WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.839 Imagine a massive reinforced vault. And inside 00:00:04.839 --> 00:00:07.919 this vault is a meticulous real -time record 00:00:07.919 --> 00:00:11.099 of the social, political, and cultural history 00:00:11.099 --> 00:00:14.320 of an entire continent, stretching back over 00:00:14.320 --> 00:00:17.019 half a century. It holds documents that have 00:00:17.019 --> 00:00:21.179 survived regime changes, global ideological shifts, 00:00:21.539 --> 00:00:24.239 and basically the entire digital revolution. 00:00:24.379 --> 00:00:27.359 That is a lot of history. It is. Now, imagine 00:00:27.359 --> 00:00:29.579 walking up to the outside of this formidable 00:00:29.579 --> 00:00:32.500 vault and finding that the world's biggest public 00:00:32.500 --> 00:00:35.700 encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has essentially slapped 00:00:35.700 --> 00:00:38.899 a sticky note on the heavy steel door. A sticky 00:00:38.899 --> 00:00:41.159 note. Yeah, a sticky note that just says, we 00:00:41.159 --> 00:00:42.659 don't really know what's in here. Can somebody 00:00:42.659 --> 00:00:44.740 help? I mean, it is an incredible image. And 00:00:44.740 --> 00:00:47.380 it really captures this massive paradox in how 00:00:47.380 --> 00:00:50.100 we interact with information today. We have this 00:00:50.100 --> 00:00:52.460 illusion that if a piece of knowledge exists 00:00:52.460 --> 00:00:54.570 out there in the world, it just must be instantly 00:00:54.570 --> 00:00:56.909 visible and perfectly summarized for us online. 00:00:57.149 --> 00:00:59.969 But the reality for you the listener is that 00:00:59.969 --> 00:01:01.810 the vast majority of human knowledge doesn't 00:01:01.810 --> 00:01:03.689 actually live in those neat little summary boxes 00:01:03.689 --> 00:01:05.840 on your search screen. No, it really doesn't. 00:01:05.959 --> 00:01:09.019 It lives behind closed doors in this incredibly 00:01:09.019 --> 00:01:13.019 complex hidden infrastructure of vetting and 00:01:13.019 --> 00:01:16.120 categorizing and honestly gatekeeping. Absolutely. 00:01:16.340 --> 00:01:18.739 And today we're going to open that vault for 00:01:18.739 --> 00:01:21.319 you. Our source material for this deep dive is 00:01:21.319 --> 00:01:24.120 that metaphorical sticky note. Yes. We are looking 00:01:24.120 --> 00:01:27.359 at a self -described Wikipedia stub, which is 00:01:27.359 --> 00:01:30.859 a highly abbreviated bare -bones article about 00:01:30.859 --> 00:01:33.599 an academic publication called Social Dynamics, 00:01:34.060 --> 00:01:36.780 a journal of African studies. And when you look 00:01:36.780 --> 00:01:39.480 at a stub like this, you are basically just staring 00:01:39.480 --> 00:01:42.379 at raw metadata. Yeah, just the skeleton. Exactly. 00:01:42.480 --> 00:01:44.439 It gives you a few bullet points, a founding 00:01:44.439 --> 00:01:47.340 date, a list of editors, and a string of databases. 00:01:47.640 --> 00:01:49.459 But our mission for you today is to take the 00:01:49.459 --> 00:01:52.569 anatomy of this tiny seemingly insignificant 00:01:52.569 --> 00:01:55.590 entry and use it to expose the hidden mechanical 00:01:55.590 --> 00:01:58.090 framework of the global academic publishing industry. 00:01:58.269 --> 00:02:00.829 Because it is all right there? It is. Locked 00:02:00.829 --> 00:02:03.930 inside those few bullet points is the exact blueprint 00:02:03.930 --> 00:02:06.170 for how verified human knowledge is actually 00:02:06.170 --> 00:02:08.729 built. Okay, let's unpack this. Well, let's start 00:02:08.729 --> 00:02:11.330 with the sheer longevity of this project because 00:02:11.330 --> 00:02:14.050 the source gives us a founding date of 1975. 00:02:14.449 --> 00:02:18.280 1975? Yeah. We are talking about an English -language, 00:02:18.439 --> 00:02:21.520 peer -reviewed academic journal covering African 00:02:21.520 --> 00:02:23.960 studies that has been running continuously since 00:02:23.960 --> 00:02:25.900 the mid -70s. I mean, if you think about the 00:02:25.900 --> 00:02:28.159 historical context of that date, this journal 00:02:28.159 --> 00:02:31.639 isn't just a publication. It's like a time capsule. 