An Inquiry Into The McDonaldization Of Academic Journals In Chinese Mainland

For the features of McDonald's management, well-known American contemporary sociologist George summarized as high efficiency, calculability, predictability and controllability. Since George Ritzer's summary of these features, people have suddenly realized that these features have actually shown in every fields in the global economy. Therefore, people began to analyze the influences that McDonaldization had caused to their fields from their point of view one after another. However, there hasn't been any study on the influence of McDonaldization towards academic journals so far, nor any associated discussion about the deep underlying causes behind the McDonaldization. This essay means to find out the underlying reasons by analyzing the influences to academic journals caused by McDonaldization, and to put forward some personal thoughts on how the academic journals can get rid of the negative impact of McDonalization. The McDonaldization of academic journals has been gradually revealed since the 1990s, with coexistence of both positive and negative effects. The development of network technology accelerates the process of McDonaldization. The essay more and more seek for the efficiency from rudiment to final product. The process from contribution to publish is more and more programmed. The essay pursuits profit all along from publish to be inquiried. The time is more and more short from the essay to be published to be forgotten. Academic journals become more and more homogenization. The measure of judgment on the basis of quantitative standards is prevail. Those negative impact affect healthy development of academic journals. The reasons for this phenomenon are many, shortcoming of the planned economy system; the guidance of the existing system of academic evaluation; all the people flippancy, the inevitable result of cultural industrialization, a product of the digital age to read. This essay try to reduce the "McDonald's" of the effects of academic journals research from the external environment, internal reform, study foreign experience.