Yes, I’ve been quiet for a month, lots of other things happening. Most pertinent, I’ve had something of a cleaning of my personal editorial duties and resigned in the last few months from three editorial positions (Interacting with Computers, JASIST, and the Int. Journal of Digital Libraries) and mitigated that somewhat by joining the board at the Journal of Documentation. Been trying to lessen the reviewing load which was becoming increasingly heavy with one of the above and it’s disheartening to see one’s rejections ignored or being landed with a new paper to review within hours of submitting a completed review — talk about punishing those who promptly do the work. We need a system that auto removes those who complete reviews for a fixed period so as to reward them.
I’ve also made a resolution not to write for anyone but myself, meaning I am declining all requests for papers or chapters and taking total control over what I want to write — it might surprise you but many academics spend their lives writing on demand, so now, at 46, I’ve decided to stop saying ‘yes’ unless I really want to do it — ditto talks. Well, that’s the New Year resolution at least.
Naturally ALISE took up a large part of January and now we are set for the iSchools Conference, and you can appreciate how the annual schedule is getting increasingly overloaded. I recommend fewer conferences and stricter reviewing, but then how would the business end of academia cope? There’s a conference for everyone and at anyone time I suspect everyone’s at a conference. Ah knowledge….