Well, the answer could be to hold better conversations at dinner parties, or to help the team at the pub quiz. Or it could be to help the stroppy niece with her homework. Or perhaps it is to make it clear to the uber-cool black t-shirted attendant that you’re in the gallery for the exhibition, not because it’s raining.

But none of the above is the answer I was thinking about.

Perhaps it is because at least some contemporary art represents what some might call the zeitgeist, what’s trendy, of the moment, what’s avant-garde. If researchers are to get contracts with publishers, gigs on television and make their work say something now in ways that will have ‘impact’, then getting onto ‘the cultural’ through contemporary art ( as well as literature film etc) might be helpful.

Well, maybe that’s an answer for the academic cool-hunters, but it’s not the one I’m thinking of.

I’ve got more and more interested in the connections between contemporary art practices and the kinds of knowledge-related concerns that researchers fret about. In academic circles these concerns are usually categorised as the e and o words – however, I’m not sure if I ought to write epistemology and ontology in a blog post. So rather than worry about the ‘correct’ term, it’s probably just sensible to illustrate what I mean.

It seems to me that a lot of contemporary art practices are about disrupting taken-for-granted ways of seeing, hearing, feeling and thinking. When viewers first encountered Duchamp’s toilet in a gallery they were challenged to think about what were their preconceptions about what counted as ‘proper’ art. When viewers first saw Tracy Emin’s unmade bed, they were challenged to consider if any of their responses to the piece arose from deeply felt understandings about gender, class and ‘decency’, as well as art.

Knowing this tradition of challenge to common sense and common assumptions, I was particularly struck by the commonality of contemporary art and researchers’ concerns at a recent exhibition by Klaus Weber. See a short news report about the exhibition here.

Weber’s pieces played with Enlightenment binary thinking – he constructed objects and installations that raised questions about what counts as natural, what is a machine, why do we understand human history as a story of progress, what are the relationships between humans and animals, humans and insects, humans and plants. Juxtapositions of man-made and natural objects opened up a space in which gallery visitors were asked to consider why we persist in seeing human manufacture as both different from and superior to that practised by animals and insects. We were asked to think about the consequences of this belief. Weber also played with perceptions and our assumptions that to see and hear is to access ‘reality’ and ‘truth’.

Weber’s concerns overlap those that are discussed and debated regularly within doctoral education. It would be hard these days to find a research methods course or text that does not deal with the problematic history of Enlightenment thought, with the need to seriously attend to taken-for-granted ways of thinking, with the importance of deconstructing as well as constructing knowledge. Like contemporary artists, researchers-in-training are asked to consider on what basis the research community can claim to see, hear, feel, and know.

Perhaps it is because the processes that are used in and as contemporary art practices often go further than other disciplines in higher education that we do not see the commonalities between us. Contemporary artists are, it’s true, quite often more confronting, more committed to disruption and deconstruction, more playful, more likely to mobilise the absurd and carnivalesque, than many of us who are located with other disciplinary thinking and writing traditions.

But this is no reason to ignore the potential for cross-disciplinary conversation.

As we teach doctoral researchers the importance of rational, reasoned, evidenced argument – rather than the open-ended provocation, ambiguities, inconsistencies and ambivalences that are characteristic of much contemporary arts practices – there are nevertheless some possibilities for thinking about how these arts practices might inform our current research methods education.

Why not expect that all doctoral researchers should go the gallery? Why not acknowledge the shared interests and concerns across disciplines? Why not countenance the notion that, by seriously encountering contemporary arts practices, those engaged in research education as both students and teachers might learn the same ‘stuff’ differently, or perhaps even learn more!

Contemporary art – who needs it? Perhaps research education does…

Once upon a time, when I was studying for a PhD, I joined a reading group. At the time I was enrolled at a university some 500 miles away from where I lived and it was hard to get there very often. I certainly couldn’t be part of an everyday research culture. I worked largely on my own, choosing the books and articles that seemed most germane to my topic.

Then, I was invited to join a reading group at a local university. The trouble was that all of the group was focused on literacy/ies and popular culture/s, while I was concerned with questions of policy and equity. There was of course some overlap between their concerns and my own, but their primary reading list looked very different from mine.

Nevertheless, I was keen to be part of a group and I was not uninterested in literacy/ies and popular culture/s so I decided that reading ‘outside’ my area would not be a major distraction. And I needed the sociality of the group.

As it turned out, the decision to respond positively to the invitation was a very good one. Initially, I was concerned that the group was reading a wide range of cultural ‘classics’, many of which I’d heard of but wouldn’t otherwise have picked up, since they didn’t seem to be required for my particular thesis. But this concern soon disappeared.

