Abstract
The field of academia is frequently associated with traditional norms that aim to regulate scholarly activity, especially research. The social web, as another field, is often viewed as challenging long-established conventions with novel knowledge production practices. Hence, the two fields seem to oppose rather than complement each other. Using a Bourdieuian lens, this research examines research participants’ accounts of their approaches to practice on the social web in relation to academia. The paper reports on the habitus dissonance between the two fields, before discussing the effects of the two fields’ competing doxas on individuals’ habitus.
Notes
1. Joint Information System Committee.
2. For the purpose of this research, the term open access is used for true gold open access publishing; that is, toll-free academic journals for both the authors and the readership.
3. As a response to institutions’ strategies to ensure academics published in high-rank journals, the Minister for Universities and Science in the United Kingdom, David Willetts, came to reassure researchers and institutions that they should not feel obliged to follow and favour the trend of prestigious journals: ‘The instructions to assessment panels are that they must judge on the basis of quality, quality, quality – not location, location, location. So individual researchers can submit pieces of work that have appeared outside the conventional hierarchy of journals, and I am assured by the people running the REF that they will not be penalised for this’ (Willetts Citation2011; emphasis added).