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Academia.
Either: We write for an audience of 3-4 (3 of which are an editor and blind reviewers);
Or: We have a larger audience but condescendingly don’t see them as “peers”;
Or: We risk tenure, job security, and academic legitimacy by conceiving of our “peers” more broadly.
Either: We write for an audience of 3-4 (3 of which are an editor and blind reviewers);
Or: We have a larger audience but condescendingly don’t see them as “peers”;
Or: We risk tenure, job security, and academic legitimacy by conceiving of our “peers” more broadly.
At University of Wisconsin-Madison, I was explicitly hired to do “public work” and “outreach scholarship” driven by the “Wisconsin Idea.” Later, an Associate Dean told me I first needed to write a blind-peer-reviewed book for an academic audience. I was “stubborn” if I didn’t.
I have so many colleagues pushing in various ways to get public work acknowledged and valorized as scholarship (not just “service”). I’ve seen the needle move over the course of my almost 20 years working in academia. The only thing that has moved that needle is stubbornness.
Those of us doing public, digital, and/or outreach scholarship need all our work to count, not just the more traditional stuff we also do to put guard rails in our CVs.
More than that, we need our public, digital, and/or outreach scholarship to not count against us.
More than that, we need our public, digital, and/or outreach scholarship to not count against us.
And those of us with any privilege need to advocate for our more precarious and marginalized colleagues, who face even more hardship, and sometimes scorn or abuse, when they do public, digital, and/or outreach scholarship.
None of this starts by talking seriously about the “wrong kinds of publications.”
