A couple weeks ago, my 100th paper or chapter was published in the peer-reviewed literature. Why do I feel so contorted?
 |
| Kai, contorted, right from the beginning of my time at UBC (and not always happy about it!). |
The short answer
is that this milestone provoked a realization that I’m getting sucked in to a
pursuit about which I am deeply ambivalent.
On the one hand,
I believe strongly in the value of peer-reviewed publications as a means of
fostering crucial learning towards a deeper and broader understanding of life
on Earth and how we can sustain it along with human prosperity. When I’m interviewing
prospective students to ensure a good fit between us, we talk about the purpose
of academic publications. It’s certainly not a perfect system, but I know of no
better way to contribute rigorously and reliably to the body of knowledge upon
which human society fundamentally depends. If we’re doing research and
scholarship that addresses important problems, we should do it with reference
to what others have found—acknowledging explicitly how our research builds upon
many important contributions from others. It seems fitting and important, then,
to also contribute our learning back to that body of literature.
In those same
conversations with prospective students, we also discuss the pitfalls of
publication-motivated research. It’s a classic case of Goodhart’s Law, where
the metrics of academic publishing (the h-index, i-index, impact factors, etc.)
have become the targets of an
academic career, thus somewhat perverting their utility. These metrics
certainly capture some elements of excellence and of scholarship’s contribution
to society’s needs. For instance, I’m proud of the role some of my best-cited
papers with Terre Satterfield and others (e.g., this
one) have played in helping enrich the dialog about culture and values
regarding ecosystem services and the environment. But other papers of mine seem
to get cited well despite much smaller roles in effecting change.
So success by
metrics is not the success I seek. There are plenty of ways to pervert these
proxies of academic contribution, for example by realizing success through the
h-index, etc., but not achieving true success in advancing and disseminating needed
knowledge. There are also endeavours that contribute crucially to society’s
knowledge and use of this knowledge, but that yield little progress by these
metrics. Much science engagement (public and policy outreach) goes unrecognized
that way—more on that to come in future posts.
Those
conversations with prospective students usually conclude with an asserted
interest in publishing but also in guarding against Goodhart’s Law. My students
and I are all committed to a reflective pursuit of academic success that also
includes those activities that are important but not necessarily rewarded academically
(e.g., engaging with policy makers, writing policy briefs and op-eds, joining
environmental and social justice advocacy groups).
After more than a
dozen papers published already this year, it seems pretty
clear that I’m spending a lot of my time publishing and not nearly enough on my
other sustainability-science passions, including CoSphere
(a Community of Small-Planet Heroes …, to make it easy to have net-positive
impacts on nature).
In my defence,
this distribution of time is not a result of my making decisions in a vacuum
to write papers and more papers. Every paper and chapter this year except one
was led by others, generally my students and postdocs, who need these papers as
markers of their excellence. Even the paper
and chapter that I did lead were
in close partnership with my students and postdocs, and I hope they will serve
them well (both are also intended to advance CoSphere). But regardless of how I
got to this point, it remains the case that I am spending so much time on the
papers themselves that I have little time for CoSphere, or those other
engagement activities.
I suspect I’m not
the only one feeling this way. From our recent Global Young Academy survey (just
submitted) and various conversations, I know that many of us are strongly
motivated to ‘better the world’ through our science and engagement. But it
seems that despite that motivation, a litany of invisible or barely visible
norms and pressures are thwarting these good intentions—at least somewhat—and
leading me and my colleagues to spend more time than we might easily justify on
the pursuit of metrics of personal acclaim. (It’s clearly different for those
seeking to get academic jobs or tenure, who have to play by the rules of the
game—but as a full professor, that justification doesn’t apply to me.)
I don’t have any
magic solutions, but for myself, I’m going to seek to right my course somewhat
by diving into a highly practical applied sabbatical in 2018-9, perhaps in the
seat of Canada’s national government.
How about you? Do
you feel any unease about your relationship with publishing? Or not? Have you
managed to align your passions with your actions? If so, please share your
insights—for our sakes!
