Dr. Calvin discovers the labor problems in academic publishing.

One of the most frustrating experiences I’ve ever had with a journal appears to be coming to a happy conclusion, and that’s not a bad way to start a Monday.

More suckiness in the world of academic publishing.

Reread some feedback from a journal editor after a couple of days, and while I still disagree with it, it’s at least more reasonable than I remembered it being.

What a gross offer to receive.

I have conflicted feelings about productivity books, but even as I increasingly reject the emphasis on productivity, I do find that there are some gems in these books that are helpful to me as I try to keep my life organized across all of its dimensions. While rereading one of these books over the summer, I came across the following quote (which appears to be a misquotation of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

I keep thinking about the similarity of exploitation of academic labor by publishers to the exploitation of everyone’s labor by AI companies, and stories like this just make it more clear.

Back in December, I wrote a frustrated post about an article I’d submitted to a special issue that was now being repackaged into an edited volume, in which my research would appear as a chapter. At the time, I wrote about how frustrated I was at the lack of control I had over my own research output. I might well have consented to having my work reprinted in this new format, but I was frustrated that my consent was neither sought nor necessary for the process.

Ben has been one of my best students over the past 5.5 years. He was a non-traditional student who flunked out of UK decades ago, went on to be a successful small business owner elsewhere in the country, and then leapt at the chance to come back to UK through an online degree completion program. As part of that program, he took one of the classes I was teaching at the time, which counted toward general education credit.

Another set of proofs, another set of complaints about a copyeditor making changes to my writing in ways that distort my meaning. If I get grumpy about a human doing my writing for me, why would I ever want generative AI to do it?

I bristle a bit at Moody’s suggestion that academics are dumb for signing over copyright—it’s dumb that we have to, but there are systemic issues at play here. Yet, especially now with tenure taken care of, I do wonder if we consent too readily to the system.

Another paper, another fight with copyeditors about not capitalizing danah boyd’s name.

Journal copyeditors are great when they fix things, but when they break my sentences and don’t ask questions about “[information removed for blinding]”, I wonder what the point is.

Journal copyeditor changed a bunch of first-person language in our abstract to third-person “the authors,” and I am peeved.

I have seen some unwieldly proofing software in my short career, but the one they’re having me use for my newest acceptance really takes the cake. I’d rather (re)learn InDesign and fix it there.

I just got paid by a journal after they accepted one of my papers, and as happy as I am about this, it is so far out of my normal academic experience that I feel disoriented.

Exciting news! This still leaves a lot of research behind paywalls, though.

I’m not a big fan of journal metrics, so I hate myself a little for including them in the research statement for my tenure dossier.