For a Better Academic Year

With only a few post published on a blog and only a limited academic activity, 2017 was not my best in terms of academic achievements and professional advancement. For reasons completely independent of my will, of very personal reasons - but luckily, not mine - most of my academic readings had to do with issues dealing with mental health and mental instability of persons that did not benefit the proper medical support when they needed to, developing into toxic unstable adults. An interesting investigation after all, but not my area of study and not something I am very keen to further explore.

However, once I settled down - at least on my side - my own version of the story, it is about time to set up my visual board and aim high for a reboost of my academic career. I am fully aware that things will not jump out of nowhere from 0 to 100, but at least, settling down in an academic mood, sounds like what I have to expect for my next 12 months. And work hard towards achieving it. 

In this new arrangement, the blog - and the Twitter account which is slowly slowly growing up (like 1 follower the year...maybe) is playing a very clear role, as a dairy which will help me keep the track of my records, but also encourage me to move forward with my efforts towards a better academic visibility and planning. The plan is to post at least twice the week, with a clear focus on books and various academic challenges specific to people with the highest academic training - as I do, with a PhD in history, a book written and couple of academic articles - but without the clear thought of actually being part of the academic establishment - at least for now. Maybe it is about time to make a change in this respect and hopefully 2018 will be the year when I will sort out my serious plans and maybe some teaching perspectives too. 

Here it is for now! Hopefully, things will get much better and I will be able to keep up with a modest schedule and academic planning!

Wish all my academic readers a happy healthy and successful 2018!

Pro and cons of academic blogging

In 2016, there are problably few and few academics wondering what blogging is and why we, as educated people, we should use this medium to share our ideas to the world. Many of my academic friends already experienced at least once the bloggosphere, either as guest writers or as owners of their blog.

However, there are still a lot of misunderstandings and confusions regarding the advantages of blogging for academics and I am here to share some of them.

Let's start with the cons:

- Not every kind of scientifical domain can be easily blogged about. For instance, as a mathematician discovering new formulas, writing a blog post about this, will most probably not reach more than the usual people that are already familiar with your very niche activities. So, why to waste time setting up a couple of sentences about?

- Talking about time...one of the big arguments against blogging among academics is the waste of time. In a highly competitive academic world, where publish or die is still the motto, you better use every dime of time for forwarding your research, apply for academic conferences. If you also have a family, you practically do not have any extra time for scribbling.

- The blog post does not equal the academic article and will not (yet) be considered a reference for applying for a serious permanent academic position.

- It increases the risk of being caught in various commercial traps, especially when various companies or institutions are keen to offer sponsorship and thus, diminish the credibility and independence of the academic individual and research.

- It has the temptation of easy journalism, and may affect the hard polished academic skills which includes precaution and long preparation of the texts as well as cross-referencing.

The advantages are equally noteworthy:

- It offers visibility to ideas developed by academics, by offering a medium to share and discuss. This is particularly available for academics in the field of human sciences and politics. 

- It makes academic work transparent and relevant to the public and take back the intellectuals in the agora as parts of the public discussions. 

- It help spreading knowledge in parts of the world without a proper educational network. Wherever they are, people can read and get in touch with new ideas.

- Outside the rigid institutional settings, academics are free to express opinions not only about their daily work but on issues of public interest.

- It offers academics important opportunities to collaborate and share ideas. It also offers the chance to find people sharing common interests and researching similar topics, wherever they are. 

Probably there are many more things to outline about academic blogging and I will keep writing about this in next posts. As for me, I will always keep telling how grateful I am for being alive these times, with tremendous learning opportunities, many of them for free. 

Being an academic while working

Here we are again! No, I didn't mean at the beginning of the year, as I usually don't count my life from a January to another. It means that the beginning of the new working season brings a lot of challenges for my already fragile academic life. 

Since I left high-school and started the university, I cope over and over again with the same problem: the balance between my long hours of work and the need to catch up with my academic interests. Even though I followed the à la carte academic menu, I didn't give up my freedom for a full time career in the academia, as what interests me the most now and in the future is to write, not to teach. I may consider this option soon as well, but for the moment, the need to do proper research and finish a couple of very interesting projects started a couple of months and even years ago is my main priority.

