by danah boyd
Last Updated: November 18, 2024
The academia that I grew up in was first and foremost a gift economy. Scholars dedicated their time and energy to others, not simply out of kindness, but to help strengthen the social fabric that made the intellectual project more vibrant. Unfortunately (in my mind), that aspect of academia has been on the decline. But I still think that what goes around comes around. Call it karma. Call it whatever you'd like, but the act of giving strengthens relationships in any context. So even if the gift economy is fading, I encourage junior scholars to be thoughtful about the random acts of kindness that they can engage in to make academia just a wee bit more pleasant.
When you cite someone, they benefit from it. And thus, there is politics in citation practices. What values do you want to enact through your citation practices? Are you citing the people that you want to celebrate or the people that you want to diss? Are you acknowledging diverse communities of living people or constantly referring back to the dead white guys? Are you focusing purely on who the "right" people are to cite at the given moment or looking to new voices?
Needless to say, every discipline has their rules on citation practices. You need to show that you know your stuff. And that does mean that you probably need to have read the works of dead people. But it's completely reasonable to scan your paper at the end and ask yourself: are these the people I most want to celebrate? Imagine inviting your citations to your house so that you could offer them each a cookie.
One variant of this is "citation justice" which focuses explicitly on raising up voices of marginallized and under-represented voices given that citations are a form of power. This is extremely important. Given your goals, it might also be important to bridge disciplines, to amplify communities that are less visible in your networks, or to connect literature between junior and senior scholars. The most important thing to reflexively account for is that there are citation politics and this is a great opportunity to engage in acts of kindness.
One of the reasons that I buy colleagues' books from Amazon is so that I can review them. I also like to score books on Goodreads, knowing full well that it's owned by Amazon. This may seem absurd, but Amazon's algorithms play an outsized role in determining the fate of a book. While buying books through most sellers count towards to the total numbers, leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads helps amplify the book to viewers who are perusing similar books. Reviews matter for direct viewers and for algorithms. So if you like an academic book, take a moment to rate it and review it. (And if you don't, there's no need to say anything.)
Likewise, many scholars use different variants of social media to announce their scholarship. Heart it, boost it, send it some love. This way you teach the algorithms (and the eyeballs connected to them) that this content has value.
Yes, I keep a lot of papers on my computer. But I often search for and re-download papers for the simple reason that I know that doing so feeds into all of those algorithms. Just like taking out a book from your library feeds into the internal algorithm that decides whether or not a book should be discarded. (Yes, devastatingly, libraries do "weed" books.)
It's all fine and well to critique algorithms - that's the bread and butter of my field. But hating and thus ignoring algorithms doesn't help your colleagues. Plenty of people are messing with algorithms for personal gain, but you can conscientiously use algorithms to quietly boost those who you appreciate.
Wikipedia plays an outsized role in depicting someone on the internet. And it's bloody ridiculous that white guys are more likely to have a Wikipedia entry than their professional equivalents who aren't white or cisgender male. If you appreciate a scholar (including your peers but even dead folks), take a moment to flesh out their Wikipedia page. If it's lame, fix it up. This is a small thing that can have a huge impact on the perception of a scholar.
Reviewing is labor, but it's also an act of kindness. As a graduate student, you might not be asked to review for things, but you can certainly volunteer. Get yourself into every database of every journal and conference you attend as a potential reviewer. Ask your advisor to teach you how to write a constructive review (often by co-writing one with them). And, as soon as you can, start reviewing. The reason that peer reviews take so bloody long is because there are too few reviewers - and so many of them are flaky. And we all hate Reviewer #2 because he's curmudgeonly, but if he's the only available reviewer, we have a problem. We need more reviewers who think differently.
Choose an algorithm for your reviewing load. Personally, my rule of thumb is 3x the number of papers I submitted the previous year. So if I was an author on 4 papers last year, I will make sure to review at least 12 papers this year. With books, I aim to review or blurb at least one per year. I also review for funders and for tenure files. It's a lot of reviewing, but I also learn a lot from other scholars in the process. I'm also hoping that when my stuff needs reviews, karma will be kind.
Turn your review around quickly. Generally speaking, I don't accept a reviewing request unless I can turn it around in 48 hours. (Sometimes, this means that it sits in my inbox for a few days while I debate it.) YMMV. But when you accept a review request, don't wait until the last minute. Try to do it within a week. Our collective delays are collectively costly for getting reviews back in a timely manner.
If you get a review request in your area, but you can't do it, say no immediately. But also send along additional names, preferably of junior scholars. That helps publishers soooo much. Of course, only do that in fields that you're actually in. Weirdly, I regularly get review requests from fields like CS theory or biology simply because of a collaboration I once did or the fact that social media is mentioned. I often can't offer alternates.
I'm a firm believer that we need to make the world we want to live in. I want to live in a kind and generous world and so I'm hellbent on enacting that. To the other senior scholars out there - it's not too late. You can make academia a healthier place by your choices and role modeling. And to junior scholars out there - please don't embrace the worst behaviors you see. Let's collectively work to make this a robust, healthy, and generous environment.