00:02:31.719 --> 00:02:34.500 Yeah. Or an intellectual survivor. Oh, without 00:02:34.500 --> 00:02:37.219 a doubt. We are talking about the height of the 00:02:37.219 --> 00:02:40.729 Cold War. the grinding reality of apartheid in 00:02:40.729 --> 00:02:44.370 South Africa, these complex waves of decolonization 00:02:44.370 --> 00:02:47.289 and post -colonial nation building across the 00:02:47.289 --> 00:02:49.909 entire African continent. It is a massive amount 00:02:49.909 --> 00:02:52.509 of change. Right. And this journal has been capturing 00:02:52.509 --> 00:02:55.189 the academic analysis of those massive shifts 00:02:55.189 --> 00:02:58.550 in real time. But, you know, a journal doesn't 00:02:58.550 --> 00:03:00.870 survive that kind of history just by printing 00:03:00.870 --> 00:03:03.870 opinions. No, it requires serious rigor. Exactly. 00:03:04.129 --> 00:03:06.389 The source explicitly calls it a peer review 00:03:06.389 --> 00:03:09.030 journal. And I want to dig into the actual mechanics 00:03:09.030 --> 00:03:11.150 of that. Let's do it. Because people hear the 00:03:11.150 --> 00:03:13.990 term peer reviewed all the time. And I think 00:03:13.990 --> 00:03:16.870 the assumption is just that a really smart editor 00:03:16.870 --> 00:03:19.669 ran a spell check and maybe checked a few footnotes. 00:03:19.849 --> 00:03:22.889 What's fascinating here is how drastically the 00:03:22.889 --> 00:03:25.669 reality of peer review differs from that assumption. 00:03:25.830 --> 00:03:28.129 It's not just a quick read through. Not at all. 00:03:28.310 --> 00:03:31.849 It is not an editorial polish. It is a brutal 00:03:31.849 --> 00:03:35.539 vetting machinery. Brutal. Truly. When a researcher 00:03:35.539 --> 00:03:38.740 submits a manuscript to social dynamics, it enters 00:03:38.740 --> 00:03:42.319 a highly adversarial process. Usually, this is 00:03:42.319 --> 00:03:44.180 double blind. OK, break that down for us. Double 00:03:44.180 --> 00:03:47.360 blind. So the journal's editors strip the author's 00:03:47.360 --> 00:03:49.659 name and their institutional affiliation entirely 00:03:49.659 --> 00:03:51.780 from the paper. So no one knows who wrote it. 00:03:51.919 --> 00:03:54.240 Right. And then they send it out to other experts, 00:03:54.379 --> 00:03:57.580 the peers, who specialize in that exact niche 00:03:57.580 --> 00:04:00.710 of African studies. Wow. So the reviewers don't 00:04:00.710 --> 00:04:03.009 know whose career they're evaluating. Exactly. 00:04:03.229 --> 00:04:06.229 And the author has absolutely no idea who's critiquing 00:04:06.229 --> 00:04:08.990 their life's work. Precisely. And the reviewer's 00:04:08.990 --> 00:04:11.389 job is essentially to try and break the paper. 00:04:11.590 --> 00:04:14.759 Like crash testing a car. Yes. They aren't looking 00:04:14.759 --> 00:04:18.480 for typos. They're looking for fundamental flaws 00:04:18.480 --> 00:04:21.100 in the data. Like, did the author misinterpret 00:04:21.100 --> 00:04:24.060 a historical archive? Or is their methodology 00:04:24.060 --> 00:04:27.519 biased somehow? Exactly. Are they ignoring a 00:04:27.519 --> 00:04:30.439 crucial demographic variable in their sociological 00:04:30.439 --> 00:04:33.480 study? The reviewers submit these aggressive 00:04:33.480 --> 00:04:36.480 critiques, and the author then has to painstakingly 00:04:36.480 --> 00:04:39.019 defend their work, revise their data, and patch 00:04:39.019 --> 00:04:41.600 the holes. And I imagine that is not a fast process. 