Writing for Research

Writing for Research

Part of the damage done by the current neoliberal management of universities is that it
devalues the social character of writing for research. Researchers are put under
performance-management regimes that treat writing “outputs” as if they were plastic
rattles being outputted from a factory. All that counts is getting the planned number of
rattles per year. If any thought is given to where the output goes, it is to “target” the
high-prestige journals. What matters to such managers is a journal’s ranking in a league
table, not what readership is reached through it.

Once we recognize that writing is communicative practice, the readership does matter –
profoundly. Then we see journals in a different way, not as steps on a prestige ladder
but as centres of knowledge practices and nodes in communication. Journals, like
books, conferences and some online spaces, link people and institutions, and carry
forward a shared project of knowledge-making. It’s that possibility of connecting with a
real audience, and contributing to a shared undertaking, that makes academic
publication meaningful.

2 : RESEARCH COMMUNICATION, THE SOCIAL REALITY

Managers nowadays have systems for counting the research “outputs” that each
researcher produces, and rewarding or punishing accordingly. This probably seems to
the bosses like sophisticated, performance-driven management. In real life it’s stupid. It
creates destructive anxieties, promotes mediocrity and conformity, and undermines the
real functions of scientific communication.

What truly matters in research is not how many publications you churn out, but

• who gets to read your writing, and


• what your writing is doing for them.

That is to say, what matters is the contribution your work makes to our collective project
of knowledge-making, critique, circulation, and knowledge use.

I once spent a sabbatical leave at the sociology department in London University’s
Institute of Education. The department head was Basil Bernstein, a famous researcher
on social class and education. Bernstein understood this principle. When a student
came to see him, enthusing about some piece of writing she or he had read, Bernstein
would ask: “What’s the news in this?” That is to say, what is it adding to our already
shared knowledge?

The dominant form of publication, in most fields of research today, is the research
journal. Books still count for a lot in History and Philosophy, but even there the journal is
important. In fields like Chemistry, Biology, Engineering and Psychology the journal is
utterly dominant.