“The job of the scholar is to contribute to society, and if they are not doing so, they are not successful.” And here, we will agree but with one vital amendment.
The Scholar's Dilemma: single-use AI, reading less, and poor pay
The job was advertised in Nature and required an honours degree - meaning research experience proven by a thesis - and a minimum of 2 years experience for an annual salary of £155 (roughly equivalent to £8,778.18 or $11,658 in today’s money).
And yet, this framing of quality science has rarely been taken up in earnest, particularly in how science is evaluated or valued in broader society. The dominant understanding of “quality” science – especially in public and policy discourse – is
“A paper that does not have references is like a child without an escort walking in the night in a big city it does not know: isolated, lost, anything may happen to it”
On Research Performativity, Agreeing Disagreeably, and Degree Inflation
The same paper would be rejected by two more top journals before, as an act of desperation, Mojica submitted it to, and it was accepted in, a smaller Q2 ranked journal.
They are a mode of academic conversation – a practice of exchanging ideas and reflections – but they enjoy the benefit of being unbounded by the constraints of the academic journal article.
On Scholarly Algorithms, Arguments, and Objectivity
Upon examining his critique, it was decided to be sufficiently important that Newton be sent a copy immediately - publication of Hooke’s work, however, was to be delayed.
For was it not academia that had given me the space-time to pursue my scholarly becoming? Academia had given me the opportunity to make this transformation happen.
The para-academic works for and with others to sustain the very simple (but somehow now very rebellious) idea that thinking and learning are worthy activities with multiple values beyond the scope of any capital-driven market, and which exceed quantification in economic terms.
The aim of examining the finer textures of your individual curiosity is not to categorize it, but to feel, to notice, how it shapes your scholarly life.