00:04:41.800 --> 00:04:44.620 Oh, this back and forth can take months, sometimes 00:04:44.620 --> 00:04:47.300 over a year. Wow. So when you see that social 00:04:47.300 --> 00:04:50.980 dynamics has been peer reviewed since 1975, you're 00:04:50.980 --> 00:04:53.300 really looking at an archive of knowledge where 00:04:53.300 --> 00:04:57.060 every single printed claim has survived a grueling 00:04:57.060 --> 00:04:59.459 intellectual gauntlet. A very grueling gauntlet, 00:04:59.540 --> 00:05:01.600 yes. It's basically a fortified wall of tested 00:05:01.600 --> 00:05:04.399 claims. But I mean, maintaining that kind of 00:05:04.399 --> 00:05:07.019 rigorous machinery for nearly 50 years requires 00:05:07.019 --> 00:05:10.240 serious infrastructure. It takes a village and 00:05:10.240 --> 00:05:12.680 a lot of money. Yeah. You need funding, you need 00:05:12.680 --> 00:05:15.259 distribution, and you need a constant pipeline 00:05:15.259 --> 00:05:17.699 of high -level academic talent. And here's where 00:05:17.699 --> 00:05:19.920 it gets really interesting. If you look at the 00:05:19.920 --> 00:05:22.339 source's data on who actually builds this journal, 00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:26.259 it reveals this massive structural tension. The 00:05:26.259 --> 00:05:28.560 institutional architecture. Right. The journal 00:05:28.560 --> 00:05:31.040 is published by Routledge, but it is done in 00:05:31.040 --> 00:05:33.240 association with the Center for African Studies 00:05:33.240 --> 00:05:35.800 at the University of Cape Town. Yes. And the 00:05:35.800 --> 00:05:37.839 editors -in -chief, that's Christopher Uma, Lauren 00:05:37.839 --> 00:05:41.120 Parramore, and Bernard Doubled, they are entirely 00:05:41.120 --> 00:05:44.040 based at South African institutions, specifically 00:05:44.040 --> 00:05:45.879 the University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch 00:05:45.879 --> 00:05:48.870 University. This is a perfect micro study of 00:05:48.870 --> 00:05:52.589 how modern academic power operates. How so? Well, 00:05:53.110 --> 00:05:55.529 you are looking at a highly strategic marriage 00:05:55.529 --> 00:05:58.529 between a global heavyweight and deep localized 00:05:58.529 --> 00:06:02.230 expertise. Routledge is a titan in the publishing 00:06:02.230 --> 00:06:05.550 world. Wait, so Routledge has the global servers, 00:06:05.829 --> 00:06:08.149 right? Right. The massive digital distribution 00:06:08.149 --> 00:06:10.410 networks. Yeah. The institutional subscriptions 00:06:10.410 --> 00:06:13.370 that get a journal into the libraries of Harvard, 00:06:13.509 --> 00:06:16.660 Oxford, Tokyo. Oh, that. But if they tried to 00:06:16.660 --> 00:06:19.019 run an African Studies journal out of a corporate 00:06:19.019 --> 00:06:22.740 office in, say, London, they would be completely 00:06:22.740 --> 00:06:24.620 disconnected from the actual continent. They'd 00:06:24.620 --> 00:06:27.360 be flying blind. So they're essentially borrowing 00:06:27.360 --> 00:06:30.560 the local credibility and the network of Cape 00:06:30.560 --> 00:06:33.160 Town and Stellenbosch. Well, I'd say they aren't 00:06:33.160 --> 00:06:35.480 just borrowing credibility. They're securing 00:06:35.480 --> 00:06:38.139 the raw supply chain of knowledge. Oh, that's 00:06:38.139 --> 00:06:40.199 a great way to put it. Think about the logistics 00:06:40.199 --> 00:06:43.160 of this partnership. A global publisher cannot 00:06:43.160 --> 00:06:46.819 effectively spot emerging trends in African social 00:06:46.819 --> 00:06:50.060 dynamics from an office park in the UK. No, of 00:06:50.060 --> 00:06:52.759 course not. But those editors in South Africa. 00:06:53.160 --> 00:06:55.579 They are walking the campus at the University 00:06:55.579 --> 00:06:58.540 of Kictown every day. They are living it. Yes. 00:06:59.019 --> 00:07:01.660 They are advising the grad students who are doing 00:07:01.660 --> 00:07:03.899 the fresh field work. They are attending the 00:07:03.899 --> 00:07:06.459 local symposiums. Right, right. By anchoring 00:07:06.459 --> 00:07:09.399 the editorial control in South Africa, Routledge 00:07:09.399 --> 00:07:12.100 ensures that the intellectual curation is embedded 00:07:12.100 --> 00:07:14.379 in the environment it is actually studying. That 00:07:14.379 --> 00:07:16.779 makes total sense. The journal isn't just talking 00:07:16.779 --> 00:07:20.040 about Africa from afar. The vetting and the theorizing 00:07:20.040 --> 00:07:22.399 are being driven by scholars who are on the ground. 