DISSEMINATING knowledge among learners is not the only duty of university academics; producing and publishing reading materials is also an integral part of their academic responsibility.
Therefore, conducting research and making research results available through publication outlets are emphasised at the university level. This explains the "public or perish" aphorism.
Since publishing is considered a proof of academic productivity and contribution, university lecturers and professors are always in a rush to have their work disseminated through print or electronic means.
The prevalence of university rankings and the consequent pressure on academics to publish are also pushing them to write and get their work published at an exponential rate.
However, there are pitfalls and snares, bugs and errors in the trade of publishing, which researchers need to identify and address to protect their careers and reputation.
What follows is a discussion of some not-so-helpful tendencies of a section of researchers and their adverse outcomes.
Recently I was preparing to make a long-distance presentation on manuscript preparation for academics and research students. While consulting various materials as part of my preparation for the presentation, I came across a striking metaphor for publication: childbirth.
Since then I have been pondering on the comparison between the academic practice of publishing and the (female) act of giving birth. The more I consider the likeness of these two phenomena the more amazed I become at the precision and consistency of the analogy.
The length of the human gestation period is more or less stable (9 to 10 months). Conversely, depending on the size and scope of a writing project, the time between conception (of ideas) and delivery (publication) may vary.
Despite this temporal dissimilarity, commonalities between childbirth and publication experiences are simply staggering.
As in the case of childbirth, the first step of any writing exercise is to 'conceive' an idea and then develop it into a full-fledged project. With sustained care, meticulous attention, and monitoring, the writer makes it to delivery, that is, publication.
Two of the pregnancy-related nightmares are miscarriage and stillbirth. Metaphorically, in writing practices too, the former is most common while the latter is dreaded. Some academics and researchers may conceive ideas and work on them for a while but abandon the project in the end. This leads to an early publication miscarriage.
The worst victims of publication miscarriage are probably conference/seminar/webinar papers. Many researchers tirelessly work on papers to present at academic events.
But miscarriage happens when they shelve the papers after making oral presentations and do not develop them into publishable research articles.
When one produces a paper for oral presentation, perhaps they have already accomplished 50 per cent of the publication task, but if they do not put the other 50 per cent effort into the project, it remains locked in their computer and is never published.
Some even put 80 or 90 per cent effort into a project and then abandon it, to be called a late-stage publication miscarriage.
Others complete the writing project and submit it to a publisher but their submission often gets rejected. This is stillbirth which is caused by, among others, insufficient care and attention during the gestation period.
That is to say, botched, weak, and poorly-prepared manuscripts are likely to disappoint and dampen their spirits.
By the way, an editor gains little by declining to publish a well-researched and well-written work; despite initial setbacks, such writing will eventually find a place in a good publication.
If an author has produced material worthy of publication in a reputable journal but rushes to get it published in a predatory one, that is like sending a child to a disreputable babysitter and subjecting them to abuse and other harm.
Like antenatal care during pregnancy, postnatal care is equally essential. That is to say, hard work and meticulousness during manuscript preparation may amount to nothing if caution is not exercised in selecting the right publisher.
In other words, just as a quality work published by a reputable press credits its author, placing it in a questionable outlet contributes to ruining its potential and damaging its author's reputation.
Many researchers work hard to prepare a manuscript but are not ready to move along the path of patience required to have it published in a good journal.
If a readable, high-quality paper is published in an infamous journal, its author's name will have an association with the kind of publisher it chooses. Such poor choices often dent the reputation of the writer.
What is worse, such a journal may cease publication and disappear at some time, as a result of which its contents may also have the same fate.
As duplicate publication is forbidden in the academic world, a good piece published in the wrong journal loses the possibility of a second chance and thus becomes unusable and obsolete.
An iniquitous and scandalous practice among deceitful researchers is plagiarism. This academic misconduct can be compared to stealing someone else's child and claiming it as their own.
Another unethical practice is forcing one's name into someone else's work, which can be likened to adopting someone else's child through kidnapping. The publication offspring thus produced is illegitimate.
Lastly, some researchers create a cabal of writers to commit authorship fraud.
For example, each member of the group writes one manuscript and all have their names included in the list of authors in each paper, irrespective of the level of their contribution.
The publications thus accumulated can be compared to children born through the primitive sexual promiscuity of group marriage.
If we dissect the metaphor of childbirth about publication, it may bring more interesting areas of similarities between their different aspects. What both require is extreme care, labour, thoroughness, and trust, the absence of which leads to disappointment, illegitimacy, and other integrity issues.
As mothers do in childbearing, delivery, and childrearing, writers are required to provide the best care to their written words.
Moreover, as sexual morality in conceiving a child is important, compliance with basic norms and requirements of authorship morality and publication ethics also deserves careful attention.
The writer is a professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at International Islamic University Malaysia. He can be reached at [email protected]
