Gooooooooood morning, afternoon, or evening, wherever you happen to be!
At the moment, I’m in the process of clearing things off my desk. I have a BFB to write, after all (that’s a ‘Big Effing Book’). My writing time is scarce and precious right now, and I have to guard it fiercely, especially because there are so many things trying to take it away from me!
One of those things popped up in my inbox this week: a request to review an article for a journal.
As all academics know, reviewing other people’s work (for free) is part of the job. Being asked to review someone else’s work is a reflection of your own expertise within the field, and it can also be a great way of seeing cutting-edge work before it gets published (if it gets published). And the entire system of peer review depends on people being willing to do that work.
But it’s also something that takes a lot of time.
You’ve got to read the piece, perhaps marking it up as you go. Then you have to figure out whether or not it’s something that can be published, and/or what it would take to get it into publishable shape. And then you have to write a constructive, clear reader’s report.
And, again, it’s almost always unpaid. As someone who is precariously employed, I really can’t stress that enough.
The thing is, academics are exhausted right now. We’re overloaded with work. And for academics in the arts and humanities, things are particularly bleak—restructuring is killing departments and cutting jobs left and right. So it’s even harder than it usually is to convince academics to commit to reviewing one another’s work.
Even though I’m precariously employed, I’m in a much better position than a lot of other academics. This is one of many reasons why I try to do at least a bit of peer review on a regular basis. The thing is, though, I happened to receive this particular invitation a day after I had sent off not one, but two reader reports, thrilled to have gotten two things off my already crowded desk.
My gut was telling me, You reeeeeeally don’t have time to do this right now. You’ve got some major deadlines looming. This is time to say no.
But some other part of me was saying, …But maybe you should do it anyway?
It wasn’t until I asked a colleague for advice that I realized what that other voice was: it was GUILT.
Guilt at the thought of disappointing someone.
Guilt at the thought of not doing something I felt I was really expected to do.
In fact, it was guilt at the thought of being selfish, which is what I advised you all to think about doing from time to time in your professional lives just last week!!
Funnily enough, once I figured out what that other voice was, it made it easier to do what my gut had been telling me I had to do, which was to say no. I followed my own advice when I did: I was polite, and I suggested a couple of other, more permanently employed colleagues who might be able to do the job.
Sometimes it’s worth listening to your guilt. But if you’re going to do that, you should at least know that’s who you’re listening to.
And to figure that out, sometimes the best thing to do is to ask yourself, Who am I listening to right now? Which part of me is telling me what to do? It may not always be entirely clear, but sometimes just taking the time to ask yourself the question can help you understand where your various responses are coming from.
So next time you’re facing a decision like the one I faced this week, try asking yourself: Am I listening to my gut, or my guilt?
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VB,
M
Ack task. terrible mistyping and apologies for missing the obvious error
What happens when more &more people decline to peer review? It means that often a te Jew is done by someone less expert or overworked efitors have to troll hopelessly through their Roladex (remember those?🤣) I contacted an editor when I hadn’t head back in 6 months. She had been turned down by a number of possible readers, lost heart, put my article on the do later pile and had stopped trying until I emailed. Then she really hit the bricks and got reviewers quite quickly. But they could have just said this article isn’t for us sorry. (Instead they fast tracked it and published it really quickly. I get the need to occasionally decline but overall I worry that this is the area of academic work that is easiest to say “no” but at what cost to peer-review being the gold standard?