00:07:22.569 --> 00:07:25.750 So the local universities act as the filter and 00:07:25.750 --> 00:07:29.129 really the generator for the raw research. And 00:07:29.129 --> 00:07:33.029 then Routledge acts as the giant megaphone pumping 00:07:33.029 --> 00:07:35.189 it out to the rest of the world. That is the 00:07:35.189 --> 00:07:37.089 architecture of academic influence right there. 00:07:37.209 --> 00:07:39.850 It's a machine. It is. But that local global 00:07:39.850 --> 00:07:41.949 machine doesn't operate at the speed you might 00:07:41.949 --> 00:07:44.589 expect. Right. Which brings us to the actual 00:07:44.589 --> 00:07:47.819 output. The rhythm of this thing. Yes. Let's 00:07:47.819 --> 00:07:50.240 talk about the output. The source tells us that 00:07:50.240 --> 00:07:53.100 social dynamics is tri -annual. Meaning three 00:07:53.100 --> 00:07:55.560 issues a year. Hold on. Three issues a year. 00:07:55.800 --> 00:07:58.810 So what does this all mean? I mean, if you think 00:07:58.810 --> 00:08:00.930 about the median environment you and I live in 00:08:00.930 --> 00:08:03.250 where we get push notifications every 30 seconds 00:08:03.250 --> 00:08:06.490 and an entire news cycle turns over in four hours. 00:08:06.610 --> 00:08:10.290 It's exhausting. It is. So triennial sounds completely 00:08:10.290 --> 00:08:12.610 glacial. Aren't they just rendering themselves 00:08:12.610 --> 00:08:15.970 obsolete by moving that slowly? It feels entirely 00:08:15.970 --> 00:08:18.310 counterintuitive to a modern digital consumer, 00:08:18.310 --> 00:08:20.870 I agree. But you have to separate the speed of 00:08:20.870 --> 00:08:23.310 commentary from the speed of empirical research. 00:08:23.529 --> 00:08:25.329 Because you can't rush the gauntlet we just talked 00:08:25.329 --> 00:08:27.759 about. Exactly. And you can't rush the field 00:08:27.759 --> 00:08:30.660 work either. Right. If, say, an anthropologist 00:08:30.660 --> 00:08:32.840 is writing an article for this journal about 00:08:32.840 --> 00:08:35.779 shifting labor dynamics in a specific South African 00:08:35.779 --> 00:08:38.720 mining community, they have to spend months actually 00:08:38.720 --> 00:08:40.700 observing that community. You can't just write 00:08:40.700 --> 00:08:43.080 a hot take on Twitter. No. Then they write the 00:08:43.080 --> 00:08:45.159 paper. Then it goes through that double -blind 00:08:45.159 --> 00:08:47.600 peer review, then the revisions, then the formatting. 00:08:48.120 --> 00:08:50.559 Right. A tri -annual schedule is actually a physical 00:08:50.559 --> 00:08:53.700 boundary. It is the journal enforcing a speed 00:08:53.700 --> 00:08:56.179 limit to ensure that they are prioritizing depth 00:08:56.179 --> 00:08:59.519 and verification over speed. OK, so they are 00:08:59.519 --> 00:09:01.659 playing a fundamentally different, much slower 00:09:01.659 --> 00:09:03.879 game than the internet. Very different. But even 00:09:03.879 --> 00:09:06.879 in that slow game, they still keep score. Oh, 00:09:07.259 --> 00:09:09.259 academics definitely keep score. Yeah, they do. 00:09:09.549 --> 00:09:12.929 The source gives us a very specific metric. According 00:09:12.929 --> 00:09:16.389 to the 2021 Journal Citation Reports by Clarivate, 00:09:16.669 --> 00:09:20.889 social dynamics holds an impact factor of .483. 00:09:21.230 --> 00:09:24.110 Ah, the impact factor. Yeah. Now, if you are 00:09:24.110 --> 00:09:26.669 a lay person looking at that number, your first 00:09:26.669 --> 00:09:29.450 instinct might be that .483 is a failing grade. 