In this particular case, my application for the fellowship at Harvard specifically stated that I would be working on a book so everyone was on the same page going into it, there shouldn’t be any surprises there.

PS: Yes, I know that Esteri Hargittainen is pseudo-Finnish and that Finland is a Nordic, not a Scandinavian country. :-) ”

Oh kiitos (thanks) Jacob! Now you’ve saved me from my irresistible urge to make an annoying pedantic comment.

Have a nice day!

Antti

Now, I assume that you are vaguely familiar with the performance board evaluation exercises introduced in the UK by the Conservative governments (if not, Christopher Bertram can surely inform us). Basically, at regular intervals evaluation boards will descend on British academic departments and with the help of a lot of indicators – bibliometric and others – decide if they produce research of value or not.

The Scandinavian countries (Social Democratic governments or not) in general have enthusiastically adopted the gospel of New Public Management, including in the field of higher education. So Norway, Denmark and Sweden are in the process of removing basic research funding to universities and replacing it with a system building on productivity-based indicators. We don’t make our students any wiser (we produce STÅs or HSTs or whatever) and we don’t gain further academic insight – we produce publication marks which again will be used for the distribution of appropriations.

Our bureaucratic overlords have decided that basically there is only one legitimate form of academic publishing – the peer-reviewed journal article written in English. These are what will earn you – or rather: the department you are associated with – money. The number of marks or points you earn depend on the status of the journal, your work appears in, but basically a journal article (provided it is published in a proper academic language and not German, French, Hungarian or – heaven forbid – one of the Scandinavian languages) beats not only book chapters but also monographs. So if we assume the existence of Eszter having a Scandinavian double (Esteri Hargittainen?), our Esteri would have to consider if she couldn’t have made more stuff by splitting the book into articles and hawking them at various prestigious academic journals. After all, the book would earn her department one, possibly two points, while three or four article would earn the department eight.

And yes, these rules also apply to the social sciences and humanities at Scandinavian universities. To our overlords, technology and natural sciences are the models for all academia.

But – a brief look at Eszter’s CV informs us that she is an associate professor at NWU (belated congratulations with your tenure, btw!) and a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center and it may not be unreasonable to assume that the powers that be at Harvard are just a bit more flexible than Scandinavian bureaucrats. In which case, producing a book may indeed count as making more stuff.

And with this back to the New Year’s resolutions!

PS: Yes, I know that Esteri Hargittainen is pseudo-Finnish and that Finland is a Nordic, not a Scandinavian country. :-)

That’s interesting, it’s a nice positive approach. I wonder if it worked in the end, because it was a joint decision and it wasn’t something you were trying to do alone.

I know it’s OT - but could you expand on this a bit?

Since when has being off topic mattered to CT commenters?;-) This is a light thread, go for it. If Jacob checks back, I’d be curious to hear more on this point, too.

How many steps have you taken since you started recording them?

Over 5,457,798, more details are here. WalkerTracker helps me keep track, but it’s on me to input the numbers and on occasion I’ve forgotten to do so thus the “over”.

I know it’s OT - but could you expand on this a bit? Are you saying that they prefer academics not to write books? Or that they prefer other forms of output? and does this extend to all disciplines, or does it only apply to the natural sciences? My curiosity about this is not entirely idle…

First, drink more Bloody Marys

Second, eat more pork.

They seem staggeringly reasonable to me.

I am in favour of resolutions, because I cannot say

“If I want to do something then I’ll just start doing it. ”

without being a pathetic liar to myself.

Being true I would say:

“If I want to do something then I’ll start dreaming about how nice it would be if I did get to do that thing more (say, writing real letters to friends). I will start doing it a little bit (write a bit of a draft of a letter), but not get around to finishing it. I will then move to making plans for doing those things right after finishing other important things (say, finishing a thesis). When I break deadlines for other important things, I will spend a lot of time lamenting that I did not get around to that wonderful resolution thing (letter-writing). Next comes the blame phase, the time for which will contribute to breaking another deadline for other important things, which of course will postpone getting around to resolution stuff. Occassionally I surprise myself, things suddenly materialise, and I do get to finish stuff. This happens most often when I spend time with The Thing to Finish rather than with interesting blogs.”

So my new year’s resolution for this year:

Rise early. Open main document. Stay away from Crooked Timber until after 8 p.m. And: Finish. Thesis. Very Soon.

Not according to the bibliometric indexes used by the Danish Ministry of Science. If it’s an anthology, even worse. If you were working at a Danish university, you would be considered a liability by your head of department. ;-)

On a more serious (?) note: Everybody talks and writes about New Year’s Resolutions around this time of the year but at the age of 44 I have yet to meet someone who have actually made, let alone kept one. Do I know the wrong people, or…? (And no: I have no resolutions myself.)

Surely, ‘selling more worms’ is not a common or garden variety of NY’s resolution (though the worms sold might be). Surely not cliche.

‘I resolve to proceed with greater resolve’ was mine.

So yes – I keep them religiously – and usually I have 20 or 30 bullet points of them. I always look forward to making them and spending some time summing up the year and thinking how the next could be improved.