What I read with the group were books that sparked off ideas, and these made me think differently about the problem I was investigating. I made friends with some authors that were ultimately very useful in my research, even though I hadn’t imagined they would be. Indeed, they helped to provide the ‘originality’ of approach on which the examiners commented favorably. And some of these books and their authors have become staunch allies in the work I continue to do.

But equally important, I found that, in reading these books, I gained a deeper understanding of lots of others. And this is why reading widely and out of what seems to be the immediate area is important and useful.

Scholarship is highly inter-textual, that is, the texts that we write contain references to lots of other writings, often well beyond what is actually cited. This is writing of the kind that Bakhtin (1981) called heteroglossic. There are multiple layers of meaning in heteroglossic texts, and the more the reader understands the references that sit behind the actual writing surfaces, the more they get from their reading.

Let me give an example to make this a bit clearer. A text might contain a reference to surveillance. The actual piece might not explore this concept in any depth, if at all, because the writer assumes that the reader will bring to their reading an understanding of the way in which a theory of discipline and surveillance was explicated by Foucault. Even if Foucault is never ever mentioned, his work is there in the writing. It is hiding behind the term surveillance. If the reader understands this reference and its hidden allusions, then they will read the piece differently than someone who doesn’t have a clue that there is anything more to the term surveillance other than its dictionary meaning.

The point I am making here is that reading writings in the social sciences and/or arts and humanities is never just a question of reading the words on the page. It is always about inter-texuality and is dependent on what intellectual resources the reader can bring to the task. The more the reader understands key texts, histories of ideas, debates, traditions and trends within the discipline and field generally, the greater their appreciation and understanding of what is written is likely to be.

The upshot of my early reading group experience is that I’ve not forgotten the importance of reading outside my field. I currently have on my reading pile books about architecture, contemporary art practices, aesthetics, mobilities and memory. None of these seem to be directly related to my immediate research, but each of them is providing stimulation and new resources to think with. Overall, these disparate texts are deepening my understandings of knowledge-producing traditions in related areas and creating a deeper reservoir of potential meaning-making resources.

I now try to encourage doctoral students to read widely, and not just confine themselves to the ‘relevant’. Neither they nor I can predict how this wider reading might become directly applicable. But what I know from my own experiences, and about scholarship in general, is that much of it will at some time, and in some way, be worth-while. Of course this is not at the expense of what must be done in order to pass. But there is usually time, in a doctorate, to fit in more than the immediately utilitarian, and much to be gained from doing so.

Bakhtin, M. M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin and London: University of Texas Press.

So I don’t object to starting a sentence with a conjunction.

Sentence fragments don’t phase me. At all. As long as they’re not overused, I can deal with them.

I’m quite partial to ending a sentence with with or to. That way, I don’t sound as if I’m recreating a Victorian novel or an Act of Parliament. The students I work with often write in this way too, and occasionally I fear that they may not actually learn that it matters from whom they learn the rules that I don’t follow.

And I really am quite attached to the split infinitive. It pleases me no end that many contemporary academic publishers choose to boldly venture into more contentious contemporary modes of expression, rather than choosing to stick rigidly to more ‘correct’ usage.

Using a singular verb for ‘data’ and a plural verb with ‘staff’ just sounds better to me, but I’m prepared to compromise here for the sake of peace and quiet.

But I’m at a stage in my career where I’ve decided not to submit to those peer-reviewed journals whose editorial Death Eaters apply the multiple rules of APA – that stands for Academic Pedantry Association – to my writing. I’ve been there, and my colleague Barbara and I still have the evidence – a page and a half of the APA ‘violations’ (sic) we made. It was lexical dispute after colloquial difference right up until the time the paper went to press.

However, everyone has their breaking point. Inside every grammar liberal lives a grammarnazi. My transmogrification comes from the use and abuse of the apostrophe.

I’ve just reviewed a load of papers in which a rather shocking number of people didn’t seem to know how to use the apostrophe. Plural noun after plural noun had one, while abbreviated verbs didn’t. As for the possessive – well, it was just random. After the first hour of irritation, I became numb. It was literally a case of me becoming comatose about the comma toss.

Judy Horacek has it right in her wonderful cartoon of Apostrophe Man. She’s invented a superhero who confiscates the chalk from every restaurant and fruit and veg shop owner who writes Meal’s and Apple’s and Special’s.

If only I had an Apostrophe Man.