00:09:29.549 --> 00:09:31.490 It does look low. Right, it's less than one. 00:09:31.690 --> 00:09:34.190 What does that math actually represent? Well, 00:09:34.190 --> 00:09:36.730 if we connect this to the bigger picture, the 00:09:36.730 --> 00:09:39.980 impact factor is the primary currency of the 00:09:39.980 --> 00:09:43.539 academic realm. It isn't a grade on a test. It's 00:09:43.539 --> 00:09:47.159 a very specific mathematical ratio that measures 00:09:47.159 --> 00:09:51.309 influence. Clarivate, the organization that tracks 00:09:51.309 --> 00:09:54.110 this looks at a two -year window. To get that 00:09:54.110 --> 00:09:57.269 .483, they took the total number of times articles 00:09:57.269 --> 00:09:59.750 published in Social Dynamics were cited by other 00:09:59.750 --> 00:10:02.470 researchers in 2021. So how many times they were 00:10:02.470 --> 00:10:05.370 referenced? Yes. And they divided that by the 00:10:05.370 --> 00:10:08.850 total number of citable items the journal published 00:10:08.850 --> 00:10:10.710 in the previous two years. Oh, I see. So it's 00:10:10.710 --> 00:10:12.909 basically tracking the academic footprint of 00:10:12.909 --> 00:10:15.629 an idea. Exactly. It's calculating how often 00:10:15.629 --> 00:10:18.090 an average article from this specific journal 00:10:18.090 --> 00:10:21.889 gets picked up. up red and then used as a foundational 00:10:21.889 --> 00:10:24.529 building block in someone else's published research. 00:10:24.809 --> 00:10:26.730 That is a great way to describe it. It maps the 00:10:26.730 --> 00:10:29.210 DNA of an idea as it spreads through the academic 00:10:29.210 --> 00:10:32.610 ecosystem. But still, why is the number 0 .483? 00:10:32.750 --> 00:10:35.970 Why not, like, a 10? You have to understand that 00:10:35.970 --> 00:10:39.450 impact factors vary wildly depending on the discipline. 00:10:39.750 --> 00:10:43.009 Really? Oh, absolutely. In clinical medicine 00:10:43.009 --> 00:10:46.289 or, say, molecular biology, where researchers 00:10:46.289 --> 00:10:48.929 are constantly publishing rapid -fire lab results 00:10:48.929 --> 00:10:51.590 and citing dozens of concurrent studies, impact 00:10:51.590 --> 00:10:54.730 factors can be in the 20s, 30s, or even higher. 00:10:54.789 --> 00:10:57.090 Because there's just more traffic. Exactly. But 00:10:57.090 --> 00:10:59.789 in a highly specialized, geographically specific 00:10:59.789 --> 00:11:02.350 social science field like this one, the entire 00:11:02.350 --> 00:11:04.870 pool of researchers is just much smaller. Right. 00:11:05.009 --> 00:11:06.970 And the research takes much longer to produce. 00:11:07.129 --> 00:11:10.629 OK. So a 0 .483 in Africa. studies isn't a sign 00:11:10.629 --> 00:11:13.470 of failure at all. Not at all. It indicates a 00:11:13.470 --> 00:11:16.649 steady specialized pulse. It basically means 00:11:16.649 --> 00:11:19.129 that roughly every other article they publish 00:11:19.129 --> 00:11:21.809 is being actively utilized and cited by another 00:11:21.809 --> 00:11:24.629 scholar in that specific field within a two -year 00:11:24.629 --> 00:11:26.850 window. It proves that the research is foundational. 00:11:26.909 --> 00:11:29.090 Yeah. They aren't trying to reach the widest 00:11:29.090 --> 00:11:31.029 possible audience, they are trying to reach the 00:11:31.029 --> 00:11:33.269 right peers. Right. But if you aren't trying 00:11:33.269 --> 00:11:35.350 to reach a wide audience and you are only publishing 00:11:35.350 --> 00:11:38.440 three times a year, How do those specific peers 00:11:38.440 --> 00:11:41.419 actually find you? That is the million dollar 00:11:41.419 --> 00:11:43.580 question. Right. Because if you are a grad student 00:11:43.580 --> 00:11:46.860 in Toronto or Tokyo doing a thesis on South African 00:11:46.860 --> 00:11:49.779 sociology, how do you even know that a specific 00:11:49.779 --> 00:11:52.559 article in Social Dynamics exists? Well, this 00:11:52.559 --> 00:11:55.059 is where we have to look at the invisible digital 00:11:55.059 --> 00:11:57.440 infrastructure of discoverability. The databases. 