Multilitteratus Incognitus

A couple of blog posts ago I was pondering my dilemmas about peer reviewing as an alt-ac. This week I've been pondering actual publishing as an alt-ac.  Here's how my pondering started (after a long couple of weeks at the beginning of the semester)... Given that... As an alt-ac I do not need to have published articles to be promoted in my professional work; As an alc-ac I do not get professional recognition for works published (except for some internal delight when I see my citation numbers😅) As an alt-ac I don't get "work release" time from my dayjob to work on this research, so any research work I do eats into my hobby/free time; As a hobby, research publications don't pay (whereas other gigs do, providing an incentive to give up some of your free time in exchange for my expertise); Publication of research is hitting bottlenecks, both with peer reviews and periodic journal moratoria; Even without the bottlenecks, getting through peer review can be a challen...

This particular post has been in my drafts folder for a while now.  The post started off as some ponderings, based on tweets from fellow instructional designers (over the summer), that lamented the fact that faculty members really didn't attend professional development opportunities that they had worked so hard to put together. With the start of the new academic year just ahead of us (at least for my campus) it seemed like a good opportunity to return to this post.  This is my local view, framed chiefly from my experiences where I work, but also from chatting about this with local colleagues at other institutions nearby over the last 15 years.  Yes...the problem ain't new! One thing I've seen over the years is the reliance on bad metrics and other various bad indicators like foot traffic through the ID offices, the number of workshops offered, and butts in seats at the workshops. This isn't new.  Even as far back as when I was a training manager for our academic lib...