So what is to be done about apostrophe abominations? Learning three different language rules just seems to be too much for some people. Maybe the answer is what I used to teach struggling readers… Spell check usually picks up the verb abbreviations. After that, it’s better to sin by omission than clutter up the text with apostrophes in the hope that one of them might be right.

Hey apostrophe sinners, try this next time – #ifindoubtleaveitout.

So, how does setting up your bid to fail actually work? Well here’s a list – do any one of these and you’re absolutely guaranteed to be in trouble.

(1) Don’t tell the reviewer why the research is needed and/or worth funding. It’s good enough to say that there isn’t much around, but it’s much more effective just to say what your research is about and let the reviewer guess who would be interested, who needs to know and why. OR just say nothing exists like this anywhere. After all, reviewers aren’t likely to know or check are they? OR of course you could just claim it’s going to solve every problem known in your field, or something not too far removed from that.

(2) Write in really dense language – use a lot of technical terms, quotations and jargon because that’s scholarly rhetoric, yes? Minimise the number of straightforward sentences.

(3) Spend most of the case for support section reviewing the literature. After all, at least some of the reviewers don’t know the field and those that do, want to know that you know. It’s like the lit review in a thesis, isn’t it?

(4) Have one really huge research question which you may or may not be able to answer with this project. OR offer several different sets of research questions and let the reviewer guess which ones you really mean. OR have a huge number of questions but don’t explain why you need that many or how they are related to each other or how they allow you to provide a coherent answer to your question.

(5) Don’t spend much time on the methods. After all, an interview is an interview is an interview, a survey is a survey is a survey… you don’t need to spell out how many, how often, where, how long, what are known issues with this approach and how this relates to the research questions…

(6) Don’t connect your data set to the question(s) and don’t consider what it might allow you to see and say and what its limitations might be.

(7) Don’t bother saying anything about analysis. That’s just technical stuff. OR if you use software to analyse data spend a long time describing it, even if it’s something well known like NVivo.

(8) Don’t bother with a timetable for the research. The reviewer can guess what happens when.

(9) Don’t bother to specify who the potential academic beneficiaries of the research actually are. It’s OK to say everyone in the field is just gagging to know your findings. Don’t say how you are going to reach them. Mentioning journal publications, conferences and book writing is quite enough.

(10) Don’t bother to say much about potential research users. Waffle a bit about media appearances, blog and a seminar or two. You don’t need to get specific and say what you are going to do, when, with whom, why, and how you will know if it’s made a blind bit of difference.

(11) Ignore ethics. It’s enough to say that you follow the guidelines and that there’s a committee somewhere that’ll make sure you fill in the right forms.

(12) Don’t spend a lot of time justifying the resources. After all you’re not going to make it up are you? You really do need three new computers, a dozen video cameras and a full time secretary and reviewers ought to understand that if they’ve read the proposal.

(13) Don’t bother with spell checking and formatting the document. What’s a few typos between friends? It’s not going to suggest you’re sloppy, it’s just that you’re writing this at the last minute and you really haven’t had time to do everything.

(14) Don’t bother to get anyone else to read your bid before you put it in. After all what would they know? They’ll probably just suggest you make a few changes and you know best – right?????

And of course this is all an exaggeration, but maybe not as much as you might think.

There are four things to keep in mind when writing feedback:

(1) Write the kind of comments you expect to get

Most journals suggest that feedback to author/s should be positive and offer concrete advice. However this is not always what happens.

I have seen some truly awful feedback destined for authors. Among the worst… This is the kind of article that gives this methodology a bad name… This is a naïve and simplistic view of… The author has clearly never read beyond… I would fail this if it was a first year essay… This is just awful. There is usually an opportunity to say this kind of thing to an Editor if you must, but it is devastating for author/s to get such off-handed, smart-alec comments.

It’s also not helpful to become teacherly. This is a peer writing, it’s not a student essay. Even if this is obviously written by a doctoral researcher, they are expecting to be dealt with as a colleague, not sent to the kiddy table.

Feedback comments should be appreciatively critical, just like the reading of the article. Generosity of spirit and collegiality in tone is the order of the writing feedback day.

(2) Use a structure for the feedback which allows the author to follow what you are saying.

Remember that the author/s now know that they need to do more, so they are reading with a sinking heart. So you need to be specific as well as kind.

I generally aim for three quarters to a page in length, unless it is an accept without change –this is usually just a paragraph or two saying what I think is great about the paper.

I have a bit of a formula I use for reviews. So here’s what I do – it’s not the only way to write feedback of course, but it’s ONE way to approach the task.

• Write two to four sentences summarising what the paper is about. So something like… This paper addresses… and presents evidence that … . The author/s argue that… This gives the author the chance to see whether you have understood what they wanted to say. If you haven’t got it, they can then consider how they might have produced this misreading.

