[Taxacom] Fwd: Zootaxa taken off of JCR

[Roland Bergman-Sun]

Of course it is; I have not in any way denied this.
However, that does not obviate the fact that not having to take this
into account for the reasons I have outlined before is also a
privilege. It is possible for different people to have different
privileges.

In this case, it is a two-edged sword, however, as the normal salaries
-- absent any publications -- is often too low to allow a normal
standard of living even for China (obviously, I can only speak for the
situation at the institute where I work, but I have been told that
their salaries are generally "competitive"; I have no idea if this
also extends to students). A year's salary for my student (which is
what I used as an example; for me this does not hold, as even with 17
publications in a year, I didn't get even close to half of my yearly
salary in bonuses; note that the example was her publishing in Mol
Phyl Evol, which has a markedly higher IF than Zootaxa) is about a
tenth of the annual salary I had when I was a PhD student in the west.
It does not allow her to rent an apartment, have a car, go travel
anywhere (including to her hometown, unless her family supports her),
and so on. As far as I know, she eats most of her meals in the
institute canteen, which is subsidized heavily for students (a meal
costs between 3–11 RMB; a "normal" lunch outside may cost 30–50 RMB).
It's certainly a privilege for her to have the option to earn more
money *if* she gets her manuscripts published in the correct kind of
journal, but it is a privilege that is dwarfed by the privilege of
students in many western countries who get a salary that is decent
enough to get an apartment of your own, go travel across the world,
and enjoy a more typical western standard of living -- and one which
is entirely independent of the journal's IF.

This was precisely one of the reasons she cited yesterday when she
told me she did not want to continue doing a PhD, and will instead try
to get a job as a teacher.

Cheers,
Daniel

On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 2:27 AM Carlos Alberto Martínez Muñoz
<biotemail at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Daniel:
> Receiving the equivalent of your yearly salary from just one publication in addition to your real salary, for a small thing as a journal's IF *is* a privilege for researchers based in China. You are right when you write that one tends to be blind to his own privileges.
> Cheers,
> Carlos
>
> Carlos A. Martínez Muñoz
> Zoological Museum, Biodiversity Unit
> FI-20014 University of Turku
> Finland
> Myriatrix
> ResearchGate profile
> Myriapod Morphology and Evolution
>
>