The Economist recently ran a report, entitled Exclusivity for everybody with the subtitle "The modern luxury industry rests on a paradox, but is booming nonetheless."
The paradox is that luxury/status brands such as Gucci, Cartier, Louis Vutton got their name because they were so exclusive [expensive]. But now they are mass produced and mass marketed to middle classes, even in the Majority World.
I realised that this is just what the mother of luxury journals, Nature Publishing Group, has done too. Now everyone can have a Nature paper too!
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Excellent analogy! Being a junior researcher in physical sciences, I have experienced/witnessed this phenomena (wave?) in all its glory first hand especially since I was trained in a high profile lab myself. It is amazing how, scarily often, the perceived worth of a researcher and his work (by self and others) comes and rests on that one nod from a Nature journal editor.
ReplyDeleteWhere is the problem? To publish "excellent waste" you need the appropriate "luxury journals", too.
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