Misc

When academics leave academia, the reasons mirror most career transitions: the misalignment between personal values and organizational culture becomes too great. But academia has a particular way of manifesting this misalignment. It promises freedom and autonomy, the ability to pursue questions that matter to you, while simultaneously creating conditions where that freedom feels increasingly illusory. I'm not talking about workload modelling or administrative creep, though those matter. I'm talking about something more fundamental: academia's unique relationship with control, or rather, the illusion of it. The Predictable and Unpredictable in Academic Life Here's what we can predict in academia: the pressure to publish will continue to exist. The volume of output will continue to grow at a seemingly impossible rate. Quality will remain variable as a result. What we cannot predict, and what many struggle to accept, is nearly everything else. Which journals will accept yo...

I tweeted about a dilemma earlier this week. It's a familiar tale.  In the last few months, I've reviewed 3 papers for the same journal. I am also a co-author of a paper that is under review at the same outlet.   To be completely transparent, our paper has been reviewed as far as I can tell, but it has now spent more time on a desk than with reviewers. A colleague emailed politely asking if the paper would be sent out for review in Feb after it sat for a month with no activity. I emailed again asking for an update on our paper earlier this month. The journal office claims to forward emails on, but we receive zero response from any editor.  What do you do? The problem with not reviewing is that I am not helping authors who deserve to have their paper reviewed in a timely fashion. On a side note, the very same journal also has a habit of giving reviewers a set number of days to complete a review and then cancelling the review before the due date.  And then they wo...

Science has its problems , but many early career researchers (myself included) can often struggle when it comes to knowing how we can improve systems that we still very much have to operate within on a daily basis. That said, I am a firm believer that making research readily available to others is something that we should all work towards where possible. This applies to publications, data, computer code/software and the peer review process. The references below are taken from my own reading, but this list certainly isn't exhaustive. All of these papers pull in the same direction. Specifically, they provide convincing evidence that open access research practices help science as well as the individual researcher.  Early career researchers, who are typically gifted very little time to get ideas off the ground and demonstrate that they have societal importance, will help their own cause by ensuring that work is readily available across multiple disciplines and beyond. Moving ...

Published research often hides the turmoil, excitement, frustration and elation of academic enquiry. The true story behind any research career is only revealed if academics are willing to talk openly about their successes and failures. Instead, the discussion is often limited to the contents of their glowing CV which never lists rejected papers, disastrous experiments or unsuccessful grant applications. Over the last few years, I've scribbled down various quotes from academics who not only publish great research but who are also interesting people: 'Enjoy and get used to saying 'I don't know!' ' ' Never forget how small academia actually is ' ' Relationships are the key to success ' ' Pick your battles. I didn't and I wish I had ' And my personal favourite, courtesy of  James W. Pennebaker ........ ' The way forward can often appear perfectly logical, but it is rarely practical '