all is not well in academic publishing

On Sunday I received an e-mail telling me, and another 15 or so authors, that a book publication we had been associated with since 2011 was no longer going to be published because the collection editors could not reach agreement over how to acknowledge their contribution. The editor from WAC Clearinghouse sent this first e-mail. This email was shortly followed by an 'explanation' email from collection editor 1, who had, in particular been in regular contact with me over the last two years. I responded offering my feelings of disappointment but also noting that given her explanation, I understood the seemingly principled position she had taken. Given my evaluation of the situation presented by these emails, everything smacked of a battle of egos at the expense of the 15 or so authors whose work would no longer see the  light of 'publication' day. Then another e-mail today from collection editor 2 - also to explain her interpretation of the fall-out that had occurred between these two academics, which resulted in the publisher pulling the volume because of the impasse. Then a response from the editor 1 - saying something like 'hope you can find another place to publish your work'. This new information has not seen me shift from my initial feelings that this whole sad, sorry affair was essentially a selfish battle of egos.

I'm completely pissed off. I feel like hitting reply all and SCREAMING at these two idiot editors and imploring them to think less about themselves, and who offended who more, and think more about everyone else so negatively affected by this really ridiculous and disastrous turn of events. This impasse occurred right at the 11th hour - with the publisher trying to negotiate an amicable solution and get the final sign-off.

Unfortunately, its not so simple to re-jig the chapter to make it more suitable for publication in a journal. This piece was written specially for this special volume coming off the back of a conference that happened in 2010. So things are dated and a lot of what I've written here was published in HERD in 2012. So although the argument is fundamentally different, I rely on the same data, and thus I run the risk of self-plagiarism - especially if I want to publish in a journal. For now I'm still blowing off steam. What I do or don't do with this written piece will have to wait until my head is clear.
It's a novice researcher and academic writer's response; to be so pissed off and irritated by such bad behaviour simply because I need the publication so badly. Otherwise I could just brush this whole unfortunate escapade aside and say knowingly 'I could have seen something like this happening. Oh well, who cares!'

time to write

Finding the time to write or working out how to be most productive at my writing tasks has always been a tricky aspect for me. My general sense, gathered from the fellow players I've encountered in the academic writing game, is that the more time and effort devoted to the task the better the result. Specifically the more time devoted to the task in a single day / sitting the better. So you can't have a productive writing day without being dent over your desk or your laptop from 6am to 6pm. It's almost the equivalent of the 'no pain, no gain' mantra used by gym fanatics and the like. That approach never really worked for me and I remember that at the height of my PhD writing only being able to manage, at best, maybe 4-5 hours of sustained and hard intellectual graft on any give day. And now given all the other things competing for my time and draining my energy (especially intellectually) the idea of sitting down for a full five hours on any given day simply to write feels both a luxury and an impossibility. So I'm rather excited and encouraged by the advice offered by Tanya Golash-Boza. Maybe her approach just fits into my yoga-induced philosophy of ahimsa which I've tried to apply to all aspects of my life, with varying degrees of success (as much of my blog writing suggests). But I also appreciate the importance of building in and acknowledging the thinking time so vital to writing. For some all of this mumbo-jumbo might just be a cop-out for laziness or signal a poor work ethic. And this kind of moralistically-infused argument always leads to second-guessing and worse still, self-doubt. But, if I've learnt anything from my four decades on this planet, it's to carve out your own path, to be confident in the choice you've made and also the manner in which you choose to navigate that path.

balance?

Eventually equilibrium comes. At the start of the last week I decided I would write. I resolved to set aside whatever was happening at work and focus on my writing. And just after lunchtime on Monday, I was in my happy place at UCT and I think that set the tone for how I approached the rest of the week. I soon forgot the intensity of the feelings resulting from the events that caused my wobble. The issues -  gender discrimination, feeling undermined, disregarded in my professional space - have not gone away, and neither has my anger about how it insidiously creeps in and infects the 'ways things are done' in my department and institution. If anything I have resolved to consciously keep it on my agenda, to be vigilant and to be challenging. Sometimes people need to know that they have to display an appropriate degree of sensitivity to issues of diversity and discrimination and that not everyone buys in to a Victorian value system. And so it continues and in the continuing, often with the mundane and the everyday, that the humanity returns and in this I found that my validation (the validation and affirmation I seek) can come from many places. Often times there is enough elsewhere (like with  my friends, mentors, at conferences, seminars or research presentations) to go around to support and sustain me as I engage with those less engaging and enabling environments and/ or personalities.