• If you really enjoyed reading the article, say so now before you start with the concerns.

• Write something about the contribution, as in… The article clearly makes a contribution to/has the potential to add to what we know about/will make a significant addition to … This might be linked to a caveat such as… but needs further work in order to bring this to fruition/realise its potential, needs some revision in order to achieve this.

• Then, if there are suggested revisions, say whether they are major or minor and how many there are, as in .. I have two suggestions for major revisions and one more minor point… or I offer some issues that the author/s needs to consider in the methodological section and a recommendation for some restructuring of the findings…

• Then dispassionately state the changes that you think are necessary, based on your reading of the article. Try to focus on the things that are the most fundamental.

You may just outline the problem (s) and suggest that the author/s needs to find a way of resolving it/them. You might offer one or two suggestions. Or you might have something very definite in mind. Any of these is OK, although just outlining the problem can be a bit scary for the author/s when they come to revise. Whatever, you just need to be explicit about which of these you are doing.

If there is reading that the author/s need to do, give them the references, don’t just say there is literature out there that they ought to know about.

If you are suggesting major revisions, then there probably isn’t much point in outlining twenty five specific things for the author/s to do; it’s the big bits that are the most important for the author/s to grasp. Too much detail and they will be completely confused/overwhelmed/dispirited. And if it’s major revisions you will get another look at the paper, at which time you can pick up any small things that still need resolution.

Finally, succintly list any grammatical, proofing and referencing problems.

• Conclude with some encouragement. This might involve repeating the potential contribution and the importance/value of the author/s continuing to work on the piece.

(3) Be clear

Reviews can be written in a kind of code, just like real estate advertisements. While it is important not to be rude/sarcastic/patronising, it is just as important to be clear. If there is a problem that you can see with an aspect of the paper, say what it is and don’t waffle. Don’t say The references need attention , say The references need to be in the appropriate journal style. Don’t say The methodology section needs to be clearer, say The methodology section needs to include information about the site, sample and types of data generated as well as the methods of analysis. Etc.

The clearer the feedback the more chance the author/s has of deciding whether they agree with you and/or doing exactly what’s needed to get the article to publication.

(4) Don’t tell them to read all your work – unless you really ARE the key figure in the field

This can be really hard. After all, you’ve been sent the article to review on the basis of your expertise and you know how your work might help. BUT refereeing is not about upping your citations, it’s about the author/s writing about their work and they don’t have to cite everything in the field in order to do this. Perhaps the tip is to only require a reference to your work if it’s central to the argument being made.

Making a publication recommendation can feel like the hardest part of the reviewing process.

New reviewers often think they don’t have enough experience…. They don’t know enough about the journal, they don’t yet have a strong, internalised sense of what makes for a good article – after all they haven’t written a lot themselves. They think, erroneously but understandably, who am I to decide this? They forget that they have actually READ a lot. Reviewing can also produce feelings of anxiety, guilt or sadness – we know that someone, somewhere, could be bitterly disappointed by what we have recommended. These negative feelings are not necessarily rational – but they are a logical response to the game of journal publication.

Perhaps this is why newish reviewers most usually opt for what seems to be the safest and nicest option – publish but with some revisions required. Deciding to reject outright CAN feel extremely hard to do – although occasionally as a journal editor I encounter a few early career researchers who err on the side of harshness rather than generosity. I have also observed, although I haven’t taken a particularly organised look at this, that it is often the very experienced reviewer who recommends publication without any changes.

So it seems helpful here, in a blog intended to open a conversation with newer reviewers, to think about the basis for the two publication recommendations that are not so comfortable.

On what grounds might we reject an article for publication?

Aside from the obvious things – it’s a rant not a reasoned piece of argument, it’s a piece of journalism, it’s a blog, it’s been sent to the wrong journal , it’s plagiarised – here are some possible reasons for rejection:

(1) It’s straight from a thesis chapter – it’s a trawl of the literature, has far too much to say about methodology and/or theoretical resources, has no argument and no conclusion
(2) It’s bad research – the quants are wrong, the interpretation of the qual data is dodgy, you can drive a truck through the claims made
(3) There is no analysis – it’s a plodding report of a survey or a set of interviews and nothing else
(4) It’s unethical – people may be harmed if this is published, it’s sexist/racist/homophobic
(5) It’s got too many ideas in it – you can’t follow what is being said at all, there isn’t enough space devoted to each part of the argument, the various bits don’t seem to relate to one another
(6) The argument doesn’t make sense – you can’t follow what is being said at all, there isn’t enough space devoted to each part of the argument, the various bits don’t seem to relate to one another
(7) It’s not significant – there is no answer to the So What question. That is, it’s too local, it’s too small in scope to say anything… it’s naracisstic and self-indulgent, and/or the conclusion is what we already know and there are heaps of other articles which say the same thing and/or it doesn’t seem to say anything much at all.

