7 ms·

There’s No Winter Break from ‘Publish or Perish’

• neonate 7y ago
  http://archive.md/yN43e http://archive.md/yN43e
• buboard 7y ago
  there's summer break though - try finding reviewers in August
  • jefft255 7y ago
    In my experience it’s usually the universities administrative staff that’s gone during the summer, sometimes making it complicated to get stuff done.
• jefft255 7y ago
  I’m going to have to come in a lot during the holidays to run experiments. Can confirm. It’s good that this is gaining some attention.
  • lonelappde 7y ago
    Did you know that outside academia "winter break" doesn't exist at all?
    • mattkrause 7y ago
      Did you know that outside of academia, people get paid a lot more? And many places do shut down-or at least slow down-between Christmas and New Year’s....
    • obmelvin 7y ago
      Sure, I don't have any formal "winter break" as part of my vacation for my full time job. However, as someone who recently finished grad school I still will find my coming two weeks of vacation far more relaxing than any month long winter break during school. I only got a BS and MS and yet during my BS I was always stressed about school, even if not working, and during my MS, you bet I was working through "breaks". I'm overjoyed to be able to totally check out mentally.
    • strken 7y ago
      My office building has about a third of the normal occupancy right now, which is pretty damn close to winter break.
    • jefft255 7y ago
      Meh, at most salaried-type jobs people I know usually take at least one week of leave during the holidays. “Doesn’t exist at all” is pushing it.
    • mateo411 7y ago
      I work in industry and I'm going to take next week off. Many people in our office will do the same.
    • mto 7y ago
      Most I know take off 2 weeks. Many companies even Full close down for a week or two. I'm in Europe so YMMV but still I'm currently working for a US startup and will be gone for good starting now
• DanielleMolloy 7y ago
  I’ve felt more balanced working in AAA games (just Q/A, but still) with several crunches and weekend night shift work, although the accounted work time was much longer. The main difference was that it was not possible to take any work home as everything was under secrecy, i.e. there was a clear boundary between work time and free time. Thus after going home there was no option but enjoying something without feeling guilty. Very liberal worktimes have their advantages though for night owls who sometimes only get their brain running with an afternoon walk. Research: Everyday is like Saturday, but you work on Saturdays. (c PhD comics)
• jostmey 7y ago
  Yes, as a researcher, I will be working over the winter break. But that's what I want to do! I guess it is the people who love their job so much they do it on their time off that lowers the bar for everyone else
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • nr2x 7y ago
    You can love your job and also love your family, and holidays are primarily about time with family. If one prioritizes one “love” for another you either fall behind professionally or live long enough to regret the decisions you made. The problem is people with families shouldn’t be forced into that choice as it is cruel to all involved. I’m early stage academic and my mother in law is late stage. My MIL missed a lot of my wife’s childhood and if she could go back in time she’d prioritize differently which is why I’m taking next week off to spend with my kid.
    • bachmeier 7y ago
      > You can love your job and also love your family, and holidays are primarily about time with family. The problem is that academics at many institutions have two jobs. During the school year, they are teaching, doing service work, and generally have so many distractions that it's hard to do research. During breaks, the job turns into a full-time research position. Of course you're going to want to work over break - especially if you're aiming for a promotion that depends on research. The current system requires you to do forty hours a week of routine stuff that won't get you promoted or get you an outside offer, and once you've done that you can work on your promotion and/or outside offer.
      • nr2x 7y ago
        Precisely my point, near-term overwork for a possibility of a “permanent” job later on, but many people who get there sacrifice family life, get divorced, and win something of a pyrrich victory in the end: a lifetime job with nobody to share it with. Not true for everybody but I’ve spent my entire career at ultra-elite tier places and the divorce rates are far in excess of average. Pretty sure 50% of tenured faculty at my grad institution were still unmarried well past 40 or divorced. I’m not suggesting one must be married with kids to have a perfect life, but the current system is weeding out anybody who wants that.
• analog31 7y ago
  I live in the shadow of a big university, so I know a lot of academics. The college breaks are a great time to get stuff done that requires "flow" because it's a little less busy and your time isn't chopped up by classes and other stuff. I don't know an academic who doesn't have a list of things they want to get done during the next break. Holidays is when I take care of my side business.
