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New publication: Angermuller/Hamann "The celebrity logics of the academic field"

This is to share a recent publication of ours, which discusses the unequal distribution of citations in Applied Linguistics: 

Johannes Angermuller and Julian Hamann (2019) "The celebrity logics of the academic field. The unequal distribution of citation visibility of Applied Linguistics professors in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom." Zeitschrift für Diskursforschung 1(2019): 77-93.

Download here: http://www.johannes-angermuller.net/pub/html/AngermullerHamann2019Celebrity.html

While academia needs the free exchange of ideas, all academics do not have the same equal access to academic discourse. In fact, one often observes a "celebrity logics" in academic communities: few academic celebrities monopolize the attention, visibility and recognition of the many who mostly remain unheard and unknown. In order to assess such stark inequalities in our own discourse, we registered all (887) full professors in Applied Linguistics in the UK, France and Germany (as of 2015) and determined how often their publications have been cited (according to Google Schools). We found that 10% of this senior group of academics is cited more than all the other senior academics in these three countries. In the light of celebrity as a driving mechanism in academia, our paper raises questions about how the value of academic research is constructed in everyday academic activities.  

If you are interested in my research on academic practices, careers and systems, you may want to have a look at my paper on academic salary regimes:  

Johannes Angermuller: “Academic careers and the valuation of academics. A discursive perspective on status categories and academic salaries in France as compared to the U.S., Germany and Great Britain”, Higher Education 73(6):963-980, 2017, http://www.johannes-angermuller.net/pub/html/Angermuller2017AcademicCareers.html 

While French academics are subject to salary scales set by the central Ministry of Education, the salaries of some status groups in the US, UK and Germany, such as full professors, are "negotiated on the market".  The paper discusses the considerable salary disparities that have emerged in the more market-oriented academic systems and their effects on academics and their practices.