We ought not to reject something because it’s written in a style we don’t like or it uses big words or we disagree with its party politics. We can raise all of these objections as reasoned arguments in a response which might, in the case of party politics, require revision to recognise different points of view.

We also ought not to reject something just because it’s boring. Again, that’s for revision, unless the reasons for it being boring are any of (1) – (7) above.

On what grounds might we recommend publication without changes?

Setting aside envy we can see that:

(1) The paper is very well written, and it’s well structured. It’s a good read. It’s elegant. It might even be pleasurable!!
(2) You can follow the argument, and the way in which it’s been constructed and on what basis. The claims that are made stack up with the data and the analysis.
(3) It says something significant, it offers important new knowledge, it offers a new way to think about/talk about/investigate something, it offers a healthy challenge to the field. You’ve been trying to sort this out and they’ve done it.
(4) Anything you can think of to improve it isn’t really necessary, and it would just be tinkering for the sake of it with something that’s already pretty darn good. (You wish you’d written it/on a good day you could do half as well/you want to give it to others.)

SO…

The thing to do when making a recommendation is to try to focus on the reasons for the decision, not the feelings. After all, it’s the reasoning you have to use to write the feedback.

And for the most common category – revising and resubmitting? I will deal with this in the third and final blog about reviewing; it will be focused on giving feedback to the author and specifying what they need to do, whether this is a few adjustments here and there, or a pretty substantive rewrite.

Before even beginning to read, the first thing to get clear about is the STANCE you have to take as a reviewer.

Once you’ve clicked ‘agree to review’ and you have the article in your inbox, you now have to put aside all of those debates about whether blind peer refereeing is a good or a bad thing, or whether it’s here to stay or on the way out. You’ve got the article and you need to do a good job. The author(s) has spent a piece of their life writing it, they have put their faith in the reviewing system – that’s you – and there is probably a lot riding on whether it gets published.

The job of reviewing is about deciding whether the paper is of sufficient quality to be published, not whether it ‘s the most ground-breaking piece of research you’ve ever come across. And you have to read the text, not as if it’s the paper you would have written if you’d done this bit of research, but rather as the research and writing that has been done.

This is reviewing as an appreciative critical stance, rather than one which is dominated by the will to offer a killer critique delivered in the most assertive and acerbic prose possible.

The second thing is to MAKE SURE THAT THERE IS NO CONFLICT OF INTEREST, that is, the article is not obviously written by your best friend or your worst enemy or is about a project that you’ve worked on. If any of these are the case you need to send it back. We do eventually end up reviewing things by people we think we know and this is tricky – we have to try to hold that kind knowledge entirely at bay. We have to treat all papers as if they were written by complete strangers. If we can’t do this, we have to send them back.

The third thing to do is to READ THE ABSTRACT AND THE ARTICLE RIGHT THROUGH ONCE. The goal here is to see what the author(s) is trying to say and to grasp the paper as a whole text.

Next READ THE ABSTRACT AND THE ARTICLE AGAIN asking yourself these TWELVE QUESTIONS – and I’m sure you can think of some others:

(1) Does the paper fit in the journal? Does it address an issue /problem /report on a piece of research which the readers of this journal will find relevant and/or of interest? The answer here is likely to be yes, since Editors usually weed out articles that don’t fit before they send them out, but it’s useful to ask the question.

(2) What is it about the paper that will be of interest to readers of this journal? What existing debates, spaces in the literature, problems or issues does it address? Is it connected to existing and ongoing conversations in the journal and if so how? Does it explicitly refer to other articles in the journal about the same topic? Is this paper of sufficient interest – that is, is it something that is significant enough to warrant publication? What does it offer that is new? ( Of course it might be highly innovative or field changing, but remember it just needs to be new enough and important enough to this readership, not world shattering – and yes, that’s a value judgement and all of this refereeing process is, which is what makes it contentious.) Can you justify your judgment?

(3) Does it establish a clear warrant for its topic within current policy/practice or the field, and if not, is the lack of warrant a problem in this journal – that is, are all articles expected to be explicitly situated in the field of readers’ interest in some way? (The vast majority of journals expect this.)

