SRHE Blog

The Society for Research into Higher Education

Tag Archives: getting published


by 3 Comments

When papers become currency

by Carolina Guzmán Valenzuela

Over the last few months, I have found myself discussing academic publishing with young researchers in Germany and Chile. What struck me in both places was not excitement about ideas, journals or scholarly debates. It was anxiety.

At workshops on publishing strategies and scholarly journals (one at the HoFoNa Conference in Germany and another at the Institute of Education at the University of Chile) the conversations quickly moved away from writing itself and towards something far more pragmatic: survival.

Young researchers spoke about publishing in highly strategic terms. Which journals were ‘safe’? Which ones counted for postdoctoral applications and funding schemes? Which journals’ turnarounds were quick enough? Which journals offered the highest probability of acceptance?

Several participants openly discussed how they calculated publication decisions in relation to career survival. The question was often not where their work fitted best intellectually, but which journals were fast enough, prestigious enough and predictable enough to maximise their chances of securing a postdoctoral position, grant or future contract.

What I found quite revealing was how naturally many early-career academics now speak the language of optimisation. Quartiles, Article Processing Charges (APCs), turnaround times, indexing systems, impact factors and publication strategies are discussed with remarkable fluency. Many young researchers are being socialised into academia through the logic of strategic productivity before they have had the opportunity to develop a slower intellectual voice of their own.

And who can blame them?

Across many universities today, academic life has become increasingly precarious and accelerated. Temporary contracts, short-term postdoctoral positions, uncertain funding, metric-driven evaluations and intense competition have transformed publishing into something far more strategic than it was. In systems (such as Chile’s), where academic careers and funding schemes heavily depend on publications indexed in Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus, papers increasingly function as academic currency.

Under these conditions, it is not surprising that publishers promising continuous publication, high-volume output and relatively predictable editorial processes have expanded rapidly. This is one reason why publishers such as MDPI and Frontiers have become so deeply embedded within contemporary academic life. Some of their journals are indexed in WoS and Scopus, which count towards grants and promotions and contribute directly to institutional rankings and evaluation systems. In other words, they are not operating outside the university system. They are increasingly part of how the system itself functions.

It is fair to say, though, that some established journals are reporting turnaround times that are not radically different from publishers such as Frontiers or MDPI. Elements of acceleration and compressed editorial timelines are also becoming increasingly visible across the wider publishing ecosystem, suggesting that these dynamics are no longer confined to specific publishers.

In any case, average turnaround statistics do not fully capture broader differences in selectivity, publication scale, editorial oversight and peer review intensity. During my years as Coordinating Editor of Higher Education, manuscripts frequently went through several rounds of major revision over many months. Reviewer disagreement, editorial discussion and substantial intellectual reshaping were often central parts of the process. The deeper question, then, may not simply be speed itself, but whether meaningful scholarly judgement, rigorous peer review and sustained intellectual critique can realistically be maintained under conditions of industrial-scale publication.

This becomes particularly important in a publishing ecosystem increasingly organised around scale. Large editorial boards, continuous publication models and relatively low desk-rejection rates create a parallel publishing universe in which the formal conventions of academic publishing are maintained, but where critique, filtering and editorial curation risk becoming increasingly compressed and uneven.

APCs have also reshaped inequalities within academic publishing. Publishing open access in prestigious journals often depends on fees that remain inaccessible for universities and researchers in Latin America, Africa and other underfunded academic systems unless institutions are able to absorb the costs.

At the same time, substantial APCs are no longer confined to traditionally prestigious journals. Many high-volume publishing models also involve significant publication fees, suggesting that what many early-career researchers are increasingly paying for is not simply open access, but speed, predictability and reduced temporal uncertainty within an academic system governed by short-term contracts, funding deadlines and metric-based evaluations. In short, they are purchasing life chances.

The irony is difficult to ignore. The same universities and funding systems that demand constant productivity often make meaningful participation in prestigious publishing circuits governed by international rankings, indexing systems and performance metrics.

Meanwhile, reviewers, the invisible infrastructure sustaining the entire system, are visibly exhausted. Every week, I receive multiple emails asking me to review manuscripts within ten or fourteen days. Some are oddly urgent in tone, politely aggressive, reminding reviewers about editorial targets and turnaround times. Many read as though they were generated from the same automated template. At this stage, I rarely even reply. I simply delete them. What concerns me is not only the pressure itself, but how normalised this publication culture has become.

