Found a new voice of wisdom (to call it vox populi would probably be wrong) today. Alf Rehn writes an excellent rant about the research article in the context of the UK RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) system:
Now, what I find absolutely horrendous and directly unethical is that all this denigrates the scholarly book, the research monograph. The way I was raised into academia, this was what you meant by research, and now a bunch of foreign bureaucrats with language problems are saying that this does not count? Well, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. Writing a journal article, to me, is mainly an exercise in typing. There are rote formulas to get a journal article done (well known such, looking at the shite that gets published), and it frankly bores me a lot of the time. A book, however, is another matter. A book takes time to craft, and the sheer length thereof forces one to work in an altogether different manner. I was taught by my Doktorvater the following: If you haven’t written a serious monograph, you shouldn’t be made a PhD. If you haven’t written two, you’re not a serious scholar. “—And never let one who hasn’t written three serious books become a professor! It cheapens the title.” And damn good advice it was too.
It’s provocative, it’s daring, maybe it could be a bit reactionary, it’s definitely bold, ballsy and forward. It also happens to be correct. Go Alf!
(via Imaginary Magnitude)