(4) Does it have a point to make? Does it have one, or at most two, ideas – or is it hard to work out what the point is? Could the point be made clearer, and if so where and how – check the introduction for a statement of intent and the conclusion. Can you summarise the point the article is trying to make in a sentence or two? If you can’t do this, then there is a problem with the article.

(5) Does it refer economically to the key literatures and/or theoretical resources it needs in order to make its case? Or does it offer an inappropriate peacock’s display of reading?

(6) If it is an empirical piece of work, do you know enough about how the research was conducted to trust it? Do you understand the basis on which the writer says they will make claims? Or is it an over-detailed methods treatise?

(7) If it is a theoretical piece, is there sufficient detail about the theory to allow you to follow the way it is used? Is it a set of quotes strung together or is it clear that the writer knows and understands the theory they are using? Is it really just a self-indulgent theor-orgasm?

(8) If it is an empirical piece of work, is this reported in a way that is comprehensible and defensible? Does it go beyond the merely descriptive to offer some kind of interesting analysis? Is there enough evidence to show how the analysis has been made? Does this seem robust and rigorous? If quantitative, are the calculations accurate and sound? If qualitative, do the interpretations seem well justified?

(9) Does the conclusion address the so what question – here is this piece of research I’ve written about – so what? Who cares? What difference does it make to whom and why? Or is the conclusion just a restatement of the article? Or does it introduce new information? (Neither of these last two options cut the mustard as a conclusion.)

(10) Is the abstract a fair representation of the article that you’ve read? Does it tell the reader what is to come? Does the title aptly sum up the essence of the piece? Does it move beyond an advertisement for the article and offer a taster of what is to come? If you found this title online would you want to click on it to go further?

(11) Is the article well written? Is the prose too dense or too naïve? Is it well balanced, that is, it’s not top- or back-heavy /light? Are there enough headings or too many? Are the headings informative – could you understand the argument in the article just from reading these headings? Are the sections in a logical order? Do they flow from one to another or does the reader get lost? Is there some clear signposting for readers to follow, particularly if the argument is complex?

(12) Does the article meet the journal conventions in titling, headings, referencing and word length? Does the English expression need attention? Has the article been carefully proof read?

Now CHECK YOUR BIAS. Do you disagree violently with the article? If so, on what basis? Could you justify publication on the grounds that the article is well written, well-argued and defensibly produced but nevertheless contentious. Consider whether this journal is one which welcomes internal debate. Would this article contribute to that? One of the critiques of peer reviewing is that it supports the status quo – do you think that there is any chance that your judgments do that, and if so, is this OK or could you live with making a more risky judgment?

You now have sufficient information to make a decision about whether the article is publishable, needs revisions and if so to what extent, or should be rejected – and that’s another task and the next blog.

But finally, remember that the reviewing process is CONFIDENTIAL and as much as you might want to, you can’t discuss it with others.

Here I’m talking about one option – the unseen advisory role that academics can take by providing expert ‘background’ advice. This is where you, the academic researcher, is either rung up or emailed and asked if you will speak to someone about a particular topic in order to help a media company or person develop a programme/article/piece.

Most magazine media formats and documentary media – for example, newsprint magazine articles, documentary films and current affairs extended features in print or television – begin a new project with some kind of semi-structured inquiry. This might be conducted by a print or radio journalist or by a specifically employed social researcher.

Media researchers look for key debates, conflicts, figures and explanations that they can use to construct some kind of narrative amenable to either audio or audio-visual production. While this is not rigorous research in the ways that we advocate in the higher education research community, it is nevertheless a form of inquiry. It is one always conducted within very tight timelines and budgetary constraints.

The media researcher usually starts by doing a bit of web-based reading, and then contacting someone they know, or someone they have found in an existing media archive/via google search/on social media. After this initial contact has been made, they often then use a snowballing technique to find more people to talk to and to find references to things they need to read.

Academic researchers contacted for background advice by media researchers are NOT being asked to speak on the record – on the record is where you are either the ‘talent’, a commentator or a ‘talking head’. However, it’s always important to check at the outset how your words will be used. If they are going to be on the record, then this is not background advice.

The background academic adviser usually has only one or two interactions with the particular media researcher. Background advice is NOT an on-going involvement – on-going advisory involvement in television and film is usually contracted as expert consultancy, and is paid and acknowledged in the credits. However there are sometime occasions when background advice goes on and on. Then it feels more like on-going consultancy. The academic researcher has to consider whether they are prepared to continue on an ad-hoc and unofficial basis or whether they want to formalise the arrangement.