Sometimes the system reaches extremes. In Chile, recent controversies surrounding publication incentives revealed academics producing absurd numbers of WoS indexed papers while receiving substantial productivity-linked salaries and bonuses. In some cases, this meant publishing well over one hundred papers in a single year. The issue here is not simply individual behaviour. The deeper question is structural: what kind of national research funding system rewards institutions according to publication output and, in turn, transfers these pressures directly onto academics?

Artificial intelligence is likely to intensify these dynamics even further. AI did not create the culture of academic hyperproduction, but it is accelerating it dramatically. Faster writing. Faster reviewing. Faster summarising. Faster publishing. More output everywhere.  And less time for, or even interest in, thought as a result.

None of this means that traditional academic publishing represented an egalitarian system. It has long been shaped by oligopolistic publishers, exclusionary gatekeeping and profound global inequalities. Open access has unquestionably expanded the circulation of knowledge and enabled greater visibility for scholars outside elite institutions. Some forms of academic closure deserved to be challenged. But something important may also be getting lost.

During those workshops in Germany and Chile, I observed that many young researchers seemed caught between two incompatible temporalities: the time required for meaningful scholarship and the accelerated pace demanded by contemporary academic careers. That tension, more than any individual journal or publisher, surely represents one of the defining conditions of academic life today.

Carolina Guzmán-Valenzuela serves on the SRHE Governing Council. She is a Serra Húnter Fellow at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain) and Senior Research Fellow at the Universidad de Tarapacá (Chile). Her work focuses on higher education, epistemic justice, decolonial perspectives, and inequalities in global knowledge production, particularly in Latin America.


by Leave a comment

Academic writing and spaces of resistance

by Kate Carruthers Thomas

At SRHE’s Annual Conference 2025, I gave a paper which argued that community, collegiality and care were key elements of the writing groups and retreats I’ve facilitated for female academics. I used Massey’s heuristic device of activity space to foreground interactions of gender, space and power in those writing interventions. I concluded that in embodying community, collegiality and care, they can potentially be seen as activity spaces of resistance to the geographies of power operating across universities and the individualised, competitive neo-liberal academy.

Academics must write. Written outputs are one of the principal means by which academics enact professional capital as experts and specialists in their disciplinary fields (French, 2020 p1605). Scholarly publications are central to individual and institutional success in the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF). Writing does not automatically or quickly lead to publication and just finding the time to write productively presents challenges at all career stages. But as Murray and Newton state: ‘the writing element of research is not universally experienced as a mainstream activity’ (Murray and Newton, 2009 p551). 

Applying Massey’s analytical tool of activity space: ‘the spatial network of links and activities, of spatial connections and of locations within which a particular agent operates’ (2005 p55)to this context, we can imagine the UK HE sector as an activity space shaped by networks and power relationships of disciplines, governance, financial and knowledge capitals, metrics and institutional audit. We can also imagine the sector’s 160 universities as nodes within that wider activity space. Massey coins the term ‘power geometry’ to describe how individuals and groups are differently positioned in relation to different geographies of power in activity spaces. For example, UK universities are more or less powerfully positioned across a spectrum of elite, pre-1992 and post-1992 institutions.

We can also consider each university as an activity space, with its own spatial networks and connections shaped by the wider sector and by regional and local factors. These are enacted within each university through systems of management, workload and performance, creating the environments within which ‘agents’ – staff and students – work and study. Academics in more senior ranks, with higher salaries and research-focused roles are more likely to produce scholarly publications (McGrail, Rickard and Jones, 2006). And while the relationship between research and teaching is a troubled one across the sector, this tension is exacerbated for academics located in post-1992 institutions, many describing themselves as ‘teaching intensive’. Research and publication remain strategic corporate priorities for post-1992s, yet workload allocation is heavily weighted towards teaching and pastoral support.

So, in relation to academic writing and publication, academics are also differentially positioned, more and less powerfully, within the activity space of the university. One of the key factors influencing that positioning is gender. If we scratch the statistical surface of the UK HE landscape we find longstanding gender inequality which is proving glacially slow to shift. Women form an overall majority of UK sector employees in academic and professional services roles but 49% of academic staff, 33% of Heads of Institution and 31% of Professors are women (Advance HE, 2024). They predominate in part-time, teaching-only and precarious contracts, all of which play a role in slowing or stalling academic career progression. These data cannot be seen in isolation from women’s disproportionate responsibilities for pastoral and informal service roles within the university and gendered social roles which place a burden of care for family, household and caring on many women of all working ages.

