Starting to see light...

You would think that with the fantastic weather and free vino in abundance (well, you do have to socialise to get access to the stuff but once you down a few carafes its not really an issue) I would be hitting the sand every afternoon. To be honest, I have been in nerd mode lately and in the flat making the final amendments to the first article I worked on with D and finishing up the second article I have been working on with him. We were even working on Christmas eve and through new years day to get this second article done as we have to meet deadlines to submit them for conferences.

For those of you who are not in on the mysteries of academia, let me try to clue you in. First you do anything and everything to get data. You become a data whore (When D first mentioned this term I shouted (in shock and awe of course) "You dated a whore??!!" rather loudly in a fairly nice restaurant..he was not pleased..) and you do almost anything and everything to get data to analyse. For the second article, I promised a few people to name my firstborn after them...so in a few years be prepared to read a posting on David-Bruno-Azam-Joseph-KeeHong-Hanson-etc-Cumming. D will understand as he will probably add on a few Germanic names to fulfil promises made for data obtained for first article.

So you now have data. You then come up with general hypotheses and hope to god that the data fits to prove you right. If they don't, you change hypotheses so that you are still right. Although your data will sufficiently address 10 hypotheses, you only list out less than 5 for an article as academics have short attention spans. As it is if an article is not relevant to their work they will not read it..ever. Even if it wins a nobel prize. If it is slightly relevant, they will read the abstract, the introduction and the conclusion. All of 3 pages of the 40 page document you spent 6 months working on. Only if the work is extremely relevant to an academic's work will they bother to read it back to front, even then only to enable them to shoot you down like the dog you are. Especially when what you find contradicts their work. They shoot you in the back while you are down.

I digress. So you have data. You have hypotheses. You then write up paper. When you do this note that you do not have to know everything. Have you ever read an academic paper and had a look at the extremely long Biblio/References? Let me tell you a secret..the author (ie me) has not read all those papers/books/articles. You read a few, yes, but alot of them are included as you hope that those writers will be your referee. You choose a name, preferably someone you have met before, and look through his list of published/unpublished working papers to see if any fits into your area. You add in the cite as nothing makes an academic happier than having his existence confirmed by a cite.

Let me now explain why a referee is the bane of an academic's life when she is just starting out. You see, as I have finished the paper, I now have what is called a working paper. I can now submit this working paper to journals. The journals are ranked in that you have really really good journals where anyone published there is elevated to status of BSD on campus (Big Swinging D*%k). You are a God. No questions asked. If I get a paper in any A journal I can just shake legs for the rest of my life as other academics have to kowtow to me. Unfortunately, only 0.002% of new submissions get accepted. My chances are even slimmer as 1) to get an article in I will be peer reviewed and 2) the level of cronyism in academia is one that surprisingly has gone unnoticed by the presidency of a country that shall remain unnamed...maybe because it is in their favour 3) as the top level journals are that same country centric so if data are not biased in their favour your work will not be considered worthy of their attention. As a new academic, I am not worthy of their favour. Even if I cite all of their work. Especially if I actually have something novel to say. So if the referees don’t like you (and they won’t), they will send you what is called a rejection letter aka FOAD letter (F*&k Off And Die). If you are very very lucky, and they somehow like you enough to actually read your paper and comment, the review process could take 2 years. Some unlucky ones take up to 7 years. By then they would have either realised that academia is not for them, or they would have just killed themselves. Same difference.

So there you have it. I have spent the last year working on 2 papers that may never see the light of day. But all is not lost. An unpublished paper can be presented at conferences. Because academics have to put up with the review process and bad pay, conferences are chosen based on venue, not reputation or even topic. Did I tell you that where you work (Boston versus Zimbabwe) and what you earn is totally dependant on your publication record in top journals? [Books don’t count because we all know that book authors are divided into 2 categories, those who are published and just staple all their articles together…sort of a Best Of Compilation (the better author) and the sad ones who have to write a book to publish their altogether unrecognised working papers]. A top tier conference on your specific area of research in Moscow is a possibility, but a so-so conference sort of related to your area in Honolulu is a must go. Funnily enough, papers that are accepted by journals are not entitled to be submitted for presentation at conferences. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

So now you understand why I worked through the holidays? There are conferences in Ghent Belgium, Milan Italy, Seoul Korea and Georgia. Fingers crossed.