Academic researchers contacted as expert background advisers may find that they have to spend half an hour or so explaining things that seem pretty obvious to an expert in the field – particular history, contexts, debates and the ‘evidence’ that exists – but this is because the media researcher is a beginner to the topic. What the media researcher is seeking is a concise, short-hand introduction. They want to know the key things that you know in as short a time as possible, and they want your steer on the topic in hand as plainly as you can say it.

Media researchers have some patience with the kinds of caveats that academic researchers generally put about their judgements but in the end, they do want you to take some kind of stand. This is so that, after talking to a number of academic researchers and others involved in whatever it is, they have a sense of the different positions and interests involved.

Media researchers sometimes present views which an academic researcher will find problematic because they are ‘common sense’/derived from very partial points of view/stereotypes. It is not helpful to deal with these in a hostile or caustic or condescending manner. The media researcher after all is not just an intelligent member of the public, but has also been trained by the scholarly community, often to doctoral level. They may either not yet know enough about the topic, or they may very well just be playing devil’s advocate in order to see how a rebuttal can be formulated. Either way, rudeness will be counterproductive to their grasp of the immediate topic. They may also of course decide you are unhelpful and you never know what this might mean for future contacts and opportunities.

Sometimes the media researcher will ask for something that is not possible or unethical. They might want you to present them with some kind of literature review which you have no time to do. Or they may want you to reveal something about your research location or informants, something academic researchers are not able to do.

So how does this work? Well here’s an example.

I often get contacted by people who want to write or film something about young people excluded from school. They find me on google via the Joseph Rowntree Foundation website where there is an executive summary and report of research I did with my colleague Lisa Russell about the provision of alternatives to exclusion. JRF obviously has good tags and key words as the report seems not too difficult to locate. The media researchers never know that I used to run a community school which catered for kids who were kicked out or walked out of mainstream schools. So I always tell them this at the start of our conversation so they know that I know about the topic from more than one angle.

I usually talk to the media researcher interested in exclusion one time only and for about three quarters of an hour. Most of this time is explaining the rules about exclusion, what schools are supposed to do and what happens in Pupil Referral Units – in other words it’s pretty basic information. The rest of the time is spent summarising the findings of the JRF research about what makes for good practice and then fielding a few questions about why this kind of practice isn’t uniform across the country in all services.

I always try to make two points very strongly – I have got something to say in no uncertain terms – namely, that I am interested in excluded young persons’ entitlement to education , not just their welfare, and that there are too many young people who are fobbed off with part-time courses which assume that they are at best only suited for and likely to get semi-skilled work, rather than them being offered choices which include on-going formal education. So I do have a message which I want to get across.

But the last time I was contacted I was also asked if I could refer the media researcher to some places where there was bad practice. They had no problem finding good practice I was told, but they needed to show the opposite in their documentary film too. I refused to do this on ethical grounds but I know that the same media researcher continued to ask other colleagues in the field the same question. It is important to recognise that Formal Ethics was not the only ethical issue at stake here. My colleagues and I were being asked to be complicit in a deception, since any site we nominated as bad practice would simply be asked if they were prepared to be filmed, not that they were being set up to be the example of what not to do. They would find out about this designation only when the film went to air. It was important for all of the academic researchers to recognise that this was what was at stake in this request for background information.

The lesson here is that it is crucial not to be too dazzled by or too cautious about any request for background advice. It doesn’t pay to be over-suspicious but on the other hand, it is not a pastime to be undertaken naively. Above all, academic researchers need to see the provision of background advice as a contribution to a better informed media and a better informed media product. This doesn’t equate to giving away or giving way on the things that we hold to be important and ‘true’.

Post script: Perhaps I ought to put on record that I have had various kinds of involvements with media. In another life I was a long-time broadcaster on community radio and also acted as spokesperson in my position as elected president of an Australian school principals association. These two activities led to a continuing research interest in media and various aspects of education, looking at both policy and the ways in which schooling is represented.

Different kinds of questions produce different kinds of knowledge contributions and often imply particular kinds of methods.

Descriptive questions aim to provide some qualitative or quantitative information about something – they want to find out how much or to what extent something happens. They may generate themes or categories as part of the construction of a description.

• How do preschool children use information and communication technologies?
• How much time do children spend playing computer games?
• When do children choose to use the computer and for what purposes?
• What do children learn from playing computer games?

Analytic questions take a description further. They set out to look for patterns, trends, processes, or causal relationships between things, events, or people. They can be expressed as hypotheses whereas descriptive questions cannot.

• How has the pattern of children’s computer use changed in the last four years?
• What are the class backgrounds of children who play computer games every day?
• How does children’s computer use relate to their educational attainment?

