{"id":120,"date":"2010-09-15T15:53:45","date_gmt":"2010-09-15T15:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/visp.machfeld.net\/astrid\/?p=120"},"modified":"2010-09-15T15:53:45","modified_gmt":"2010-09-15T15:53:45","slug":"publish-or-perish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astridmager.net\/index.php\/2010\/09\/15\/publish-or-perish\/","title":{"rendered":"Publish or perish?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The new level in this game of academia – the postdoc level – seems to include making a decision on getting the PhD published as a book or not. Encouraged by one of my PhD reviewers, Michael Nentwich, I\u00a0started to contact publishing houses\u00a0to get information about the procedure of\u00a0transforming\u00a0PhDs into books. Well, the first answer I got was pretty disappointing.\u00a0One of the central points in the publishing guidelines was to consider whether I\u00a0would like to spend\u00a0another 12 months, minimum, up to 5\u00a0years\u00a0on reworking my thesis.\u00a0And\u00a0whether I have got a contract\u00a0that allows me to do so.\u00a0Well, the quick answer\u00a0to all that is no. No, I don’t want to\u00a0rework my thesis for the next\u00a0couple of years and no, I don’t have a contract that gives me time to\u00a0do so (is there any contract despite tenure track positions\u00a0–\u00a0pretty rare in Europe up to non-existent in Austria\u00a0–\u00a0that allow you\u00a0to do so?). Further, my empirical research conducted in Austria turned out to be too specific for the\u00a0US market according to one publisher – although “it\u00a0looks like\u00a0an interesting piece of research”.. hm, local contexts don’t seem to be appreciated much\u00a0in globalized academia. Since I wasn’t sure whether to go down this road anyway, I take it as an interesting experience having figured that out. Also, my heart beats for open access and thus an online publication may not be\u00a0bad either.\u00a0However, my own experiences made me talk to other people,\u00a0also\u00a0from the HUMlab, about this issue and it seems as if there are no standardized solutions to this problem. Rather, each local academic culture seems to have a\u00a0different approach. While some people from the British context are convinced that it’s not worth the trouble and therefore better go for peer-reviewed journal publications, people from the US tend to go for a book publication straightforwardly. And of course, disciplines matter as well. So much for the globalized academic landscape. An interesting contribution in the digital arts context comes from Charlotte Frost, who has just set up the platform PhD2Published with helpful tips etc. Check it out here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Besides these burning questions, I was exploring the surroundings of Ume\u00e5 the last couple of days.. well, surroundings, this lake is approx. 5 min from my appartment –\u00a0can you believe it?<\/p>\n

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