Academic writing groups and retreats are a popular response to the challenge of writing productively. They can ‘be a method of improving research outputs’ (Wardale, 2015 p1297); demystify the process of scholarly writing (Lee and Boud, 2003 p190), and ‘enable micro-environments in what is perceived of as an otherwise often unfriendly mainstream working environment’ (ibid).  Groups and retreats are often targeted at different academic career stages and/or specific groups within the academic workforce. Since 2020, as critical higher education academic and diversity worker, I have run online writing groups and in-person writing retreats for female academics at all career stages, most employed at my own post-1992 university. Over 140 individuals have participated in one or other of the interventions and I used a range of methods (survey, interview, focus group) to gather data on their motivations, experiences and outcomes.

The combined data of all three studies show that the primary motivation of every participant was to create protected space for writing, space not made sufficiently available to them within working hours, despite the professional expectation that they will produce scholarly publications. In this context, the meaning of ‘space’ is multi-dimensional: encompassing the temporal, the physical and the intellectual. The consequence of the interaction of protected temporal and physical/virtual space is intellectual space, or what was referred to by several participants as ‘headspace’ – the extended focus and concentration necessary to produce high quality scholarly writing (Couch, Sullivan and Malatsky, 2020) .

When I launched the online writing group (WriteSpace) during the UK’s first COVID-19 lockdown, MS Teams software enabled the creation of a virtual ‘writing room’ and a sense of community over distance. Socially-isolated colleagues sought contact with others, even those previously unknown to them. As lockdown restrictions eased and remote, then hybrid, working arrangements ensued, the act of writing alongside others virtually or in-person remained an important way to engage in a shared endeavour. The in-person residential retreats in 2023 and 2024, followed Murray’s structured retreat model (Murray and Newton, 2009 p543).  Participants wrote together in one room, for the same time periods over three days. They also ate, walked and socialised together.

Each of the writing interventions were multi-disciplinary spaces for female academics at all career stages, including those undertaking part-time doctoral study. Whatever their grade or experience, no one individual’s writing was more important or significant than another’s. These hierarchically flat spaces disrupted the normative power relationships of the workplace and the academy. On the retreats, additional practices of goal setting and review in pairs encouraged ongoing reflection and exchange on writing practices and developing academic identities.

Many participants experienced the facilitation of the groups and retreats as professional care – a colleague taking responsibility for timekeeping, recommending breaks and stimulating reflection on writing practices. The experience of care was extended and heightened at the residential retreats because all meals were provided in a comfortable and peaceful environment and no household chores were required. This was particularly significant in the context of women’s social roles and conditioning to care for others.

Viewing these writing interventions as activity spaces situated within the wider contexts of the university and the UK HE sector foregrounds interactions of power, space and gender in the context of academic writing. The writing interventions were not neutral phenomena. They were deliberately initiated and targeted in response to a gendered imbalance of power in the academy and the university. They were occupied solely by women. They intentionally prioritise temporal, physical and intellectual space for writing over teaching, administrative, pastoral, household and domestic responsibilities. Within them, academic writing becomes a social practice and a common endeavour.

The interventions do not remove longstanding and pervasive gender inequality across the UK sector, change gendered social roles, resolve the tensions between teaching and research in the contemporary neoliberal academy, nor increase workload allocation for academic writing. However, in embodying community, collegiality and care they can potentially be seen as activity spaces of resistance to the normative geographies of power operating across universities and the wider sector. 

Kate Carruthers Thomas is Associate Professor of Higher Education and Gender at Birmingham City University. Her research is interdisciplinary, drawing on educational, sociological and geographical theories and methods. She also has a track record in creative research dissemination including graphics, poetry and podcasting.

Ian Mc Nay


by 1 Comment

Critical management studies

by Ian McNay

My thanks to Rob Cuthbert in the July issue of SRHE News for his generous comments in trailing a (possibly) forthcoming article treating TEF and, mainly, REF through a triple lens of capitalism, competition and competence in policy making and implementation. Some newer researchers may find some consolation in its history. Given that I have led workshops on ‘Getting in to print’ for SRHE, it has been a salutary and frustrating/irritating experience, for someone whose recent writing and publication has been mainly by invitation.