Evaluative questions show how well or badly a goal/state/level/norm is being achieved. Such questions require a lot of careful definitional work to determnine what counts as well or badly.

• What do parents do to promote responsible computer use? (how would responsible use be defined?)
• How effective is the strategy of banning mobile phones in schools? ( what would be considered effective?)

Predictive questions want to foretell behaviour or events on the basis of trends or models. These generally require some kind of quantitative approach.

• Will children spend less time playing computer games if they are involved in sporting activities?
• Will children spend less time playing commercial games if they are taught to design their own?

Problem-solving questions are committed to change something for the better. These are often used in practitioner research, action research and design research.

• What can schools do to promote critical use of digital information?
• How can teachers use information and communication technologies to improve their own learning?
• How can libraries improve the ways in which their computer facilities are accessed?

Theory building questions desire new ways of understanding a thing, event(s), people or social phenomena.

• How might we understand the ways in which children learn literacy/ies through playing computer games?
• What can learning theory gain from cultural studies approaches to children’s use of computer games?
• What questions is it helpful to ask about children’s computer use?

Acknowledgements: This heuristic was prompted by and owes something to the questions found in Ch 5, Nygaard, L (2008) Writing for scholars. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. However, the writing of each type of question as an active agent is to see research texts as an actor in the research process. More of this later.

And when I say public I mean that there was an audience. In this case the public was made up of family, friends, doctoral students and staff members from the faculty in which the doctoral study had been undertaken.

Of course, the oral defence wasn’t all there was to it. There’d been a written report to start with in response to the thesis – and then the candidate had had a chance to revise the manuscript in the light of what the two examiners said.

The candidate began proceedings with a twenty minute presentation of the research – its origins, the question, the methods and findings and the contribution to knowledge. Then came the questions. There I was, with another external examiner, dressed in academic gowns, interrogating the candidate just as I would have in a viva. And while after the questioning we did depart to consider our verdict, there really wasn’t any uncertainty. We all knew that the candidate had passed before we had begun the formal proceedings.

So what was the purpose of the interrogation by the opponents/examiners if it wasn’t to pass or fail the dissertation?

This problem vexed me and my colleague opponent. We eventually came to the conclusion that the defence served purposes other than passing and failing. We identified three important things that were happening:

1. The defence was a ceremony which served as a rite of passage into the academy. The conversation with the opponents symbolised the way in which any contribution to knowledge is in reality a conversation with other scholars who receive it appreciatively, but also critically. As opponents we acted on behalf of the wider academy, and materially but also symbolically, welcomed the candidate into our ranks.

2. The defence continued the learning process for the candidate. All research is always partial and incomplete; there is always more that can be done, even if it is considered a ‘pass’ or ready for publication. The conversation in the defence indicated areas where more work was needed, possible and desirable. This is also true in the viva, but there the things still to be done can remain a privatised affair. Here by contrast everyone knew there was still more to do.

3. The defence provided a dedicated time where family and friends could share with the candidate the pleasure of their success. This was not simply by seeing them receive a degree, but also seeing them perform as an expert in front of their peers.

The occasion caused the two opponents, both of us currently in the UK system, to reflect on how unceremonious and lacking in importance some doctoral graduations seem to have become… Each of us had certainly sat through a number of graduations where the achievement of completion seemed somewhat trivialised by the rapid file of relatively large numbers of new doctors across the graduation stage. While their families were in attendance, and no doubt celebrated, there was no opportuntity for them – or indeed anyone else – to hear what any of the research had been about, and to see the doctors as experts in their own fields. We agreed that it sometimes even seems as if the PhD award is just another degree in some kind of degree factory.

The unceremonial graduation ceremony seems to miss the reality of how hard the doctorate actually is. It is unlike any previous study. It requires a particular kind of physical, intellectual and emotional stamina. It also involves more than simply learning a new set of skills or doing an extended piece of work. It is, as my colleague Barbara Kamler and I insist, both text work and identity work. Doing a doctorate is about becoming a particular kind of person who does particular kinds of work.

There is something to be learnt, I think, from this European tradition, from dedicating more time to celebrating the contribution and sheer hard work that goes into a doctorate, to making public the knowledge that has been generated, to acknowledging the significant role that families and friends play in supporting the doctoral endeavour. Celebrating doctoral completion via the public defence is a marking of the formation of the scholar, and is an important milestone in consolidating that emergent identity.

A little more ritual and a bit less dourness in doctoral graduations wouldn’t go amiss, I reckon, in Blighty and beyond.

Thanks to the Faculty of Education, the University of Iceland, for helping me to learn a new way of examining.