The profession of freedom of expression and collective conscious

The profession of an editor of academic journals demands a collective conscious, one that brings together a group of voices and ideas, yet avoids complacency. Two affinities characterize this profession: cultivating dialogue that allows ideas to germinate and the highest value, liberty. Even at this axiological junction, many of its battles are fought and settled in the silence of the computer screen. The profession becomes a silent witness inhabiting the interstices of the time of publication-which is not just the time or hours spent in the office-and the weight of endless hours dedicated to the incomprehensible prose of this or that author, or the irrefutable clarity of ideas that shine on their own. The desperation caused by uncountable details becomes sudden joy, an inexplicable enthusiasm upon seeing the collective work-which is really every issue-and every one of the pieces in its place. The journals and their issues become a collective victory resulting from countless attempts, rewritings, in the rush towards publication. Thus once they are in the reader’s hands, they are no longer ours; they reaffirm their collective nature and their possibility to exist as a common good for humanity.

This image of the editorial work needed for the publication of academic journals is not so distant from the history of science itself. Heirs to a tradition of scientific publications, current journals face one of the greatest possibilities to reach more people through digital mechanisms of databases, indexes and archives, among others. But at the same time, this digital possibility tends to measure and quantify even the unquantifiable; it becomes a latent risk for the future of academic journals. This risk is also present behind something even more important: the development and focus of research and the generation of knowledge for the future of human well-being.

The need to rethink the future of academic journals implies observing them critically as a collective that will grow through open access. In this collective nature, the editor is nourished by all who participate, but also has tasks that represent challenges, such as avoiding a perspective that has been diluted or obscured by pressure-produced by the race for acquiring and sustaining a place in indexes-or the constant worry about resources to finance publications. However, a challenge that has grown exponentially is the avalanche of articles by researchers desperate to publish-in large part due to the pressure occasioned by jury committees, grants, research systems, and so forth, which will determine where one should publish and how this should be measured. Though this ensures a cycle of productive determination on behalf of the researcher, it does not necessarily mean a higher quality of content or relevance of research.

Something that should not be forgotten is that the profession of an editor is oneof freedom; this should not mean the freedom to choose which jury committee to please, but rather the freedom of verbal expression. At the very heart of this freedom, the editor has the opportunity to exercise a watchful awareness, not aligned with miserly interests-of a group, of marketing, or of trends- but, in the case of academic journals, constructed from an ethic that safeguards the knowledge generated not for a personal, but collective benefit. This ethic and collective good are at constant risk: the risk of determining which research to support and which not. The future risk for journals lies in determining what research matters and what interests will be taken into account.

This creates a mechanism, which is ultimately a cycle of production adjusted to specific interests, determining what is published, how much it will cost for universities to access the information, which journals will grant the classification of scientific knowledge and how the number of citations will be tracked or how to speed up the route to creating a new patent. But the cycle of determination does not end there.

That a small group of committees and publications determine what is science and what topics are pertinent-or should be pertinent-to governments has an impact on the financing mechanisms and amounts to fund research that, consequently, will determine among whom any benefits will be distributed; yet this distribution is not based on who needs the benefits most, but who can pay for them. The collective that is constructing scientific journals today should consider this enormous risk, especially amidst the often-ignored frenzy of corporate guidelines for the management and visibility of knowledge. Investment in research will not be free to follow scientific perspectives, in the widest humanistic sense to improve today’s societies, but it may lean towards other interests, dissolving objectivity: “In order to function correctly, scientists must maintain a position of impartiality and objectivity” (^{Koepsell and Ruiz de Chávez, 2015, p. 129}).

If the profession of the editor implies freedom of verbal expression and a watchful awareness of the ethics that sustain academic traditions, then each editor has a relevant role in the future of journals, not as a sole hero or leader, but as a collective conscious. To a certain extent, the growth of a country’s scientific journals reflects the focus of its policies for the development of science and technology; we are witnessing some recent efforts in Latin America to improve the impact and development of its scientific journals. Governmental efforts will need to be sustained because consolidation requires maturity of the management mechanisms, the acknowledgment of a culture that supports scientific publications and continued economic support. However, the Latin American case, while demonstrating great efforts, is also at risk because it faces budget cuts in science and technology in 2017, for example in Mexico, Brazil and Costa Rica. In Mexico this risk can be understood within the context of reductions in federal resources designated to research, education, science and technology; the efforts from the past years will be jeopardized by the instability generated by reductions in the resources of these truly critical areas for the development of a country in this context (La Jornada, November 21, 2016).

