On ‘Contributing’ at Conferences

Now that the academic life is being given another shot, one gathers that attending — and “contributing” to — gatherings is a measurable indicator of academic-ness. CVs have sections (and sometimes pages) dedicated to this phenomenon.

How does one contribute? Either by presenting their work, or by showing off and asking one or more questions (actually snarky comment(s) in disguise), or by being (in)famous enough to preside over proceedings. If contributing by presenting work, one also needs to play the game of making sure they ask the right persons for their contributions to one’s own contribution. Signalling and what not.

One often recalls wisdom shared by older dodos, back in the day, when one was a mere fledgling: for example, an older dodo had once said that the purpose of a presentation is to validate a piece of work—share material from an earlier iteration, focussing on problems one has already tackled and answered in the final version. In doing this, the moment when critics blurt out their “contributions”, one knows whether they have answered the problems in the right fashion or not. And in all likelihood, even identified potential reviewer comments when submitting said work for publication.

Though, in the vein of showing off, I still struggle with using older and incomplete material for presentations. Worse still, is knowingly falling into the trap of contributing to others’ contributions.

One is a young dodo still.

At a recent gathering, I did some stalking of presenters. Studying various CVs, I think I have chanced upon a recent trend: the inclusion of a section on journal articles that have either been submitted for review, or articles that have been sent back with a “revise and resubmit.”

Back in the day, the practice (or so I thought) used to be to only list accepted and/or forthcoming articles in one’s CV. If one wants to boast about ongoing work, one should list a few working papers, a senior colleague had once told me.

Looks like CV padding skills are a different game now.

Of late, I have also been surprised by my surprise at the implicit lock-ins of academia.

Attending such gatherings makes me wonder whether we in academia have gotten stuck in replicating things done by others (a.k.a., the “let’s take paper x by so and so bigwig, add one variable or change the data and see if it holds” phenomenon). And, perhaps as an extension, are we, especially in the social sciences (hello, economics), languishing in pedagogical approaches to imparting knowledge because we are stuck on replication rather than challenging status quo?

Perhaps this phenomenon is a response by academics to the game that they are being forced to play. If knowledge creation was a public good, then in principle, it would be non-excludable and non-rivalrous—one academic partaking would not hamper others from partaking, nor would it reduce the amount available to others.

But that’s not the case now, is it? Because we have invested so much time in learning more and more about less and less, we want to create clubs where only those who have gone through the same things we have. And then do things to keep this club exclusive.

So people writing papers and citing each other. If you cite the right people, and in the right way, your contribution will be “acknowledged” by being cited by others. There is zero incentive to say anything new. Especially if the reward for the game is citations and/or recognition from an exclusive club.

This is not a critique of current academic circles that I can claim credit for. Lots of people are writing about it. Research over the last decade or so have taken deep-dives into the role of ghost journals and paid publications in this game. But, just like the DVORAK…