Socien's Blog

One of my posts in a subreddit r/Zimbabwe had a link to a  Google Form questionnaire. I needed to have it filled in by citizens in my country who had some experience with internet banking because the study I was working on was mainly on adopters of the technology. The post informed the sub that I was a paid researcher. Not a think-tank type. My job was just to write assignments, dissertations and various papers for clients in academia. You might say, as one comment in the sub observed, I was doing academic theft en masse. But before we go any further. Here are the definitions of the terms in this article:

• Biblio-puritism: Of academia; adherence to citation and source verification, prioritising sources on top of the hierarchy in a way that favours Western scholarship over the rest and ritualised research ethics at a sacrosanct level. While it separates the prized academic thought from the rest, it stifles innovation where approach in certain areas may require demand what may seem to be the researcher’s methodological weakness.
• Biblio-libertinism: direct opposition or the extreme left of puritism, where defiance of ethics is a norm. The article fully explores its subtypes that include biblio-opportunism, nihilism and iconoclasm.
• Pragmatism: It sits at the centre. It seeks to exploit elements of libertinism while trying to fabricate an outcome that resonates with puritism.

Note: These elements shift. What was pragmatism in 1920 is now libertine. I am not defending libertinism, but I am pointing to incidents that helped my to bring up with this categorisation.

A barrage of comments interrogated my moral quandary. I was not only a thief, but a lost soul who needed more salvation than self-restraint can achieve. My hunger for money, they concluded, was robbery and Reddit, through its confidentiality-focused account naming scheme provided a mask for my routines. I was quick to name my tormentors as biblio-puritists. To them, my sin was not just using the sub to pull in a rigged participant-base, acting in favour of a feigned research. I was doing anything to get a completed survey, a done study at the expense of the hallowed rituals of source verifiability of the academia.

The academic rituals place prime importance on a study that’s not only informed but also by those who ethically participated. The accomplishment of a research study is a matter of the ethics of the informant and the ethics of the researcher. The informant must inform not only because there is a need but because it is the right thing to do. My Reddit request provided no need for any conscious informant to fill out the questionnaire. Doing so meant that they were accomplices turned in consciously to support my heist by filling out my questionnaire, and acting as accessories before and after the fact. Their morals had to be questioned as much as mine.

As an element in academia, I was a biblio-libertine. This group of people are seen by purists as by-passers of the rigid codes of academia for selfish reasons. In my case where the moral quandary is questionable, I was in pursuit of a profit. The research topic was ideal, focusing on adapters. This made it a new approach because most had dwelled on Challenges without separating adopters from non-adopters. Probably they had challenges identifying a good sample of adopters who regularly used their respective platforms once a week. In a country, where 50% of the Internet consumption bandwidth happens through WhatsApp a much less known discussion platform like Reddit was the furthest one could go with the internet. It was much easier to yield a higher sample of adopters there than on a winding bank queue.

Libertinism is a bracket -ism. No one would want to be associated with it in this modern world of academia. A long time ago it was the only option. Ancient thinkers and writers mixed their thought with others, with most deciding not to give any credit unless they were copying verbatim from a known text. Then sanity was weighed through the lenses of religious texts and the culture’s perception of a morally just writing. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600 A.D. for advancing a geometric model in Italy. He had rejected empiricism and allowed his intuitions to inform him. How radical this mideval libertanist was? (He was, mostly, burned for denying Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary).

But you would find that it was the then form of libertenism that would eventually open pathways to modern science. The theories we still study today had to be brought by those who did not submit to the definition of sanity at the time. I am not saying being a paid ghostwriter will make me a great thinker, but it has more than not did unlock opportunities for me than doing more degrees and writing journal articles could have. It exposed me to many disciplines across the academic tapestry. I find gaps in one discourse or discipline being covered by opportunities in another. I have had a good time thanks to this exposure.

However, I may defend myself, but the realm of paid academism is less exalted. I find it this form of modern libertanism a harm to the planned, the very threat to academic validity. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence and more specifically, Natural Language Processing, clients have asked me to humanise documents written by other ghost writers. In that case, I have to rewrite the whole document in my very own words (tiresome).