00:11:57.600 --> 00:12:00.620 Yes. The source gives us a dense alphabet soup 00:12:00.620 --> 00:12:03.559 list of databases where this journal is abstracted 00:12:03.559 --> 00:12:05.990 and indexed. Let's hear them. Okay, we've got 00:12:05.990 --> 00:12:09.330 EBSCO, Index Islamicus, the Modern Language Association 00:12:09.330 --> 00:12:13.490 or MLA database, ProQuest, Scopus, the Social 00:12:13.490 --> 00:12:17.070 Sciences Citation Index, and CSA. It also mentions 00:12:17.070 --> 00:12:20.230 specific ISSN numbers for print and web. It's 00:12:20.230 --> 00:12:22.870 a long list. It really is. And I think the temptation 00:12:22.870 --> 00:12:26.149 is to view these databases just as big digital 00:12:26.149 --> 00:12:28.639 filing cabinets. like a Dewey decibel system 00:12:28.639 --> 00:12:31.580 for the internet. And that is a dangerous underestimation 00:12:31.580 --> 00:12:34.120 of their power. Why dangerous? Think of these 00:12:34.120 --> 00:12:36.940 databases less like passive filing cabinets and 00:12:36.940 --> 00:12:39.320 more like exclusive digital toll roads. Okay, 00:12:39.379 --> 00:12:42.059 toll roads. I like that. If your journal is not 00:12:42.059 --> 00:12:45.039 vetted and mathematically integrated into EBSCO 00:12:45.039 --> 00:12:49.080 or ProQuest -specific search algorithms, a university 00:12:49.080 --> 00:12:51.799 library search engine simply will not drive traffic 00:12:51.799 --> 00:12:54.779 to your articles. Wow. You are effectively off 00:12:54.779 --> 00:12:57.070 the map for the global academic... community. 00:12:57.389 --> 00:12:59.669 So it's like having a website but not being indexed 00:12:59.669 --> 00:13:01.789 by Google. Yes. You might as well not exist. 00:13:01.990 --> 00:13:04.350 Exactly. And what's really revealing here is 00:13:04.350 --> 00:13:07.110 how the tagging actually works across these different 00:13:07.110 --> 00:13:09.070 toll roads. Look at the variety in that list 00:13:09.070 --> 00:13:11.830 you just read. Yeah, the MLA database, the index 00:13:11.830 --> 00:13:14.990 Islamicists, the social sciences citation index. 00:13:15.190 --> 00:13:17.809 It is a massive cross -section of disciplines. 00:13:18.070 --> 00:13:20.940 Literature, religion, sociology. This raises 00:13:20.940 --> 00:13:23.840 an important question about how knowledge fragments 00:13:23.840 --> 00:13:26.519 and spreads. What do you mean by fragments? Let's 00:13:26.519 --> 00:13:29.480 say one of those editors in Cape Town publishes 00:13:29.480 --> 00:13:33.539 a paper in Social Dynamics titled Post -Apartheid 00:13:33.539 --> 00:13:36.759 Labor Rhetoric in Islamic Communities. OK, hypothetically. 00:13:36.940 --> 00:13:39.559 Right. When that paper hits the databases, it 00:13:39.559 --> 00:13:41.919 gets dismantled and tagged differently by different 00:13:41.919 --> 00:13:43.559 algorithms. Oh, I see where you're going with 00:13:43.559 --> 00:13:46.960 this. The bots for the MLA database. are going 00:13:46.960 --> 00:13:50.139 to scan that paper and tag it for its analysis 00:13:50.139 --> 00:13:53.000 of rhetoric and linguistics. Because it's a language 00:13:53.000 --> 00:13:55.600 database. Right. Yeah. But the bots for the index 00:13:55.600 --> 00:13:58.600 Islamicus are going to tag the exact same paper 00:13:58.600 --> 00:14:01.820 for its demographic data on Islamic communities. 00:14:02.080 --> 00:14:04.600 Right, right. And then the social sciences citation 00:14:04.600 --> 00:14:08.080 index will tag it for its data on labor economics. 00:14:08.259 --> 00:14:11.659 That is wild. So a single article sitting in 00:14:11.659 --> 00:14:14.480 this one journal can be pulled up by a literature 00:14:14.480 --> 00:14:17.259 professor. a theology student and an economist. 