Academic Scholarship: If You Want to be Heard- Follow the Rules

In the academy graduate students learn how to produce scholarship in a manner that is acceptable to the academy, that is publishable, and ideally is related to ones scholarly interests. Additionally, Professors (depending on the type of institution they seek to call home) have publishing requirements that pressure great thinkers to produce knowledge that meets academic quality, publisher needs and desires, and their institutional standards. Somewhere in all these standards and demands is the researcher: A scholar at heart who has a desire to seek out information that satisfies their burning questions and philosophical quandaries. So how does the romantic scholar negotiate their preferred work with the academy and academic publishers?

This question is obviously relative to the scholar and has inherent relative difference depending on the person attempting to answer this question, however, it seems as though scholars are expected to follow structural requirements in order to be “successful”. Success is understood in this framework, for example, as one who can get their work published. This success is dependent on one’s ability and will to produce knowledge according to preconceived and approved forms, methods, and resulting works of research and scholarship that give into the pressures and standards of what is and isn’t acceptable scholarly work.

For example, quantitative studies have preconceived ideas as to the format of the work, standards for how research is collected, analyzed, and presented, and without some of these basic requirements the work can be rejected prima facie. Same is true for qualitative studies, rhetorical studies, and critical studies. It seems as though, scholarship is more interested in showcasing the meeting of standards, formulaic and accepted formats, and producing work that fits into a mold rather than inquiry that is accepted as part of a conversation that is most interested in learning and listening to what others are finding in their scholarly explorations.

As a graduate student who conducts research in each class and produces scholarship that aims at contributing to conversations, I am at a loss for getting my work published. My work collects dust in the memory of my computer, in my own mind, and possibly some of my peers and Professors take in what I work on….but besides that I am constantly either being rejected by scholarly publishers or are told to revise and resubmit based on their proposed changes.

In a competitive world, where there are preconceived notions for performance, there is a lack of appreciation for those just trying to participate in the conversation. If I don’t meet this expectation, or that standard, or I am doing things too differently compared to how things have always been done, I am immediately rejected. I am told that I basically lose and the person who did what is told wins.

The academy itself is situated in an argumentative framework that embraces practices of compliance, structure, rules, legitimacy, and rigorous competition where there are accepted winners and losers. And in our present world of education budget cuts, the need for standards of excellence within this framework will only be heightened. If the academy itself is structured in such a way, it seems reasonable to assume that some of this framework is being imposed in the classroom.

Overall, as a young scholar who works to get their voice heard in the world of academia I find that the standards of rigor, excellence, scholarly quality, and other conformist and oppressive practices are straight up violent and silencing. This tyranny to conformity and to academic standards is a practice of silencing and eliminating other voices, and until the academy shifts and makes changes that are more inclusive, instead of exclusive, that are more willing to hear and listen to others and their scholarly work and practices, I believe that my scholarship as well as the scholarship of other lost voices will continue to be absent in the conversation. Hopefully one day I, and the other scholars out there who are to remain nameless because we have no idea who they are because they are also rejected, will be accepted into the conversation(s). At that point, I believe that education and the academy has some potential to make some real changes to its own practices, as well as practices in the classroom.