Restoring the pleasure in scholarly writing

I identify as a writer. I write both for work and pleasure. I write scientific papers, research reports, research reviews, peer review reports for work and blogs, short stories and letters for pleasure. In both forms of writing, my process is the same, but there is so much happiness in writing for pleasure (obviously it is writing for pleasure) and so much discomfort and unpleasantness in writing for work. I have been wondering why the experience of writing for pleasure versus writing for work are so different. I decided to write for pleasure about writing for work! 

 

Scientific writing is regulated by scholarly standards. I have been stuck inside this quagmire of ‘scholarly standards’ for more than 2 decades now. What are these scholarly standards in writing? Maintaining objectivity and neutrality is one of the benchmarks of scholarly writing. The scholar is expected to be detached and impersonal. There is no room for emotions and sentiments in scholarly writing. The scientist is expected to see the world around them with an objective lens and report what they see. Reporting with transparency is another characteristic of scientific writing. Another thing we are taught to do as scholars is to always cite other work in our writing to establish how our work is related to existing knowledge. “Denser the citations, more scholarly the work”, we are taught. Another major feature of scholarly writing is rigid adherence to structures, most common among which is the IMRaD format or the Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion format. There is no room for storytelling, narratives or free-verse in this. There are also hundreds of reporting formats that a scientific writer must adhere to, namely STROBE, CONSORT, PRISMA etc. which ensure all scholarly writing adheres to cookie cut criteria. There are advantages to such scholarly standards. They ensure effectiveness of scientific communication. They ensure uniformity of scientific writing so that scientists all over the world understand what is written. There are some other characteristics of scholarly standards, which are specific to different journals and often unwritten. For example, some journals insist on British spelling versus American spelling! There are unwritten stylistic expectations like avoiding passive voice, avoiding first person narratives, use of ‘formal language’ versus ‘casual langauge’ etc. Where did these scholarly standards come from?

 

Western Europe and North America, during the colonial era dominated the scholarly standards and established them. These standards continue till date. The explicitly western centric knowledge system that prioritizes quantitative science, positivism and linear logic, promotes these scholarly standards and continue to dominate the narrative of what is considered scholarly. Elite journal indexing bodies like PubMed, SCOPUS and Clarivate etc. demand such standards of journals. High impact journals published mostly from the high income countries dictate the norms of scholarly publication. Most editorial boards and peer reviewers also demand strict adherence to these norms of scholarly writing. They tend to dismiss some writing from the Global South as “not scholarly”, “language needs polishing”, “sounds too casual” and act as gatekeepers excluding alternative methodologies, ideas, and styles that are unfamiliar to them and challenge them. What is sad is that sometimes journals from the Global South also tend to adhere to these scholarly standards and use similar excuses like “inappropriate style”, “casual conversational writing” etc. to reject piece, thus reflecting a form of imbibed colonialism.

Fifteen years ago during my early foray into qualitative research, I had a breath of fresh air when I learned that writing qualitative research has more structural and stylistic liberty compared to the rigid structure of positivist research. But with increased experience of conducting and writing qualitative research, I understood that the promise of freedom is only a mirage. There are quite a few strong structural demands in writing qualitative manuscripts as well. In one of our research work involving stigma associated with COVID 19, we conducted interviews among patients who were admitted in a Covid care centre and discharged, to understand their lived experiences of stigma. After a few interviews, we did a preliminary analysis and identified that there is a pattern of intersectionality emerging from the narratives where older, women, with disabilities were the most stigmatized compared to younger, men without any disabilities. We wanted to demonstrate this intersectionality with a few more purposively sampled interviews. I wanted to write this research process as it was conducted. That would mean iteratively presenting methods – results – methods – results and then discussions. But the journal did not allow for such a non-linear presentation. It was frustrating because we did not want to adhere to the rigid structure of IMRaD. But we had to! 

 

A couple of years ago a very good friend of mine completed an excellent PhD dissertation on diabetes self management among persons living with disabilities. The research work organically evolved from a systematic literature review, to developing a survey in a rural community, to studying a few patients as detailed case studies and finally performing a qualitative study to understand the lived experiences of such persons. He wanted to write each component of the research as a separate chapter in his dissertation establishing a seamless link between the chapters and demonstrating how each previous step in the research led to the next one. However, his guide and the university PhD guidelines denied him permission to deviate from the rigid IMRaD format. They said he had to organize all the objectives together in one chapter, methods into one chapter, results into one and discussion in one. He ended up writing two version of his dissertation, one for the university, public defence and the world, and one for his own pleasure!

 

So, when I write a scholarly article for work, I am bound by these rigid rules. These rules sometimes make it impossible to express my creativity. I sometimes end up writing something that is not what I originally intended to write. After it goes through several rounds of editorial and peer review, it ends up as something totally different. I don’t even recognize it as my piece. But then I am told and led to believe that this is for the best, and even though it is not what I originally wrote, the idea was mine and therefore it is still my work. 

 

On the other hand, when I write a blog post or a Substack post, I have absolute freedom. Yes, I almost always send it to friends and peers for their critical comments. But they give me comments to improve the piece and point out factual flaws and how I can improve readability. If I am interested in publishing a good quality piece, I consider their opinions and act on them. They never exert power over whether what I write gets published or not. It is up to me to decide whether to take up their comments. I retain the power over my written piece. There have been instances where I have decided not to post my blog after peer review, have allowed it to rest for a while, revisited it and redrafted and posted it. So the freedom can be handled responsibly! This intellectual freedom is a great feeling, but more importantly, such intellectual freedom is essential for promoting knowledge, science and scholarship. More than anything the democratization of writing removes the epistemic injustice imposed by the scholarly standards. It establishes that impersonal and formal writing is not superior to casual and emotional writing. It confirms that intellectual integrity and clarity are more important than style and syntax. 

 

Two major moves in academic and scholarly publishing have taken a few steps towards democratization of scientific writing – (1) Pre print servers, where we can host our articles in public domain before some journal passes it through peer review and publishes it, (2) Post publication continuous review, where journals publish articles with minimal scrutiny to ensure clarity, transparency, accuracy, and most of the review happens post publication. These moves have removed the oppressive power from the hands of editors and peer reviewers, who can no longer be gatekeepers excluding articles, but must serve as stewards and curators who include, enhance and support publication. 

 

It may not be too long before the age old rigid epistemic hegemony of language, style of writing and rigid formats are thrown out the window to allow more freedom of expression in scientific and scholarly writing. I am waiting for that day, when scholarly writing can itself become pleasurable!