00:14:17.480 --> 00:14:20.460 Yes. All entering through entirely different 00:14:20.460 --> 00:14:23.059 digital doorways searching for completely different 00:14:23.059 --> 00:14:25.679 things. Exactly. The fact that social dynamics 00:14:25.679 --> 00:14:28.120 has secured placement in all of these highly 00:14:28.120 --> 00:14:31.259 guarded multidisciplinary databases proves its 00:14:31.259 --> 00:14:33.320 structural importance. It's connected everywhere. 00:14:33.399 --> 00:14:36.159 It is deeply woven into the hidden fabric of 00:14:36.159 --> 00:14:38.440 the digital library. Which ironically brings 00:14:38.440 --> 00:14:41.059 us to the ultimate irony of this entire deep 00:14:41.059 --> 00:14:43.120 dive. Yes, let's bring it back. Let's zoom all 00:14:43.120 --> 00:14:45.559 the way back out to the actual page we've been 00:14:45.559 --> 00:14:48.019 analyzing. The sticky note. The sticky note. 00:14:48.580 --> 00:14:52.080 The text explicitly identifies itself as an African 00:14:52.080 --> 00:14:54.899 Studies journal stub. Right. It notes that the 00:14:54.899 --> 00:14:58.580 page was last edited on April 28th, 2023. And 00:14:58.580 --> 00:15:01.000 at the very bottom, it includes that classic 00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:04.100 almost pleading Wikipedia call to action. You 00:15:04.100 --> 00:15:06.259 know the one. You can help Wikipedia by adding 00:15:06.259 --> 00:15:09.110 missing information. Yes. You can help Wikipedia 00:15:09.110 --> 00:15:11.629 by adding missing information. He's a staggering 00:15:11.629 --> 00:15:14.350 contrast. It really is. On one side of the divide, 00:15:14.509 --> 00:15:17.490 you have social dynamics itself. It is a rigorously 00:15:17.490 --> 00:15:20.110 vetted, double -blind, peer -reviewed journal 00:15:20.110 --> 00:15:22.950 that has been documenting half a century of history. 00:15:22.970 --> 00:15:25.809 Our huge legacy. Curated by premier experts at 00:15:25.809 --> 00:15:28.200 the University of Cape Town. It is mathematically 00:15:28.200 --> 00:15:31.679 scored for its influence. It is intricately woven 00:15:31.679 --> 00:15:34.220 into the algorithms of the most elite academic 00:15:34.220 --> 00:15:37.139 databases on earth. All of that weight. And then, 00:15:37.299 --> 00:15:39.700 on the other side of the divide, its public -facing 00:15:39.700 --> 00:15:42.240 footprint on the most visited, most accessible 00:15:42.240 --> 00:15:44.740 encyclopedia in human history is, well, sticky 00:15:44.740 --> 00:15:47.159 note. A tiny stub. A few lines of text basically 00:15:47.159 --> 00:15:49.750 saying, hey, We know this exists, but we don't 00:15:49.750 --> 00:15:52.490 really know what it does. It perfectly illustrates 00:15:52.490 --> 00:15:55.269 the great fracture in how human knowledge is 00:15:55.269 --> 00:15:59.009 managed today. The fracture? Yes. We have institutional 00:15:59.009 --> 00:16:02.490 academic knowledge, which is deep, heavily verified, 00:16:02.809 --> 00:16:06.000 and incredibly rich. But it is locked. hidden 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:08.919 away. It is locked inside those exclusive toll 00:16:08.919 --> 00:16:12.980 roads like ProQuest and eBisco or it is sitting 00:16:12.980 --> 00:16:16.059 behind Routledge's corporate paywalls. You literally 00:16:16.059 --> 00:16:18.940 have to be enrolled at a major university or 00:16:18.940 --> 00:16:21.960 be willing to pay a really steep fee just to 00:16:21.960 --> 00:16:24.340 read a single article from that 50 -year archive. 00:16:24.539 --> 00:16:26.559 Exactly. And on the other side of that fracture 00:16:26.559 --> 00:16:29.460 you have public open source knowledge like Wikipedia. 