Negotiating tensions around new forms of academic writing

Barton, Dávid; McCulloch, Sharon

doi:10.1016/j.dcm.2018.01.006

Cited by 18 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…The project team included myself as Principal Investigator, Professor David Barton and Professor Mary Hamilton as Co-Investigators and Dr Sharon McCulloch and Dr Ibrar Bhatt as Senior Research Associates. This paper represents my own reflection on one aspect of the project research; see also Barton and McCulloch (2018); McCulloch, Tusting and Hamilton (2017); McCulloch (2017); Tusting and Barton (2016) for more information on the project. 2.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The genre regime of research evaluation: contradictory systems of value around academics’ writing

Tusting

2018

Language and Education

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This article addresses how academics navigate different kinds of prestige and different systems of value around what 'counts' in academic writing, focusing particularly on the impact of the genre regime associated with research evaluation in the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF). It draws on data from an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded project working with academics across different disciplines and different institutions in England. We interviewed people about their writing practices several times, exploring their practices, life histories, institutional contexts, and the tools and resources they draw on as they write. Academics' research writing is framed within explicit institutional and departmental strategies around the numbers and publication venues of research outputs, driven by institutions' need to succeed in the national competitive research evaluation system. Such institutional strategies do not always map well onto other values systems in which academics have been trained and within which they locate themselves. The articles analyses the interviews we carried out, exploring how academics negotiate tensions between these systems of value and considering the implications of this for what is considered to be important in academic work and, therefore, what it means to be an academic.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The genre regime of research evaluation: contradictory systems of value around academics’ writing

Tusting

2018

Language and Education

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“…Central to the evaluation of blogs was the potential for outreach to stakeholders within and outside academia on the one side and trying out ideas on the other side. In contrast to research in the UK and US (Barton & McCulloch, 2018;Weller, 2011), the interviewees situated in Finland did not mention managerial pressures to use social media but framed the outreach to the general public in terms of enlightenment and civic duty (Hynninen & Kuteeva, 2020). Testing ideas and networking with other academics within and outside the field as well as potential research participants was evaluated positively if the interviewees connected it to their career merits in terms of the furtherance of their core research work.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some connected blogging to their writing process of research outputs and used it as a testing ground (cf. Barton & McCulloch, 2018). In their evaluation, the interviewees considered their potential audience when evaluating their discursive choices but did not identify any institution (in the widest sense) as evaluative authority.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, later-on in the interview, she recounts how she has been contacted by professionals who might not have read her published work had it not been for the blog. In effect, the blog is an indirect means of research dissemination (see Barton & McCulloch, 2018) and, more importantly, networking. Her evaluation thus relates to different centres of evaluative authority, associated with play on the one side and research potential on the other.…”

Section: Blogsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We look at the meaningfulness of online writing for academics beyond institutional pressures (cf. Barton & McCulloch, 2018), as well as the roles the selected genres play for their writing practices and knowledge production. The way scholars evaluate these hybrid genres indicates how these genres support or otherwise relate to the academics' core research writing activities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The value of academics’ research-related online writing

Hynninen¹,

Kaufhold

2020

Apples

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Research productivity indicators tend to ignore online and social media writing of academics, nevertheless, many academics for instance tweet and blog. It thus seems that there is additional value for writing in these genres. This study sets out to explore what roles writing in these hybrid online genres plays in relation to academics’ research activities. Drawing on in-depth research interviews with 29 academics with various L1s from three different disciplines, the study focuses on the participants’ perceptions of tweeting and blogging, and how they value writing in these genres in relation to core research-writing genres in their fields. Besides some differences in the evaluations between the disciplines, in general the academics expressed a strong orientation towards evaluative regimes related to writing in their core genres, particularly institutional merit systems and peer review systems. At the same time, the hybrid genres seemed to gain value beyond these systems in providing opportunities for self-actualisation and communicating on one’s own terms. The findings provide important insights into the ecology of genres academics make use of in the process of knowledge production.

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Digital academic discourse: Texts and contexts

Kuteeva

Mauranen

2018

Discourse, Context & Media

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Negotiating tensions around new forms of academic writing

Cited by 18 publications

References 13 publications

The genre regime of research evaluation: contradictory systems of value around academics’ writing

The genre regime of research evaluation: contradictory systems of value around academics’ writing

The value of academics’ research-related online writing

Digital academic discourse: Texts and contexts

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