As I inspect the reference list, I find that all the sources referenced in the client’s work do not exist. Libertenism is puncturing academia. For this reason, controls at the top are tightened. Postgrads are being asked to reference only sources ranking 1, 2 or 3 on AJG and other rankings. But this hurt not only less-known journals but also journals that are available under Creative Commons distribution or newer ones.

A journal titled AI (it exists) started to publish in 2023. It contains a good list of articles on AI than a Wiley-Blackwell journal with more than a century in existence. I had a client looking for how “AI is impacting job application trends”, “its uses in editing and enhancing CVs/resumes” and “how it is affecting one’s decision to quit or find a job”. If you are to take this text in quotes to your Google search or Google Scholar, you will find articles written discussing the employee side are close to non-existent.

Scholars are focusing on how employers can and are using it to screen CVs. The articles discuss the so-called ATS, an automated system with keywording AI algorithms  that can narrow down 1,000 PDF CVs to 5 without human intervention. The ranked journals also fail to build a collection of articles on new areas such as the one we pointed out in this article because they would want a new article to use ranked journals as sources.

The institution told her to find another topic. Because after a thorough search, we only found articles in the journals such as (follow links to read them) Frontiers in Education or AI  meeting the topic’s demands. But these articles simply fail to qualify. Indian journals fail to qualify as well not because of poor quality but because they are not published by the likes of Wiley-Blackwell, Sage and Francis and Taylor.

More than just being a measure to safeguard academia from libertinism, it safeguards big Western institution-led academism. It others non-Western literature, at a time when non-Western researchers are increasingly gaining access to the publishing press. It frustrates, Governments and taxpayers making an effort to fund their researchers. In academia uncited means useless. But the academic class structure puts researchers on third world specific topics, e.g. The impact of refurbished phone on Kenyans, at a disadvantage. Those from the third world are locked in a hermit. To escape it they find it worth to join western institutions.

I can’t defend libertinism, because that not my intention. I find it with more layers. I think there we have biblio-opportunism, nihilism, iconoclasm and pragmatism. An opportunist utilises the academia to achieve their goal. In my case it was money. A state pushes forward its political agenda. We hear of denominations saying “A study shows members in our church are happier than the rest of Americans”. (I hope I am not criticising anyone).

Biblio-opportunism is characterised by its involvement in a rigged sample. We are talking of a sample informed about the malicious designations of the data it is providing. A biblio-nihilist is radically dismissive of the codes of academia. This one stays out of its sight but would want to rob others’ thoughts without crediting the source. A biblio-iconoclast is a nihilist who goes on to attack the cherished cows of academic purity.

Biblio-pragmatism as a way to go

Ludwig Wittgenstein gave us the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) and Claude Shannon A Mathematical Theory of Communication (1948). These came with no prior referenced literature but they are now the most cited sources in their particular fields. The reason? The two took what was the best pragmatist approach of the time.

One might suggest the American Psychological Association (APA) referencing style came in 1929, but some way of giving credit to the source had long since existed. Von Ranke, for instance, voiced in his preface to a work on the history of the Teutonic and the Latin people that giving reference to the source was ideal in the 19th century. His prized work became the guiding principle for later historians. von Ranke’s approach was the starting point of puritism in the historical field.

We see biblio-pragmatism in play in Wittgenstein (1921) and Shannon (1948) at play rather than nihilism and iconoclasm. These two likely found no prior sources as they attempted to spill the ink. But the rise of rigid methodologies has erased the possibility of this approach. Lesser-known areas, non-Western areas of interest, research questions on the subaltern, and newer areas of interest ask researchers to be pragmatic than to swing on the restricted pendulum of research methodology and journal rankings.

Pragmatism varies with a given background. As shown above, a student writing on the topic of AI job application trends as noted above might find her pragmatic approach being incorporating all journal articles regardless of whether they are ranked or not. Rigid puritism may as well choke not only the academia but the rest of the society. Because more than ever before answers are now needed. The humanity is facing is many threats and opportunities. Our climate is changing, our technology is promising, our world is becoming a global village but areas of clash are multiplying. Can strict adherence to puritism alone give us the answers?