Making of the Popular. Few pages

Ryukoku Graduate School of English Language and Literature, 2019

This is a personal account of nearly thirty years as an academic in Japan, covering my time at three different universities – Kanazawa University, Kyoto Women's College, and finally Ryukoku University in Kyoto.

Current Issues in Tourism, 2018

This article introduces the concept of the 'publication regime' into the current discourse on academia. This allows for a much deeper understanding of how publishing conglomerates and appointment and promotion procedures in Western universities are increasingly interlocked. It then turns to the global permutations of that regime as it is currently disseminated to other parts of the world. Using empirical examples drawn primarily from the field of tourism studies, we examine the problems engendered by the introduction of the regime's appointment and promotion procedures of early career academic staff in universities in the emerging world regions. We specify the auxiliary mechanisms intended to ameliorate these problems, and draw attention to the neo-colonial implications of the disciplining process which these mechanisms are introducing into the academic life of the universities in the emerging regions. We argue that, as the Western publication regime is becoming increasingly globalized, local intellectual voices tend to be silenced by the regime's growing hegemony, and, call for the integration of non-Western perspectives into the framework of the publication regime.

Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts, 2009

This chapter draws on the experience of managing creative and academic interests and interrogates expectations of creative arts practice – and practitioners – within the academy. It draws on the experience of producing creative works that have started with research (research-led practice) and works that have started with a creative project but have proved a rich field for theoretical exploration (practice-led research). Central to this analysis is the assumption that higher education is increasingly shaped by our largely uncritical adoption of the culture of audit. In this context, the dimensions of our practice that resist conclusion , that open possibilities and new implications rather than answer research questions, are ultimately at the core of our enterprise and this is what makes creative practitioners and creative production distinctive.

Annals of Journalism and Mass Communication

Going public with publication, surmounting the difficulties and pressures of quantity and quality to fiercely vie for raises, more academic visibility and fame as well as promotions is mostly what drives researchers all over the world particularly university professors. Regardless of the increasing power these forces exercise to publish, few academics actually do. Accordingly, the aim of the present study is to get to the type of sources that push and the hurdles that deter Moroccan research-active academics to yield or to fight back and publish in internationally indexed journals, the way they deal with publish or perish factors, such as stress, burnout, and satisfaction, and the perceived conflict between the teaching profession and research. Though this emerging publish-or-perish culture has ravaged the academic world and classified universities on a scale from the best to the weakest, in Morocco this culture is still not bothering people in charge of higher education especially that the best Moroccan university,

Learning Media Technology, 2019

This paper explores relationships between knowledge production and academic publication and shows that the current political economy of mainstream academic publishing has resulted from a complex interplay between large academic publishers, academics, and hacker-activists. The process of publishing is a form of ‘social production’ that takes place across the economy, politics and culture, all of which are in turn accommodating both old and new technology in our postdigital age. Technologies such as software cannot be separated from human labour, academic centres cannot be looked at in isolation from their margins, and the necessity of transdisciplinary approaches does not imply the disappearance of traditional disciplines. In the postdigital age, the concept of the margins has not disappeared, but it has become somewhat marginal in its own right. We need to develop a new language of describing what we mean by ‘marginal voices’ in the social relations between knowledge production and academic publication. Universities require new strategies for cohabitation of, and collaboration between, various socio-technological actors, and new postdigital politics and practice of knowledge production and academic publishing.

Publishing Research Quarterly, 2007

The match between contemporary book publishing and academia would appear at first glance to be the most natural of alliances. No other subgroup of the general population is as likely to deal with publishers in the capacity of author, contributor or reviewer, and no other profession would appear as predisposed to bibliophily as the humanities academic. In the twenty-first-century research-intensive university, publishing quantum is the indisputable currency of hiring, promotion and grant decision-making, with books enshrined as the highest accredited research output for humanities scholars. Yet, until recent years, publishing has constituted the academy's medium for research dissemination rather than its explicit subject, 1 Over the last fifteen years or so, publishing courses have begun to multiply internationally in the post-secondary education sector, appearing first in the guise of vocationally-oriented certificate and diploma courses in institutes of further education, and only more recently (and tentatively) infiltrating the postgraduate coursework and doctoral programmes of internationally recognised research universities. 2 The research quantum imperatives of such institutions have combined with the pre-eminence of theory in the humanities over the last decades to exert pressure upon publishing studies. The field is currently experiencing a sense of urgency arising from both scholars and their institutions to reconfigure itself as a critical--rather than merely a descriptive or vocational--field) As so recent an entrant to academic environments on any terms, contemporary publishing studies may justifiably find this new demand that it generate a coherent theoretical paradigm and research methodology forthwith somewhat confronting.

The XXII Sukhalata Rao Memorial Lecture School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University, 2023

