Since I managed to open my website –despite the little technical help we get and the odd quirks of the DRUPAL programme– I’ve been wondering about its possibilities for self-publication. My institution insists that self-published work should go to its digital depository, yet where the actual file is placed is ultimately quite irrelevant. What matters is that I finally have the instrument to self-publish (I’m not sure this can be used as a verb…).

I have already set up a space for self-publication in the web, so far empty, though not for long. I’ve taken out of my digital drawer about a dozen documents that were there doing nothing except occupy space in my computer. What are these documents? Essentially unpublished academic stuff: conference papers presented at events generating no subsequent publication, rejected articles (ouch!), pieces accepted for publication in projects that never materialised. Why not simply update them and try publishing them in academic journals, books, etc? Because I know from experience that revising an article, given the enormous amount of bibliography published every year, is often more taxing than writing a new one. Also, because, typically, an article written for a specific conference, journal, or book will not easily fit a different kind of publication. Or just plain laziness (not really…).

I have now finished the process of editing with a certain homogeneity these dozen pieces and it’s been a very strange trip down memory lane, as some of these articles go back to the late 1990s. It’s been funny. I have gone again through the frustration of the rejection of some of the pieces, sometimes for reasons I totally disagree with, sometimes with good reasons. Also, although I fancy that one grows intellectually as time passes, I realise that the same bees have been in residence in my bonnet for quite a long time, albeit the amount of theoretical background I now surround them with is much larger. As requested today, since we seem to have got a collective high fever for massive numbers of quotations in each piece.

Why publish these documents? The answer is: why not? They’re neither better nor worse than most of my legitimately published academic work and if someone finds in them an idea worth considering, then I’ll be satisfied. They may simply gather digital (or virtual) dust, as one of my student says, but, then, I’m afraid that so do most of our publications anyway. It hurts really nobody to have the stuff online. Only perhaps my own reputation (if I have one).

By the way, most of these articles, not to say all, are peer reviewed, even though some may have been negatively so. My publishing them online is not, mind you, a little revenge against my less sympathetic reviewers. It cannot be, since –I know what you, my academic colleague, are thinking– self-publication does not count for official research assessment. Not even if I found five colleagues who would put their signature to my articles as peer-reviewed would they count since, as we all know, only work published in certain periodical publications and collective volumes really ‘counts.’ Ah, the famous ‘no cuenta’ mantra.

Now, to my surprise, this blog counts as a legitimate instrument for ‘knowledge transfer’ for the corresponding assessment which my Department passes regularly (these are the activities in which we academics take part to publicise what we do but which are not academic –in Spanish it used to be known as ‘divulgación’). Well, I’m happy to contribute to the Department’s kudos but also a bit annoyed at the arbitrary criteria by which some things count and others do not and for what.

Some other day I’ll tell you the story of why among the documents I’ll soon upload you can also find my book Monstruos al final del milenio (which I’ll be giving away for free) but not any of the others I have published so far.

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I have already written a few posts connected with conferences and if I am repeating the same ideas, this must be because things are not changing. I am back from a three-day conference, which makes number 57 in the long list of academic events I have attended since 1994 (not that many, really). As usual at this stage, once it’s over, I have mixed feelings about the whole procedure. My arguments will sound familiar to everyone who’s been in the circuit for a similar number of years but might give an introduction to problems unknown to junior researchers.

To begin with, attending conferences is very expensive. This last event, at a Spanish university, has cost me 500 euros, despite making considerable economies in terms of travel expenses. The 500 euros come integrally out of my pocket and although I know that it’s not that much in comparison to international conferences, it’s still a lot of money for a small item in my CV which will count nothing towards assessment. 350 euros, in contrast, would have gone a much longer way towards buying books that might help me produce better research. Yet, I’ve never spent that much in a few days on books.

Why have I attended? For social/academic reasons. First: loyalty towards the organisers, as this is was the 16th Culture & Power seminar, an event to which I have been attached from the very beginning in 1995 at my own university. Second: an interest in the potentiality of the topic –spaces– in relation to its application to SF, hence to increasing the academic visibility of this genre (there were six papers in two monographic sessions). Third: networking. I agreed to meet some colleagues for the purpose of furthering our common objectives, aside from the conference, and ended up coming across others unexpectedly, meetings from which other plans came out. Fourth: the need to take a break from admin duties (I’m degree Coordinator, or Head of Studies), which means having a good excuse not to check email.

As usual, question time, coffee breaks and mealtimes have been much more productive than listening to the presentations (well, to be fair, the best debates came logically out of the best papers). The colleague who organised the conference proposed that the next one be an extensive coffee break, with delegates discussing with each other papers forwarded in advance. I love the idea but remain a bit sceptical about it, as researchers often behave like bad students and might turn up with no homework done. At any rate, it is clear to me that the real exchange of ideas happens in conversation.

A worrying, seemingly unstoppable phenomenon is erratic attendance, by which I mean not only that many delegates attended just for one day (in one case, just to deliver a paper) but also that many dropped off the programme the day before or even without warning. This way, although this was a 50-delegate conference, plenary lectures were attended at the most by 15 persons –a shame. I am myself guilty of not attending a couple of morning sessions, as, frankly, I could not face the 10-hour day.

I know that erratic attendance is mostly due to the ongoing crisis as impoverished tenured researchers and severely exploited untenured researchers are cutting corners to make ends meet. Certificates of attendance were granted to all, which might not be a good practice, I’m afraid. Yet it’s difficult to find an alternative as having delegates sign for each session sounds too controlling (I’m paying, I choose what to attend…), and might completely alienate the poorest researchers. One-day conferences work, of course, much better in that sense, but, obviously, this is not a format for all kinds of conferences (I wonder what it is like to attend one of those medical conferences in my city, with up to 30,000 delegates…).

The worst part, for me, is that after many hours preparing the paper and the PowerPoint presentation I finally spoke to an audience of 10, including my two co-presenters. The session went very well and we had a very lively debate but, still, are 10 people worth so much effort? (with all my respect, of course, for those who attended my presentation). The best part, as with all the conferences I have attended, was the time spent with those special colleagues, who are actually personal friends. Perhaps we do need conferences that are just long coffee breaks. Or the academic equivalent of team building.

The last worry: age. Suddenly, I notice there’s a whole new generation in the circuit and that in conferences people connect along age lines which, somehow, makes networking less effective (or more complicated). Joining a colleague of a similar age for, say, lunch, is easy but asking a younger colleague makes me feel quite awkward (silly me!). Dinner is even more complicated. It might be just shyness and, of course, it would not apply to my own doctoral students or younger Department staff. Yet, it is there.

Now to enter the conference in my CV…

Comments are very welcome! (Thanks!) Just remember that I check them first for spam; it might take a few days for yours to be available. If you like my blog, you can subscribe using the RSS feed (right-hand column, below Blogroll.) You’ll get an email message for every new post. VISIT MY WEB: https://gent.uab.cat/saramartinalegre/