It started, as many articles do, in a presentation to an SRHE research seminar in the autumn of 2019. My procrastination, and demands from other work, delayed crafting that in to an article, which was submitted in early summer 2020. It took a second reviewer over 4 months to submit a report dismissing it as ‘bold and bombastic’, adding nothing to existing knowledge. The other reviewer was kinder and more constructive but the editor rejected it in October. One blow to the self-esteem, but ‘pick yourself up, dust yourself off…’. I accepted the second reviewer’s view that there was a need for a clearer message and tighter structure.

Submission of a revised version went to a different journal in early March 2021. Again, there were two reviewers. One I quote in full:

“Thank you for the opportunity to review your article. I found your argument carefully crafted and supported. It is a captivating read and throws a very strong light on the distortions created by unintended (and intended!) consequences of the ‘research game’. I think it will be very well received by an international audience, especially by those institutions wondering why their high quality research is undermined.”

The second said:

“Your topic … would be of interest to international readers, many of whom will be experiencing similar issues in their own institutions. Your conception of the article is exciting and it is well worth writing about … [it] has the potential to add to the body of knowledge and be of value to readers. However…”

They then made useful criticisms, comments and suggestions on improving it.

That was in May, with the overall judgement that it needed ‘minor modifications’; I revised and re-submitted in early June. Towards the end of July, I got a second lot of feedback, from two people not previously involved, so with no continuity of engagement. One thought it had ‘few references to specific policies or policy documents’ – 14 are cited – and needed more underpinning to support the argument and give balance. Nevertheless, they thought the article ‘an interesting one which raises important issues and deserves to be published’. The second, I again quote in full:

“Thank you for the opportunity to review your article. It packs a punch and boy, is it needed! I sincerely enjoyed your paper, reads like an express train – loved it! I think it will stir up the debate – I shall look forward to it! :)”

I submitted a slightly amended script in early August and, at the end of the month, was told there would be a final decision within two weeks. It is now October, and two referees, as well as Rob, and Rajani Naidoo, who chaired the original seminar, think highly of it. I had been worried that the latest REF results would appear before it is published, but they will now come out on May 22nd, so there is time. A dilemma – do I contact the busy editor again and risk it being seen as harassment, or wait for the process to grind through?

Briefly, on content, the use of Lisa Lucas’s ‘research game’ leads to comparisons with soccer, where the Guardian’s top 100 footballers in December had 32 who play in the English Premier league, but only 6 are qualified for England, and one for Scotland. In HE, over half of full time research students are international and according to UUK 48% of ‘research-only staff’ in 2018 were not born in the UK, where graduates are loaded with debt. As with truck drivers, we have imported to cover a lack of development (as in soccer and in county cricket), but post Brexit entry conditions, particularly visa controls and minimum salary, will reduce that possibility considerably. As with cricket, concentration on the short form, where the money is, may have prevented the development of longer form – blue skies research or five day tests – because of deadlines and targets. Rugby union coach Eddie Jones was quoted in 2018 saying that the team captain ‘can captain England with a rule of fear’.

In some HEIs, that seems to be the approach to research and the REF. One press comment on the subsequent match – defeat by France – said that the reason the team underperformed was that ‘they lacked autonomy and freedom from external control … it all feels overly managed’. Researchers, too, have lost control of the means of research production and distribution (publication). In my article a final comparison was made with the European Song Contest – not strictly a game, but a competition – where some panels tend vote for ‘people like us’ and assessment of quality gets entangled with tribal loyalty.

My elder son is also having trouble with senior managers over researchers and research students. He heads the Behavioral Neuroscience Area in a federal state university in the USA, where the comparable stipend for comparable students in other institutions within the federal university is up to 50% higher, creating low morale and difficulties in recruiting the best students, which will affect the university’s rating as a level 1 institution. Even students in the same lab have higher stipends because they are classified as STEM students, though both groups do similar work, often together. After 18 months of trying to engage with senior management, he took the decision to stop recruiting. That finally got an email response, which appeared to be simply: ‘if you do that you will have to do more undergraduate teaching’.

Finally and briefly, I anticipate that 18 months of home working will lead senior managers to try to save on estate costs and have teaching staff timetables structured to allow ‘Box and Cox’ arrangements with paired staff sharing a single desk and computer – much worse than the UEA situation reported in the recent Private Eye. There will be 2-3 days designated as ‘presentism’ days and 2-3 designated as ‘home-based’.

SRHE Fellow Ian McNay is emeritus professor at the University of Greenwich.