Ah, the social media

I spend some time on LinkedIn after Twitter turned chaotic evil. Usually the vibe is the “super positively enthusiastic” type. Amazing unicorns everywhere. But, some people complain! And they complain about academia. Specifically after careful and systematic review I identified three types of complaints.

These evil publishers

This is just a classic and revolves around three pieces of information.

Did you know that… 1) We (academics) get research paid by public money and then… 2) We do free editorial and review work for private publishing companies… 3) who then ask us to pay to get access to our own work - and make a ton of money in the process?

(Bonus: we also give them all the publishing rights)

Ok, now that you know this inconvenient truth please start your own open access journal, retract all your Elsevier/Springer/Wiley papers, and join an international union of researchers fighting for better publishing conditions globally.

Peer review is broken

Second theme is variations of these headlines:

  • No paper results can be reproduced! CRISIS!
  • Reviewers asked me to include citations to their work! MAJOR ETHICAL BREACH!
  • There are no reviewers around! SYSTEMIC COLLAPSE!

(bonus, just recently: AI is doing the reviews!…AI is even writing the papers!…Wait, AI is BOTH writing and revieweing the papers?!? There is no real knowledge being generated in this world anymore, universitis are doomed, TOTAL SYSTEMIC COLLAPSE!)

Yes paper production has exploded in the last 10-15 years. Yes objectively, the system is probably under pressure. Again, it’s all volunteeer work for the evil publishers (previous point). Yes AI is there too… Now please accept all nine review invitations you received in the last three days. And start writing less and better quality papers - thank you. Use ink and pen to be sure you keep AI out of this.

I am out of academia

Something roughly along the lines of: I so much love science it was my childhood dream to do research but when I finally got a univ. job I was suffering so much the environment was toxic I was working so hard my proposals were rejected and my contracts were temporary…now I am in the PRIVATE SECTOR everything is sooo good I got gorgeous colleagues, company car with free gas, I do almost nothing and take long vacations and familiy time I make REAL IMPACT and feel fully realized in life almsot close to nirvana but most important I earn so much more money you are all a bunch of losers.

Ok. But if it’s sooo good on the other side why are you still complaining? Live your new life happily or find a good therapist.

A good one: “papers are overrated”

In the comments sections of one of these complaining rants I found a little pearl: papers are overrated.

Wait. Yes, they are. Scientific articles are the main currecy of academia. It’s our product. I wrote a paper. I got my paper cited. I got it rejected. How many papers you got? We collaborate and then write a paper. I’ll need so many papers to get this grant/position/prize.

People talk about papers all the time. But outside academia this currency has much less value (zero value?). So there is an insane focus on writing and publishing papers that is…kind of misplaced? There are many other ways nowadays to make impact with research, that are not writing papers. There are many other important skills to gain in research that are not writing papers.

Papers are overrated. This one really made me think. I should probably make a LinkedIn post about it.