ABSTRACT
This chapter uses the experience of an academic journal editor in order to reflect upon the social and economic arrangements which bring together academics, universities, states and knowledge capitalist organizations in order to generate what look like positive outcomes all round. It analyzes the market for publishing journal articles, and considers the consequences of the ranking and monetization of journals, papers and citations by different agents. The chapter aims to suggest that this set-up actually has some very negative consequences for taxpayers, academics and students. It also encourages the overproduction of academic output because it turns it into a commodity which is traded, whilst simultaneously tending to discourage forms of knowledge production which fail to fit into the boxes which have already been established for them, whether in terms of content or style. Reflexive accounts explore certain elements of personal experience, but might not necessarily a great deal about the more general features of the social world.
