[URBANTH-L]in praise of Christmas writing

[Barry Wellman]

I found the article you reprinted from Nature to be doubly sad:

1. It assumes everyone is Christian and therefore must get involved in
Christmas. Us Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. have our own
holidays.

2. It assumes that scholars write to "publish or perish". Two of the
biggest pleasures in my life are (a) to do research and (b) write it up.
The December break is great for giving me relatively uninterrupted time to
do that.

Happy Holiday Break to One and to All

 Barry Wellman
 _______________________________________________________________________

  S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC              NetLab Director
  Centre for Urban & Community Studies           University of Toronto
  455 Spadina Avenue          Room 418          Toronto Canada M5S 2G8
  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman            fax:+1-416-978-7162
  Updating history:     http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
         Elvis wouldn't be singing "Return to Sender" these days
 _______________________________________________________________________


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Today's Topics:

   1.
       NEWS: Come All Ye Scientists, Busy and Exhausted, oh come ye, oh
       come ye, out of the lab (Angela Jancius)


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Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2007 00:26:40 -0500
From: "Angela Jancius" <jancius at ohio.edu>
To: <urbanth-l at lists.ysu.edu>
Subject: [URBANTH-L]
 NEWS: Come All Ye Scientists, Busy and Exhausted, oh come ye, oh
 come ye, out of the lab
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Reply-To: Angela Jancius <jancius at ohio.edu>
Message: 1

From: Kristopher Olds <olds at geography.wisc.edu>

http://blog.beerkens.info/index.php/2007/12/xmas-workaholism-among-scientists/

Xmas Workaholism among Scientists
Posted by Eric on December 20th, 2007

A remarkable letter in today's correspondence section of Nature. For some
odd reason, a group of scientists from Oxford and the National University of
Singapore thought it would be a good idea to investigate the level of
research activity of scientists during the holidays.

In order to find out how many submissions were made to academic journals on
Christmas Day between 1996 and 2006, Richard Ladle, Ana Malhado and Peter
Todd searched Google Scholar for articles received on 25 December. Even
taking into account the overall increase in the volume of submissions, there
were about 600% more manuscripts received by journals on 25 December in 2006
than in 1996.

The authors suggest four potential reasons for this move towards seasonal
workaholism among scientists:

We are collectively falling victim to the 'publish or perish' institutional
culture, in which our professional success depends almost exclusively on our
publication record.

The pressure on scientists to publish is paralleled by an increase in their
administrative and teaching workloads. This pushes research and, in
particular, writing into vacation periods.

With the wide-scale implementation of electronic submission systems in the
late 1990s, most journals are now 'open for business' every day of the year.

Although Christmas Day seems to be an ideal opportunity to get on with some
blissfully uninterrupted research, we would urge our fellow scientists to
keep their laptops turned off and enjoy a bit of Christmas spirit. You never
know, Santa might then be more inclined to bring you that most popular of
presents - a paper published in Nature!

[Richard J. Ladle, Ana C. M. Malhado & Peter A. Todd. Come all ye
scientists, busy and exhausted. O come ye, O come ye, out of the lab. Nature
450, 1156 (20 December 2007)]



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