• glitchc 7y ago
  The publication cycle is vicious. We hear a lot about the hard-working academic, but it won’t change until researchers themselves decide it’s not worth it. And please don’t tell me it’s about promotions. That’s a small part of the story. A typical tenure is far more secure than an industry position, yet many of my colleagues work just as hard, if not harder, than the assistant profs hoping to obtain tenure. To date, I haven’t heard a good reason for why they keep working so hard. It’s never mother dying or bills to pay. Rather they are always wishy-washy reasons that hide the real truth: They like it. They enjoy it. It gives them meaning and purpose. Not to mention sabbaticals: I see senior faculty frequently delaying sabbaticals too, for reasons as varied as the individuals themselves and none of them ring true. I often ask, “Do you really think committee A or initiative B would not survive without you?” They hem and haw, but have no concrete statements to back up their reasoning. And don’t get me started on academics who continue to practice into the 70s and 80s, well past their best before date. Most can’t even remember the names of their grad students. It’s pure hubris. The norm should be retiring to teaching-only roles, and hand the mantle of research over to the younger faculty or stepping away from the lab they created by selecting a successor. Rather, it’s the exception. If all the senior faculty across academia collectively took a break in the same timeframe, say one or two months every year, it would create opportunities for the younger members to step in and shine in their own way across the stratum of activities. Publications receiving fewer (and invited!) papers from senior academics would accept more research from the juniors, there would be more openings on committees. There would be greater career growth at the early stages. In short, the inmates are at least partly responsible for the rules of the asylum.
  • lonelappde 7y ago
    It sounds like you are saying that there aren't enough professorships for how many people want to do (and can do) research. Blaming the professors seems misplaced. The biggest criticism in the comment is that... professors enjoy doing the work they are paid to do?
    • mattkrause 7y ago
      I would amend this to “not enough [stable] research jobs” At the moment, a faculty job is pretty much the only stable job in academic research, so if you want one....that’s what you’re doing. The problem is that training students (and post docs) is part of a faculty job, and some of those will also want faculty jobs, and so on. Increasing the number of professorships just kicks the exponential-growth can a bit down the road. However, it doesn’t have to be like this. We could make more staff scientist positions that have a bit more responsibility for doing and managing research (and the job security to match), but aren’t expected to train students. I think this would be a win for everyone: it would reduce churn in the lab, enable harder research projects (since these people would have experience), and there’s even data suggesting trainees fare better in labs with more senior-but-not-PI staff. The NCI is now funding a few of these, as is the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, so hopefully it’ll catch on in other fields too.
• cmdshiftf4 7y ago
  >More than a tenth of U.S.-based researchers who submitted manuscripts and peer review reports to journals did so during the holidays. I got my degree and got out, so excuse my ignorance on academia as a profession, but I'm just wondering what the cause behind this spike is? Is it as a result of researchers being off during the summer months and then making up for the time during the opening half of the academic year, pushing to get to a certain deadline (and getting there last minute, as many in education will)? Or is there an incentive to submit at a time where reviewers are distracted with non-work activities, such as here during the holidays? i.e. is one more likely to be pass peer review and be published at these points in time?
  • srl 7y ago
    I'm not sure that is a "spike". At my institution, "holidays" are nearly 1/10th of the year already! Moreover, the quote doesn't say "more than a tenth of papers were submitted", it says that "more than a tenth of researchers who submitted, did so during the holidays". The latter statistic includes folks who pushed out several manuscripts in a year, including one which happens to be finished over the holidays. Not that it's implausible that there is a spike -- just that I've never seen actual evidence of one. (Disclaimer: haven't read article thanks to paywall.)
    • cmdshiftf4 7y ago
      Ah, very plausible. Thanks for weighing in. >At my institution, "holidays" are nearly 1/10th of the year already! That would indeed go quite some distance in explaining it in itself. Although I'm sure the idea of hitting an already bogged-down reviewer at peak season in the name of getting something perhaps hastily put together to publish, in avoiding perish, has crossed the minds of a few. Indeed, if it can cross the mind of a decidedly average non-academic such as myself, I'm almost certain it has for my intellectual and academic betters.
