Skip to main content

Bournemouth University

BU Research Blog

Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University

  • Home
  • RDS Team
    • Faculty-Facing Staff
    • Funding Development Team
    • Project Delivery and Research Governance Teams
    • Knowledge Exchange and Impact Team
    • Research Excellence Team
  • Clinical Governance @ BU
  • Research Ethics @ BU
  • Post-REF 2021
    • BU REF 2021 Code of Practice
    • Declaration of Staff Circumstances
    • BU’s Unit of Assessment Teams
    • REF FAQs
    • Archive – REF 2014
      • BU REF 2014 Code of Practice
      • REF 2014 Frequently Asked Questions
        • REF 2014 Overview
        • Staff eligibility
        • Mock REF 2014 (REF preparation) exercises at BU
        • REF 2014 Assessment of outputs
        • REF 2014 Staff selection
        • REF 2014 Equality and diversity
  • Impact
    • Partnerships & collaborations
    • Working with businesses
      • Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF)
    • Communicating your research
    • Influencing policy makers
    • Public engagement
      • Quick guide to public engagement
    • Student engagement
      • Stages of engagement
      • Case study: Sean Beer
      • Case study: James Gavin
      • Case study: Anna Feigenbaum
  • Research Toolkit
  • Research Lifecycle
  • Policy
  • PGR
    • The Doctoral College Team

October 26, 2019

Academia is becoming more demanding

BU Challenges, Featured academics, Guidance, Knowledge Exchange, Public engagement, Publishing, Research assessment, Research communication, Research Integritiy, research integrity, Research Training, Training, Uncategorized, Vitae, writing Edwin van Teijlingen

Academia has become more demanding than twenty years ago, particularly, the job outwith university.  Just this morning I received three requests to review a paper.  Each from a very reputable journal and a each a legitimate requests, i.e. I asking me to assess a paper in a my academic field. 

Reviewing papers and grant applications is, of course, part of my academic responsibilities, and hence part of my scholarly practice.  But I am already reviewing five NIHR (National Institute for Health Research) grant applications this weekend, as well as an other paper for BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth, and there are two PhD theses next my bed which I need to exam.  On top of this I have been ignoring several reminder invitations to review a research proposal for the Croatian Science Foundation, as I simply do not have time to do so, however, much I would like to do so.

The forthcoming REF 2021 is not helping.  UK academics are frantically submitting their manuscripts to academic journals to have them in print before the end of 2020, to beat the REF 2021 deadline.  The flip-side of this reviewing coin is that my collaborators and I have had three papers turned down in the past year by a reputable journal as it could not find appropriate reviewers.  Three articles on three very different aspects of our work, one a UK-based study, one a European study and one a study based in Nepal.   For two of these manuscripts the journal took nearly a year to come back to us, wasting the chance to submit the paper elsewhere.

Perhaps it is due the rose-tinted spectacles of looking at the past, perhaps is it simply my level of seniority (compared to twenty years ago) but I don’t think so.  The underlying trend is that the volume of papers submitted to journals is growing faster than the number of academics volunteering to review.  This blog is, therefor, also a call for my academic colleagues to step up and agree to review on (extra) paper.  Interestingly, I made a not dissimilar call in a BU Research Blog eight years ago!  Unfortunately, the overall situation has not improved.

I haven’t even mentioned the exponential growth in email requests to academics  submit papers to so-called predatory journals!  I counted 15 requests in the past two days alone and it is only 10 AM on Saturday morning so more to follow later today.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Tags: Academic publishing academic quality AHRC peer review college BU research CMMPH Edwin-blog-post Grant review journal Nepal NERC peer review college online journal open peer review peer review peer reviewer Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen publication publishing ref ref 2021 research scholarship

Related Posts

  • An epidemic of invitationsJuly 15, 2019
  • Two papers rejected the day after submission in same weekDecember 2, 2018
  • Last review of the yearDecember 22, 2017
  • Your most popular paper this week was ….September 9, 2015

BU staff can login below:

Other services

Research Digest

Subscriptions to the BU Research Digest email are currently unavailable.

