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Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Collaboration (2)

I've found someone with whom I'd like to collaborate on an article. I've long wanted to to this, but it is hard to find someone with whom I could establish an equal partnership. It has to be someone who shares some of my ideas and prejudices, but who does not think in exactly the same way as I do. Someone who knows some things I don't. It can't be someone vastly junior to me, so that I would be the overbearing partner. I'm not looking for a research assistant or someone to flesh out my ideas, but someone who could hold their own with me.

Anyway, there are only a few people like this that I know, so I've made some overtures to see whether this might work.

Scholarship is kind of isolating, so I need to work with other people more. I have enough publications under my own name so that I don't have to worry about how much credit I get.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It will be interesting to see if this works. I've often thought about it. But it's hard to figure out how, for the reasons you say.

Tanya Golash-Boza said...

I collaborate fairly often, but certainly not on every piece. I am currently working on two co-authored pieces and they both will be better (and easier) for it. I wrote a post on this a while ago: http://getalifephd.blogspot.com/2010/12/five-tips-that-will-help-you-have.html

Jonathan said...

I don't know that it will be easier, but it will be more fun and interesting.

Clarissa said...

I have an unrelated question that I hoped Jonathan could answer in a separate post. The question might sound stupid but I'm sure there are other people like me who have no idea how this works.

Why do people write reviews of other academics' books for academic journals? How do they choose books for review? If an academic forwards you a copy of their recently published book, is that a hint they want you to review it? Should all the reviews you do be positive? If the reviews don't count for anything in terms of progress towards tenure, then why should one write them?