The Academic Pensieve: Between the muggles and the wizards

"Oh, poof. Who cares about academic respect?" [...] "My novels are going to be interesting and are going to sell and be famous. What's the use of writing books unless you sell them and become well-known? I don't want just some old professors to know me. It's got to be everybody."

Arkady Darell in Second Foundation: Stowaway by Isaac Asimov

I have to work quicker. But also to publish. I am falling in this non-sense rush for publishing everything before everyone. It is not a question of having all the data that you want or need to start analysing or developing your ideas, it is also an issue of publishing at the right moment, publish ideas, publish findings, publish everything in the academic race to win who knows what. Let me explain this better. I am the kind of person that requires several hours of thinking, of practical reasoning, of philosophy, before starts writing/acting/analysing formally; that is, following academic manners. To do that, I hear music, I go out with friends, I spent most of my time discussing with my other half about almost everything. Then, when the ideas are significantly better or congruent than at the beginning of this process of reaching the truth, or at least the approach to it, I move towards my personal Dumbledore's Pensieve, which, in my case is any single word processor. But then...then you have to decide. Write to whom? To yourself, to the academics, to the public, to your supervisors, to your colleagues, to your social networks followers, to your friends, to humanity, to scientists far from your topic of study?

Science. To whom is made for? To whom we should write for? This is the first barrier I bump into. I have a particular style of writing, very informal to be honest. Normally, when I write something, my main focus group is far from being academic. Do not get me wrong. I would like to write for people that are not specialists in what I study, but that could be very interested in what I do. The last focus group is academic, but not because I do not want to write to them, but because they actually know what I am doing and most of the time they are perfectly informed about what I am doing. We write reports to specialists, and of course, we try to write them with all the formalities, because they are intended to be written by people that typically understand and know the academic topic you are reporting. My main focus group is very diverse and goes from family members, friends, and acquaintances, to politicians, activists or even other scientists from a different area of knowledge [to this point if your mother tongue is English you should have noticed that I am not a Native English speaker, by the way].

And then, if I try to publish something, say for research dissemination, I am always too liberal for the academics that evaluate my article. Then, I try to change a little bit the paper to fit the minimum standards, but then the dissemination paper becomes of no interest to the public, or just too technical or boring. I agree that we do not have to be patronising with the muggles, I mean, the "public", but if we speak a different language is not a question of being patronising, is a question of not being able to translate our work to a diverse public.

Even more, coming from the social sciences, I found myself going backwards in time when trying to represent something differently taking advantage of new developments in technology and computer programs. For instance, if I want to show something visually attractive, minimalistic, with shadows, colours, perspective, the academy with tell me that is not correct, then I just need to go back in time, and try to reproduce the same image with standards very similar to those of the 19th century. 

And finally, of course, you find yourself trapped with no publications at all after three years of trying, and what is worst, quoting or citing new works that mainly talk about your own ideas, published by people that you know. I am not saying that they are copying, not at all. On the contrary, precisely because of wizards knowledge, I mean, academics, some of them are great when publishing since they reproduce verbatim the academic standards; they publish it so other scholars can read and know more and improve the spells, I mean, the knowledge. In the end, we learn from each other and keep talking to us in our small wizardry world, which eventually is what Science is. But to what purpose?

I want to finish this by saying that I can keep complaining about not publishing because of the academy, or just try to follow the standards, stop whining and publish. I think that playing by the academics rules I can still publish something like Umberto Eco, Carlo Ginzburg, or Asimov [yeah, sure, and then rather than muggles and wizards, my next post will be about farmers and Elders...]. In the end, I am part of this tiny world of privileged people that are in charge of the developing of knowledge around the world. Sometimes, you just have to follow the rules, even if you do not like them, and your work will talk for you. At some point, if you keep your simple and naïve thoughts of writing to non-academics, keep a promise and not forget your ideals, when your work starts talking for you, you will have the chance to write what you want for the people that you want. Right now, you have a commitment to the Academy and the scholars that are leading you, that are teaching you minutiae of being a scientist, a social scientist. You have to convince a very severe and strict public, the academic public, that your thoughts are as good as you think, and that you can pour them in the magic Pensieve of Science with your writing capabilities. That you are going to being capable of a report in an academic way what you think. If you are able to do it, you are done with the Academy, and then if you want you can turn your attention to other matters. Before going beyond, just remember to finish what you started.