00:16:29.600 --> 00:16:32.500 The open square. Right. It is free. It is accessible 00:16:32.500 --> 00:16:35.379 to anyone with a smartphone and it operates entirely 00:16:35.379 --> 00:16:38.059 on the energy of crowdsourcing. Just people volunteering 00:16:38.059 --> 00:16:40.159 their time. The fact that this incredible important 00:16:40.159 --> 00:16:42.679 journal only has a stub tells us that the bridge 00:16:42.679 --> 00:16:44.899 between the locked academic vault and the open 00:16:44.899 --> 00:16:47.480 public square does not build itself. No, it doesn't. 00:16:47.519 --> 00:16:49.919 It relies entirely on volunteer labor. So if 00:16:49.919 --> 00:16:52.320 an independent researcher or a passionate student 00:16:52.320 --> 00:16:55.240 doesn't take the time to read the journal, summarize 00:16:55.240 --> 00:16:57.879 its 50 years of historical impact, and manually 00:16:57.879 --> 00:16:59.879 type that information into Wikipedia for the 00:16:59.879 --> 00:17:02.980 public, the journal just remains a ghost on the 00:17:02.980 --> 00:17:06.440 open web. That call to action, you can help Wikipedia 00:17:06.440 --> 00:17:09.799 by adding missing information, is a stark reminder. 00:17:10.160 --> 00:17:12.740 We like to think that the democratization of 00:17:12.740 --> 00:17:15.099 knowledge is an automatic feature of the internet. 00:17:15.359 --> 00:17:17.559 Like it just happens by magic. Right. But it 00:17:17.559 --> 00:17:20.500 isn't. It requires active, deliberate translation 00:17:20.500 --> 00:17:23.200 by everyday people. Wow. The knowledge is sitting 00:17:23.200 --> 00:17:25.240 right there in the vault, but the public map 00:17:25.240 --> 00:17:27.859 to find it is still mostly blank. So what does 00:17:27.859 --> 00:17:30.480 this all mean for you, the listener? We started 00:17:30.480 --> 00:17:33.200 today with a tiny overlooked list of journal 00:17:33.200 --> 00:17:35.700 metadata, just a few bullet points. Very brief. 00:17:35.859 --> 00:17:38.259 But by unpacking it, we've essentially taken 00:17:38.259 --> 00:17:40.400 a guided tour through the hidden plumbing of 00:17:40.400 --> 00:17:43.119 human knowledge. Yes, we have. You've seen how 00:17:43.119 --> 00:17:47.130 a single academic claim has to survive. a grueling 00:17:47.130 --> 00:17:49.730 gauntlet of anonymous peers. The crash test. 00:17:50.049 --> 00:17:52.950 Right. You've seen how a global publisher has 00:17:52.950 --> 00:17:55.690 to borrow the on -the -ground expertise of South 00:17:55.690 --> 00:17:58.190 African universities just to stay relevant. The 00:17:58.190 --> 00:18:00.509 local connection. You've seen how influence is 00:18:00.509 --> 00:18:03.009 mathematically calculated over years, not days, 00:18:03.589 --> 00:18:06.809 and how complex tagging algorithms slice up a 00:18:06.809 --> 00:18:09.369 single idea and route it to different disciplines 00:18:09.369 --> 00:18:11.740 across the globe. And honestly, once you see 00:18:11.740 --> 00:18:14.839 the blueprints of that hidden factory, it completely 00:18:14.839 --> 00:18:17.240 changes how you evaluate the information you 00:18:17.240 --> 00:18:19.940 consume. It really does. You realize that every 00:18:19.940 --> 00:18:23.519 genuinely verified fact has a massive labor -intensive 00:18:23.519 --> 00:18:26.519 lineage behind it. It absolutely does. Before 00:18:26.519 --> 00:18:28.779 we let you go, we want to leave you with a final 00:18:28.779 --> 00:18:31.119 thought to mull over. Something to think about. 00:18:31.200 --> 00:18:33.359 Yeah. The next time you are searching the web 00:18:33.359 --> 00:18:35.599 and you feel that frictionless magic of an answer 00:18:35.599 --> 00:18:38.000 just popping up on your screen. Think about this. 00:18:38.279 --> 00:18:41.019 If a scholarly journal that has been rigorously 00:18:41.019 --> 00:18:43.359 documenting the intricate social, political, 00:18:43.599 --> 00:18:46.259 and cultural shifts of Africa continuously since 00:18:46.259 --> 00:18:49.740 1975 only warrants a few bare bones sentences 00:18:49.740 --> 00:18:52.700 on the world's largest encyclopedia. What other 00:18:52.700 --> 00:18:55.200 massive, rich reservoirs of human knowledge are 00:18:55.200 --> 00:18:57.480 sitting out there right now, locked behind pay 00:18:57.480 --> 00:19:00.319 walls or buried in algorithms, quietly waiting 00:19:00.319 --> 00:19:02.160 for someone like you to discover them and bring 00:19:02.160 --> 00:19:02.900 them into the light?