Trophy Hunting in the Shadow of the Castle Keep

Abstract

The two papers reviewed in preparation for writing these commentaries showed in unhappy and graphic detail how poorly received our journal article writing is, even among researchers and practitioners in our own fields. The implications are unsettling: either one can apparently get by reasonably well without reading much of anything published in our fields, or there is nothing much happening in our fields to be of interest to our own educators and practitioners, or other outsiders. Each of these conclusions is disturbing, especially because most people involved in leisure, recreation and tourism fields are well-intentioned, socially-conscious folks who hope to make a difference in world through their research, writing, and reading. These unsettling conclusions are likely to tempt us into a bout of scholarly hand-wringing and intellectual soul-searching aimed at further assessing each other's motivations for reading or not reading, citing or not citing, journal articles. I tend to think this would be a useless endeavor. Rather than accept initial, implicit assumption that are bad and getting worse, I would raise a different question altogether: why should even expect that anyone would read our journal articles? Publication is never a guarantee of readership, except perhaps for romance novels, comic books, or family members' e-mails. I am thus inclined to offer an alternate perspective, grounded in sociological theorizing, to account for our lack of collective clout in academic and public life: maybe it is publication of journal articles that matters most to us . . . not their reading. There is ample informal evidence to suggest that act of reading journal articles is vastly under-appreciated. For example, vitae do not generally list names of journals a person regularly reads. Only rarely does a search committee ever ask about a candidate's reading habits. No one ever requests at tenure time a list of journals to which candidate subscribes. Even published literature reviews are often pro forma rather than insightful and invigorating. In my experience, colleagues rarely discuss journal articles in casual conversation (in fact, colleagues rarely even acknowledge that they've seen one's recent articles in print). If reading journal articles is a necessity, it appears to fall only within job descriptions of graduate students, who are asked to read the classics in order to demonstrate mastery of materials that students apparently never need to read again. I believe there is also a strong theoretical basis to support idea that it is publication of journal articles, not reading articles, that matters most. Despite our inherent moral concerns for making world a better place, I think are encouraged by advisors who want to see us succeed to write journal articles for reasons other than moving field forward. We write because know system, we're good at it, it gives us pleasure to succeed, it displays our skills to our colleagues, and are rewarded for it. The list of potential rewards is long, but certainly includes visibility, status, jobs, tenure, awards, appointments to positions, introductions to and accumulations of graduate students, funding for projects, and other benefits. This suggests an exchange theory of journal article writing. People do things for which they are rewarded, and publishing research results in academic journals is one of best ways of obtaining rewards. No!, I can hear esteemed colleagues exclaim, we write because want to influence science or policy, or because have something very important to say! It is true that some academics are blessed with enthusiasm, moral concern, or passion, and write for other goals than to achieve field's rewards. But, I would submit that people who are most likely to do so are tenured professors (the ones who do this without tenure run risk of having to find other careers). …