Why should we consider the future of well-being along with academic journals?

Academic publications in general are an important step in ensuring the social relevance of knowledge and communicating the collective benefits of human intelligence. However, human intelligence itself has constructed, paradoxically, the very conditions that jeopardize it through development and investment in research to make a non-human super intelligence reality (^{Bostrom, 2014}). Though this risk is very specific and seemingly distant from the topic of academic journals, it is also ubiquitous and will have an impact on different aspects of life as we know it today, therefore compromising the future of humanity itself. More specifically, I recommend asking, “What is the role of academic journals-whether research-based, scientific or popular-in the construction of the future risks or benefits for humanity?” The publication of research results has a direct impact on the technological developments that are today a challenge for our species. There are two examples: the development of artificial intelligence and the way in which information and communication technologies have transformed and will continue to transform our interaction with others. In the publication of journals we have already witnessed these factors in different realms of editorial management, and we can thus ask ourselves, “How do we envision academic journals in the coming decades?” We are probably working, without even realizing it, towards a point in which editorial management and the processes involved will be carried out by a super intelligence capable of determining what is research, what should be published and what will be measureable with what economic value. Do we really have reasons to worry?

There is considerable economic investment in artificial intelligence and ITC in some countries; and in other regions the investment is principally directed at purchasing these developments and their applications. The projected growth of both fields, artificial intelligence and ITC, for the coming decades occupies an important place in the investment in, sales and purchase of technology that, consequently, will exacerbate the economic dependency of some countries. But why should we mention these two fields and the relation they have with the future of academic journals? Huw Price, Director of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, expresses one of the concerns that will need to be considered, even in academic publication systems:

If we are to develop machines that think, ensuring that they are safe and beneficial is one of the great intellectual and practical challenges of this century. And we must face it together -the issue is far too large and crucial to be tackled by any individual institution, corporation or nation. Our grandchildren, or their grandchildren, are likely to be living in a different era, perhaps more Machinocene tan Antropocene. (^{Price, H., Now it’s time to prepare for the Machinocene, 2016})

The concern for the future risks faced by humanity-risks being created by technological developments and artificial intelligence-has already been both directly and indirectly expressed in scientific literature. Our task in the Latin American academic journals will also be to convey these reflections to the researchbased systems of administration, publication and communication of knowledge. This concern requires clarity on behalf of the different actors that make up the systems of publishing and communicating knowledge. In this way, certain questions will need to be considered: what human values implicit in the generation and publication of scientific knowledge might be jeopardized by the development of a super intelligence and the growing presence of ITC in the processes of scientific publication? If we think about this in the context of academic publication in the coming decades, what criteria can ensure that published research contributes to an inclusive well-being, fair and ethically oriented, where a human being decides on behalf of humanity and not a super intelligence with greater autonomy and no ethical limits?

The question can perhaps be understood as a reflection ahead of its time, but it is not. Today we have information and evidence provided today by research centers at Cambridge and Oxford University-for example the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, the Future of Humanity Institute and the recent Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence-in new fields with interdisciplinary focuses on the future of humanity, existential risk and the future of intelligence. We can also say that whatever is capable of shaping a bright future for humanity is also capable of jeopardizing its existence as we know it today. Thus, the question from the previous paragraph has its foundations; it is not fiction, nor is it irrelevant to the research that is taking place in today’s universities. A comprehensive approach to these risks is found in the research work of Nick ^{Bostrom (2013)}, or in Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, (2014). I will close with another question. In the current context of academic journals and the growth of autonomy of information systems and the capacity for monitoring the measurable, what lessons can we learn from other areas where the decisions, innovations, technological development and research have already traced the possible risks, due to the increase of the autonomy of intelligent systems for management and information?