June 2009

I recently got an email from a reader named Hinne Hettema, asking me if I could comment on the challenges faced by former academics who continue to publish scholarly research after they leave. I told him that I knew little about this topic, having had no desire to do academic research once I’d quit. I knew there had been a recent WRK4US discussion on the topic, and even a call for papers for a book on the subject. But Hinne had clearly done a lot of thinking on the topic, though, so I invited him to write a guest post. Here are Hinne’s thoughtful insights–and let us hear your own!

Here’s a question. Suppose you manage to leave academia and find employment on the outside. But what to do with your research? In this post, I’ll try to outline that it is not necessary to leave research behind altogether, even though there are a number of issues to consider. If you find that the opportunity to do research and publish is what keeps you in academia (but there is little else keeping you there) you are not alone and should probably get out. Is there a way to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

I found myself in this situation about twelve years ago. The bright colors of that what attracted me to seek an academic career in the first place, the opportunity to apply my best thinking skills to do scientific research relatively autonomously, had faded into the grey realisation that I was getting paid (and rather badly at that) to work on someone else’s problems, in an unattractive environment, with few further career prospects. To put it bluntly, the autonomy and freedom of thought that I craved, and once hoped to find inside academia, was in reality hiding somewhere else.

So I left academia in 1997, after my second post-doc, and never really looked back. But I am trying, with more or less success, to stay active as a researcher. I have maintained a connection with my last university. It pretty much involves academic library access with borrowing privileges, email and a letterbox at the department.

This sort of setup brings up the ‘independent scholar’ question rather quickly, and in my experience there is a large, but undeserved, label attached to independent scholarship that urgently needs modification. Yes, there are indepdent scholars working on witchcraft and UFOs, independent scholars that put out amateurish work, and just plain cranks that call themselves independent scholars. There are two answers to that charge.

First, amateurism, crankiness and substandard work is not limited to independent scholars. For every independent scholar working on UFOs there is probably a ‘real’ academic doing exactly the same; for every cranky ‘independent scholar’ there exists, somewhere, a similarly cranky academic.

But a more interesting objection is that the fact that there are some bad independent scholars does not in turn mean that all independent scholars can be safely regarded as amateurish cranks.

I consider myself an ‘independent scholar’ precisely in the sense that I am entirely autonomous, and can work on the problems that interest me whenever and wherever I want. But I am beholden to normal standards of professionalism. I submit my papers to regular journals, have my work peer reviewed and also act as a reviewer for a journal now and then. In short, I am a researcher like all others, just one that’s not beholden to funding agencies, regular research assessment, annual job search angst, budget cuts, vacuous exercises in academic ‘excellence’ and other such distractions that just hoover up valuable research time. I am more than happy to leave all that to the professionals. They, after all, get paid to deal with that sort of crap.

On the other hand, this sort of independent scholarship also has a number of issues associated with it. I think it is important to map out what they are, and to solicit and suggest ways of overcoming these drawbacks.

The reason for this is simple. My hunch is that an increasing number of disciplines will in the future increasingly depend on independent scholars (in the sense of independent academics) for their continued vitality (Witness the fate of many German departments currently in the US). It should also be recognised that what I am hinting at here (professional scholars with a non-academic source of income) have been the norm rather than the exception throughout history.’ The model for the university we accept as ‘normal’ in an academic environment originated somewhere in the 1880s on the Continent, and died somewhere in the 1980s. It won’t be back for a while. The sooner we can make the transition that decouples serious scholarship from academic tenure, the better off we’ll all be.

So what do I think are the key issues?

Sustaining motivation is probably the most important issue, and what I find is that many of the crutches that one can use in traditional academia to overcome this are not available in that form to someone working ‘independently’. There is no pressure to publish, which is a bonus, but it can also be a drawback. Currently I have two specific commitments: I have a book to write and promised someone a chapter for a collection, but I’m talking more or less self-imposed deadlines here.

Not having any time or funds to attend conferences is another important one. To facilitate independent scholars, more conferences should be online, and this is a development that I watch with interest. I notice that it is the less established branches of my subject, where funding lines are uncertain and where no ingrained patterns and habits have yet taken hold, that are making the largest inroads in this arena.

Being fairly invisible professionally a is a third issue. In my view, a few significant changes are required at various scholarly organisations to accommodate researchers who are not full time academics. What is required, in my view, is a notion of professional proficiency that is not immediately linked to an academic career. As I said above, I suspect that this will become increasingly important for the health of many disciplines in the future, with more and more academic ‘leavers’ taking significant expertise with them, increasing teaching loads for the ’stayers’, and wholesale department closures becoming more commonplace.

That’s it for the issues. I’d really be interested in reading about other people’s experiences in this regard, or maybe contribute to a robust debate on how to best advance the cause of independent scholars.

Tagged as: independent scholar, research

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