We hope to have them back online soon. In the meantime, you can sign up or unsubscribe by emailing research@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Recent posts

BU research Funding opportunities EU
  • Future of Complex Innovative Trial DesignMarch 31, 2023
  • A New Publication by MSPH researcher on Combat Trauma and Heart Rate Variability in a UK Military CohortMarch 31, 2023
  • New research just published: Customer incivility for frontline employeesMarch 31, 2023
  • Here is what is coming in April for RKEDFMarch 30, 2023
  • UKCGE Recognised Associate Supervision! NEW OPPORTUNITY for ECRs!March 29, 2023
  • UKCGE Route to Recognition for Supervisory Practice: Deadline for Submission 19 June 2023March 29, 2023
  • Here is what is coming in April for RKEDFMarch 30, 2023
  • GoodBye JeS, Hello TFSMarch 23, 2023
  • Updated Intention to Bid form – March 2023March 22, 2023
  • UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships Round 8 – Internal Process LaunchedFebruary 23, 2023
  • Save the Date – 26 April 2023 – UKRO Annual Meeting with BU AcademicsFebruary 16, 2023
  • BA/Leverhulme Small Grants 7th June 2023February 13, 2023
  • European research project to promote local food purchasing and reduce food wasteMarch 9, 2023
  • HE Policy update for the w/e 27th February 2023February 27, 2023
  • Save the Date – 26 April 2023 – UKRO Annual Meeting with BU AcademicsFebruary 16, 2023
  • COST Information and Networking EventFebruary 13, 2023
  • Horizon Europe Update – January 2023January 16, 2023
  • Horizon Europe ResourcesJanuary 5, 2023

Search by Category

Search by popular post topics

AHRC Brexit BRIAN BU research clinical research CMMPH collaboration collaborative research conference congratulations Dr. Pramod Regmi Edwin-blog-post ESRC EU Europe event Events funding funding opportunities Fusion Fusion Investment Fund Health horizon 2020 HSC impact innovation knowledge exchange media midwifery Nepal nhs NIHR open access Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen publication public engagement publishing ref research Research Councils research professional RKE development framework social sciences training widening participation

RSS Research Information Network

  • Physical Sciences Case studies: information use and discovery
  • Information handling in collaborative research: an exploration of five case studies
  • Information literacy monitoring and evaluation
  • Data centres: their use, value and impact
  • Heading for the open road: costs and benefits of transitions in scholarly communications

RSS UKRI

Browse all our categories
  • Awarded & submitted bids
  • BRIAN
  • BU Challenges
  • BU research
  • BU2025
  • Business Engagement
  • Centre for Excellence in Learning
  • Clinical Governance
  • Coffee Morning
  • conferences
  • COVID-19
  • data management
  • Delicious links
  • Doctoral College
  • ECR Network
  • EPSRC
  • ESRC
  • EU
  • Events
  • Featured
  • Featured academics
  • Festival of Learning
  • Friday profile
  • Funding opportunities
  • Fusion
  • Fusion Investment Fund
  • Fusion themes
  • Global engagement
  • Grants Academy
  • Guidance
  • hate crime
  • HE-BCI
  • HEIF
  • HSS Our 9 Research Entities
  • humanities
  • Impact
  • Industry collaboration
  • Info Days
  • innovation
  • international
  • Knowledge Exchange
  • Knowledge Exchange and Impact Team
  • Knowledge Transfer
  • Knowledge Transfer Partnership
  • News from the PVC
  • nhs
  • NHS
  • open accecss
  • open access
  • parliament
  • Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology
  • PG research
  • policy
  • Post-award
  • Postgraduate Research
  • pre-award
  • Public engagement
  • Publishing
  • R & KE Operations
  • REF Subjects
  • Research assessment
  • Research Centres
  • Research communication
  • Research Concordat
  • Research Ethics
  • Research Integritiy
  • research integrity
  • research methods
  • Research news
  • research opportunities
  • research staff
  • Research Supervision
  • Research themes
  • Research Training
  • RKE development framework
  • staff profile pages
  • Strategic Investment Areas
  • Student Engagement
  • student research
  • the conversation
  • Training
  • UKRI
  • Uncategorized
  • Vitae
  • Women's Academic Network
  • writing
  • Twitter

© Bournemouth University 2023. All rights reserved.

  • Charitable status
  • Website privacy & cookies
  • Copyright and terms of use