Gigi Roggero). The weakness of the recently implemented reform of Polish education, the essence of which is making the status of ‘scientist’ dependent on publication in high-ranking journals belonging to publishing corporations’ oligopoly, is that the natural and technical disciplines have been places on an equal evaluation footing with social sciences and humanities. This practice impoverishes the educational and critical functions of humanities, impoverishes the research questions, impoverishes the research methodology, and consequently, their cognitive values. The assessment of the quality of a social researcher’s work, to be reliable, should include several other components - the presence of an "invisible university" in international networks (e.g. measured by selected citation indicators), but also problematization and interpretative innovation, as well as an original contribution to the achievements of the discipline. Monographs mainly document this. Qualitative expert assessment is required for evaluation. Therefore, the publication of monographs in reputable Polish and foreign publishing houses should become a showcase of the Polish social researcher, rather than contributing journal papers. In the paper, the author synthesizes his various analyses of contemporary capitalism and the role that science and the research and development sector play in accumulating capital.