{"id":3753,"date":"2013-12-20T03:25:29","date_gmt":"2013-12-20T03:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/?p=3753"},"modified":"2013-12-20T03:25:33","modified_gmt":"2013-12-20T03:25:33","slug":"the-professionalism-issue-divya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/2013\/12\/20\/the-professionalism-issue-divya\/","title":{"rendered":"The Professionalism Issue – Divya"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Getting It Right & Getting It Out There – Divya Madhavan<\/h2>\n

\"Divya
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I work in Academia. The land whose billboards sometimes carry clever maxims like “publish or perish\u201d or, as I’ve argued elsewhere<\/a> \u201cresearch says…\u201d<\/p>\n

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Publish or perish is a fairly hollow cluster of words. It reduces professional culture to its most mechanical state; ticking the survival box. It emphasises, or rather downsizes, professional growth in terms of hard and fast cut-off points and recognition more through rules and less through ideas. Every game has its rules of course, but it’s the ideas that flourish within these rules that ultimately make us want to remain a part of the play.<\/p>\n

I was recently asked why I wanted to write a thesis, why I didn’t consider publishing articles and then compiling them into a thesis, that way I’d establish a bibliographic train to my graduation gown. What’s intriguing here isn’t so much the different routes to getting a doctorate, but that this suggestion of a publication route was perceived as ‘getting the job done’ (and thus perhaps lowering my odds of perishing?).<\/p>\n

I make these statements about norms and thresholds not because I am an academic who hasn’t published much (ahem\u2026yet \ud83d\ude09 ) I say this because I believe in bringing down barriers to good ideas. Just like I don’t believe that research is only valid if done by a PhD holder, I don’t think publication in this or that journal is what makes an academic great. Surely the standard of greatness doesn\u2019t just belong journal editors. Academics also lecture, mentor, supervise and look after students\u2026and are on a very profound level, teachers.<\/p>\n

My reason for blogging about the publication barrier here is because I see so many people struggle within my practice. From senior colleagues who forcefully wedge themselves into co-authoring spaces to junior colleagues who sweat over writing in languages they haven\u2019t mastered for the sake of this or that journal, publication grade, impact factor, and so on\u2026 I\u2019m not alone in expressing my worry regarding such banes of careerism<\/a>. But what I\u2019d like to do here is share some thoughts on how these rules of the game shape professional identity<\/p>\n

For me there are two ways of collocating ‘professional’ and ‘identity’:<\/p>\n