My morning enthusiasm to have everything done in due time was significantly diminished when shortly after I finish my first coffee I realized that I also need to do some non-academic chores, for being able to pay my freedom of writing and doing research. 

As I didn't reach yet the impressive level of being able to self-sustain my daily needs only from my books and academic achievements, I still need to keep some projects that eat a lot of time and without a drop of high-thinking in them, but serious enough and financially important to secure 4-5 days the month when I don't need to do anything else but focus on my writing, or allowing me to buy online the books that I cannot read at the library.

It is a schizophrenic reality but not so dramatically demanding for not giving me the hope that I should continue one more year, or maybe two. Today, for instance, I continue the research for my next book, while I stop every 30 minutes to check if new freelance gigs are available on my online platforms. This will continue tomorrow too. But there is always a price for a free life and I am ready to wait a little bit longer till, finally, I can enjoy the luxury of being nothing else but an academic. Meanwhile, I know that it's all for the good and trying to get the best of my experiences.

Happy academic life everyone!

It is worthy any more to publish in academic publications?

Leading academic journals are distorting the academic process. It is not my who's saying it, but Randy Schekman, respectable Noble Prize laureate. 

His main arguments are that the journals - he is referring to those in his domain of activity, biology, but I think that it can go with almost every academic publication - are trying to direct the researches into areas that are considered 'trendy', neglecting domains that may be of interest for the development of science, even though not necessarily for the readers. Another important observation is that the editors are not necessarily active scientists and thus, their opinions are limiting the domain and the quality of research as such. For the sake of the colour, he compared the approaches of the 'trendy' publications with those of 'fashion designers that creates limited hand-bags' (nothing wrong with the limited hand-bags, as long as there are big enough to carry all your scientific booklets in).

When I read the remarks the first and second time, I realize how much I am on his side. Not only because he is a Nobel Prize and he might be right, but because he is saying in his own words what I was always think about the general process of submitting to big, trendy, branded academic publications.

Very careful with my energies and with my time, I did not apply too often in the last 2 years and tried to limit my editorial appearances to those publications - 1 or 2 - that make me feel free with my writing. I do a lot of book reviews lately while trying to keep my ideas for the books that I will definitely self-publish.

Once upon a time, when I was at the beginning of my PhD studies, I applied and even sent articles to some local and regional publications. As expected, I received a lot of rejections and some kind acceptances. When you are a perfect beginner in the academic field, and in addition someone that did not spend too much time in the academia, such a situation is normal. I enthusiastically reviewed my articles and sent them again. Some were accepted, many not. But I don't give up too often and I took the situation for granted and continued my research.

The more I was involved in further research and study, the more I realized that some topics are very trendy for a while - especially when you can receive proper international funding - while some - many of my topics - were not. Some angles were more popular than the others, some references always accepted and highly recommended in order to have a high rate of acceptance. 

Later, as an academic editor, I noticed how PhD coordinators are extremely proud to see themselves mentioned at least 4 times in the papers of their pupils and, of course, not always in a critical way. As for me, I was lucky enough to be left alone with my own references that did not include too much work written by my teacher. 

After a while, I lost too much interest in writing articles, and except my regular notes about academic life and my book reviews - and most recently, this blog that I will do my best to make it growing in the next 12 months - I keep my ideas for books and larger researches that, surprise, I will self-publish. This is another reason to love the 21st century, as it gives me the time and the opportunities to write what I am interested in, without following the editorial lines and reproduce ad nauseam the limitations from the mind of some editors whose main frustrations is that they edited too much without writing their own works or are too specific to see the big picture any more. 

Am I afraid of being judged? Not at all! What the self-publishing always showed me is that if you write quality work and you do a bit of promotion - nothing shameful when you know that you did something worth to change the scientific trends - your work will be appreciated and will find the audience. If you create - was about to write 'produce' - bad quality work, no one will ever buy it. As simple as that!

PS. I promise to be back with more academic writing. Right now, I am doing intensive research for a handbook aimed to help the non-academics to cope with the challenges of being back to school. More posts are ready in my mind and when I will have more time, I will try to be here more often!

Happy writing anyone!