I do not pretend to be a scholar of the person whose name has become an annual feature of the School's commemora�ons-however, I will relate much of this talk, to the ques�ons that con�nue to haunt us-ques�ons from her life, her prac�ce and legacy., as they do for many underrepresented persons whose way of being was representa�on. As a woman, simultaneously benefi�ng from and bridled by benevolent patriarchy, her story today is a reminder of the privileges and unprivilege at the intersec�ons of colonialism, patriarchy, caste and class, and the legacies of these systems of oppression, that we con�nue to be enmeshed in, to this day. Slide 2 In this presenta�on, I draw from images that I took while in Kolkata and San�niketan in early 2020, before Covid struck, when I was hosted by Dr Dhawan and the School of Women's Studies as Visi�ng Professor. Some of you may recognise the images of protest in and around the campus at the �me, enactments of the freedom of expression against the imposi�on of laws which would have adversely impacted ci�zenship in India. Other ques�ons were raised then too on your walls; those which I found compelling and enriched my own understanding of the ethos and thinking of the �mes within the campus. For this talk, I'd like to highlight freedom of expression (which is a human right not limited to academia, but is also one of aspect of our academic freedoms to protect) and ci�zenship. In this case it was the poli�cs (big P) of who and who is not counted as ci�zen or a na�on; there is of course also poli�cs in terms of the poli�cs of par�cipa�on, belonging, inclusion of academic ci�zenship, who and what is ideal, and the rights, du�es, freedom and posi�oning not extended to all. Slide 3 Most of the images I will show today, including the one on the �tle page, are those I took when visi�ng the town of San�niketan with fellow scholar of higher educa�on, Madhuparna Karmakar. As with this work, they are photographs of the detritus in and around the art school of that university-artworks, some finished, some incomplete or discarded, some in process, made over �me by ar�st-students. I am myself an ar�st, though most of my form these days is through words not pain�ngs or prints; I studied pain�ng then contemporary art, and eventually taught fine art prac�ce at university in my country of South Africa. Since moving into the field of Higher Educa�on Studies, I also have studied how formal art educa�on at university level-such as that experienced by these makers-has such an important role in the forma�on of future ar�sts; but as with all university educa�on, that role comes with problema�cs in terms of sociocultural forma�on: that selec�on of who gets in involves both inclusion and exclusion; that par�cipa�on

In the sciences, digital modes of publication are already regarded as equivalent (if not superior) to their printed analogues, whereas in the humanities, hard-copies still count as the silver bullet to aggrandise symbolic capital in the sense of Bourdieu. While the scientist community seems to have overcome the general scepticism towards the digital realm, humanist academics especially in Germany appear more reluctant to fully embrace the new technologies. Apart from just ‘publishing’ texts in a strict sense, social media, blogs and platforms also hold a lot of catalyst potential especially regarding reflective communication, which is barely made use of due to the stigma of poor quality. The printed book, on the other hand, remains among the indispensable criteria to gain a tenured position. “Researching” and “writing (documenting the results)“ appear as separate stages in the sciences, but are closely interlocked in the humanities – so the geneses of texts may indeed differ to a degree rendering those processes incomparable. But even though it may sound like comparing apples and oranges, it reveals the crux of the matter: The practices of the disciplines have grown historically. We wish to emphasize that some elements of today’s scholarly practice are not so much the best possible solution to meet the needs of academic discourse, but rather atavisms, once established as compromises between what was needed and what was technically possible. Thus, they need to be carefully reassessed in order to eliminate inhibitions, p. e. those rooting in the specific limitations inherent to the printed book as a static, unidirectional medium. Quite possibly, a closer look at the situation in Germany might reveal the authority of the printed book as overrated and in fact hindering rather than advancing knowledge and scholarly discourse.

Learning, Media and Technology, 2019

This paper explores relationships between knowledge production and academic publication and shows that the current political economy of mainstream academic publishing has resulted from a complex interplay between large academic publishers, academics, and hacker-activists. The process of publishing is a form of ‘social production’ that takes place across the economy, politics and culture, all of which are in turn accommodating both old and new technology in our postdigital age. Technologies such as software cannot be separated from human labour, academic centres cannot be looked at in isolation from their margins, and the necessity of transdisciplinary approaches does not imply the disappearance of traditional disciplines. In the postdigital age, the concept of the margins has not disappeared, but it has become somewhat marginal in its own right. We need to develop a new language of describing what we mean by ‘marginal voices’ in the social relations between knowledge production and academic publication. Universities require new strategies for cohabitation of, and collaboration between, various socio-technological actors, and new postdigital politics and practice of knowledge production and academic publishing.

LOGOS: Journal of the World Book Community, 2007

We have all heard the phrase 'publish or perish' but what does perishing actually look like? Are you publishing and still perishing? In this article, Vossen probes into the complexity of academic publishing from her perspective as both a poor PhD student and the editor-in-chief of Game Studies publication First Person Scholar. Vossen argues that academic publishing (examining both journal articles and academic manuscripts) exploits the labour of grad students and contract workers by encouraging them to publish their work without compensation in the hopes of attaining tenure-track employment in the future. This 'work for exposure' method is dependent on the optimism of young scholars, the majority of whom will not attain tenure-track positions. Vossen focuses specifically on how academic journal articles function as both currency and commodity, devaluing alternative forms of research sharing (such as the work published in First Person Scholar) which is seen as 'academic waste' that doesn't 'count'. Academic journal articles are intrinsically linked to an academics 'worth' both culturally and financially and therefore, many untenured academics feel they can't take the financial risk of publishing outside of traditional venues for fear of furthering their descent into debt and poverty. Vossen and the staff of First Person Scholar have attempted to remedy the system in their field of Game Studies by both paying academics for their writing and firmly rejecting opportunities to become an academic journal to instead be considered a 'middle state publication'. Lastly, Vossen discusses opting out of the publish or perish game as a grad student and what you lose when you decide not to play.

Article publication in the field of sociology has proliferated. Data are presented on change in the number of sociology journals over time, the patterns of publication productivity by faculty in differently ranked sociology programs, and the patterns of article output by faculty of different age cohorts located in top-, middle-, and bottom-ranked sociology departments in the United States. Data are inconsistent with findings from the sociology of science, which elaborate a pattern of generally low productivity, and which describe sharp differences in publication by the age and organizational location in which academics work. The reasons for proliferation, attributable to historic shifts that have affected the terms of academic work in the late 20th century, are discussed. Proliferation of publication is not unique to sociology, but neither are its effects on fields monolithic. Comparisons and contrasts to other fields are made throughout the discussion. The proliferation of publication poses significant implications for the status of sociology and sociologists. While increased output may be associated with the advancement of science and scholarship in some disciplines, it is both a consequence and cause of demise in others.