  • mattkrause 7y ago
    Lots of reasons: It can be hard to get stuff that requires extended concentration during the business-as-usual part of the year. An uninterrupted morning is vastly more useful than six scattered half-hour blocks between meetings and seminars and helping students. The summer is actually fairly productive for most people for the same reason; very few people are actually off (as in at the beach); they're just not teaching. There's a brief period of calm between the end of the academic year (which is chaotic with exams, end-of-year stuff, and holiday parties too) and the beginning of the "personal holidays." If you've been mulling something over, now is a great time to finish it off. Finally, it's nice to start the year with less stuff on your to-do list. I don't think anyone expects more favorable peer review over the holidays; in fact, our lab lore suggests reviewers are grumpier now. In any case, stuff submitted in mid December probably won't even go out for review until next year.
• dekhn 7y ago
  I've often gotten my best/most interesting software projects done in the lull from Dec 15 to Jan 5 (when almost nobody is working, meetings are cancelled, etc). It's an opportunity cost- by paying it, you'll have more opportunties to work on interesting things during the year, and it can be enjoyable to focus on one "simple" thing (for example, this break I'm making code that generates 3D surfaces that I then carve into wood using CNC; it requires a fair amount of fiddling, then waiting hours for the results, then some more tweaking, while keeping all the state in your head).
• hprotagonist 7y ago
  Tell me about it. I’ve got drafts due 20 Jan.
• zwaps 7y ago
  Probably the biggest issue is pre tenure, as there isn't even a possible way to do anything else. On the plus side, my work as PhD is self directed and I can most often come in whenever I like, and work whenever I like. Also, of course, my work is very rewarding most of the time. The downside is: I feel pressure to work always, also on weekends. I will not be taking vacations, I will not visit family over holidays, I will be at university. I earn the equivalent of minimum wage for someone working full-time. I work more.
  • thatfrenchguy 7y ago
    > I feel pressure to work always, also on weekends. I will not be taking vacations, I will not visit family over holidays, I will be at university. But why ? Nothing prevents you from going on vacation, and it’s not like it’s going to influence your PhD results anyway.
• el_cujo 7y ago
  I'm definitely not suggesting this is the norm (especially for new investigators or those going up for tenure) but my time in academic research has been kind of the opposite. Almost everyone in my lab would take at minimum the week from christmas to new years off. There's a pretty big annual conference in my field every late October/early November, so really every year, not much gets done at all from November to mid-January unless you're a student close to defending your dissertation. In fact a lot of people I knew at the time outside my own lab cited non-strict hours as being one of the main perks of the job along with being relatively easy to take time off for holidays. Again, I get that it's not like that everywhere, but just thought I'd share the "24/7/365 crunch time" isn't completely universal either.
  • ticmasta 7y ago
    Interesting experience. I also wonder if the comparison is made from the perspective of someone working in non-academia who might get a few days at Christmas, or undergrad students who get plenty of time off?
• bonoboTP 7y ago
  Lots of academics are from different countries than where they work. I couldn't imagine not visiting my family over the holidays. And what's with all the wisdom we can read often, like good ideas come when doing something else, having fun, being bored. Working all day every day is not necessarily the most efficient, even if we care about nothing other than academic output. A clear headed idea after a relaxing vacation may save more time than was lost with the vacation. After some point keeping "working hard" will devolve to busywork, procrastination. Sure there are outliers who can work all the time, 12 hours every weekday, throughout the whole year, but those are very rare. In practice, I think a lot of what such "hard working" people do is busywork or procrastination for a significant number of hours. I've known successful PhD students who are very deliberate about their time. In the lab they only work, and put away time for regular exercise, social life and trips to interesting places to refresh the mind.
• julienchastang 7y ago
  Especially when your annual conference is immediately after the holidays which is the case for the American Meteorological Society (AMS) conference. This used to bother me, but I've gotten used to it over the years. I suppose I would rather put in extra hours during the winter months and have more free time during the warmer parts of the year.
• whymauri 7y ago
  When I was a junior in high school, I worked Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as a lab research assistant. I got out early and made it home for dinner, but my mentor/supervisor spent the night at lab running experiments and monitoring a protein purification protocol. I don't regret leaving lab-bench science and academia.
• waynecochran 7y ago
  Siggraph paper due date has always been in January. What are you going to do?
• musicale 7y ago
  January deadlines are the worst. I would like to see more conferences and journals switch to rolling deadlines, which in addition to providing more flexibility for authors could have additional benefits of spreading out the review workload and reducing some of the incentive to rush to publication before the work is ready.