
Living on Hope? Reflections on ‘Hope Labour’ in Academia | Lex Academic Guest Blog
In academic fields where competition is tough and resources are scarce, it is common for people to perform work for little or no remuneration, hoping that this will lead to better opportunities for further employment, promotion or recognition. This sort of work can be described as ‘hope labour’. David Brax, adviser at the Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research, reasons here about hope in academic work as an important driving force but also warns about it as a potential source of exploitation.

It Happened to Me: How I Failed My PhD and How to Pass Yours | Lex Academic Blog
You may have heard the myth that a PhD is ‘impossible to fail'. This myth proliferates because the data on material PhD failures is scarce. Universities typically do not publish this information as it is not something they wish to advertise. The statistics on PhD failure are, in addition, unhelpfully obscured by the high attrition rates in PhD programmes. Had they continued in their studies, many more PhD students would add to the statistics on PhD failure. In this guest blog, our writer describes the process of leaving a PhD programme, having been told by their supervisor that PhD failure was inevitable.

Post-AI Translation Editing and Proofreading (Machine Translation Post-Editing (MTPE))
Post-AI translation, AKA Machine Translation Post-Editing (MTPE), is a relatively new service within the author services industry that has come about thanks to improvements in artificial intelligence (AI). AI is increasingly being used in the workplace and academia, which comes as no surprise when machines can produce content faster – and cheaper – than skilled and qualified human beings. The problem is that most content produced by AI fails to meet professional standards. This is particularly true in the case of academic work, whose technical terms, context-sensitive vocabulary, and subtle argumentation far exceed the abilities of machine translation.

The Dangers of PhD Burnout and How to Avoid It | Lex Academic Blog
PhD and professional burnout have much in common. Among the key factors at play in PhD burnout, however, is lone working. Owing to the intense specialisation of doctoral study, there is a significant risk of social isolation. Furthermore, the ‘get on with it’ attitude embedded within academia is seen as a rite of passage for budding researchers. This environment enables and exacerbates an insidious culture of burnout that can lead to low morale and high PhD student attrition rates.

So, You Want to Edit a Collection of Essays? | Lex Academic Blog
What exactly is involved in being an editor of a collection of essays? Having recently co-edited such a volume myself (which Lex Academic did a masterful job of copy-editing, proofreading, and indexing), I’d like to share some insights about this process, primarily with first-time prospective editors in mind, to help make it more transparent and easier to navigate.

The Lex Academic Interview: Tom Morris
Our Founding Director Constantine Sandis in conversation with leading public philosopher and pioneering business thinker Tom Morris

Why Use Transcribers and Not Speech Recognition Software? | Lex Academic Blog
Researchers armed with accurate transcripts, produced with attention and sensitivity by professional transcription services, are best equipped to establish patterns, draw meaningful conclusions, and contribute substantively to collective knowledge. For this reason, the work of human transcribers remains, and will continue to be, deeply valuable in the age of AI.

‘Tis the Season to be… | Lex Academic Blog
For some academics – especially first-generation academics, or those not from academic families – returning home can mean encountering a family that has no idea what you do, or what the point of your research is. Why did you dedicate your life to studying the bubbles in washing up liquid?

Applying for PhD Funding | Lex Academic Blog
You might be the most capable scholar, producing exciting work, yet fail to get your PhD funded if you don’t pay extremely close attention to what a committee is looking for and provide precisely that.

AI Killed My Journal Submission
In April of 2023, I submitted a paper to a fairly well-known philosophy journal from a major publishing house. This was the second journal I’d submitted this paper to—it had been rejected from a different one years ago, with some helpful and generous comments, and I’d procrastinated sending it out again. I had a co-author […]

Preparing For a New Academic Year as a Graduate Student | Lex Academic Blog
As a community of veteran academics, we have some thoughts that we’d like to share with you about making the most of the new academic year.

The UK Joins Horizon Europe
In a recent and highly anticipated move, the United Kingdom has officially re-joined the European Union's Horizon Europe programme as a full associate member.

Transforming a PhD Chapter into a Journal Article | Lex Academic Blog
As a newly minted PhD, or student approaching the closing stages of your degree, you will already know what a peer-reviewed article is and why it is important to a scholarly career. A PhD chapter can come to life as an article, but it needs to be prepared a little differently; excised from the body of the thesis and made to live independently.

2,300 Years of Indexing: From the Library of Alexandria to AI
If you visit the librarianship section of a library and scan the books on ‘indexing’, you’ll find broadly three kinds. The first are the practical guides. How should one actually go about creating an index? For the purposes of this blog, we’re not so interested in these (although we have a guide of our own), […]

Who’s Afraid of Reviewer #2?
No one is likely to argue that academia attracts many of the sorts of people who create spaces for collaboration, get involved with their colleagues’ projects, and value a supportive community that they lovingly nurture. As peer reviewers, some of these academics might even write things like ‘this journal is lucky to publish your article’, […]

Applying for a Research Grant: Some Dos and Donts | Andrei A. Buckareff
Suppose you’ve found a funding body to which you are interested in submitting a proposal for a grant. What now? Assuming that this is your first grant application, we recommend the following: collaborate with a veteran; go small; and find a niche that fits well with the vision of the agency from which you are requesting a grant.

Where are all the women? | International Women’s Day
Our thoughts on International Women’s Day invariably return to a key piece of feminist literature, Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, which is well known for stating that ‘a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’. Woolf’s essay talks us through how she came […]

Five Reasons Why Writing Your First Article Need Not Detract from Writing Your Dissertation | Lex Academic Blog
Should you be publishing peer-reviewed articles while in grad school? In the sciences, the response to this question would be a resounding 'yes'. In the humanities and social sciences, however, not everyone does this. Some prefer to start publishing only after defending their thesis.

Romance your Research | Lex Academic Blog
It’s hardly a surprise that some days you want to walk (run) away from your research out of boredom and frustration or seek a get-out clause in the desperate hope that absence will make the heart grow fonder. But escaping from the relentless admin and tedious Teams meetings that sit alongside a research career would also mean leaving your one true love.

How to Give and Receive Feedback | Lex Academic Blog
As academics, and even as students and managers, we’re asked to review and give feedback on everything from how a conference workshop went to our peers’ theories and methods. When we give feedback in our professional lives, we are fundamentally letting our thoughts be known.

How Sensitivity Readers Can Improve Your Work | Lex Academic Blog
Do sensitivity readers offer vital perspectives that help writers avoid causing offence, or do they represent the creeping tyranny of cancel culture?

A Short History of the Footnote | Lex Academic Blog
Footnotes divide opinion. Noel Coward once said that ‘having to read footnotes resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love’. Is the footnote, then, a scholarly facilitator or a self-indulgent textual thwart?

Insider Tips on Getting Published in English-language Journals | Karen Englander, Ph.D. | Lex Academic Blog
When English is your second language (and even when it isn't), passing through a journal's peer review process can be challenging. What is an author to do to improve their prospects of sailing through peer review? We have some ideas.

Insights into independent research: Moving out of traditional academia and how to keep your research engaging | Lex Academic Blog
A level of social stigma exists around independent academic research and researchers. And these biases die hard. Here, we look at the challenges and opportunities that exist within this liminal academic space.

Decoding a Book Proposal Form | Lex Academic Blog
Publishers' book proposal forms can feel broad and vague with not a huge amount of guidance on what each of the questions and sections is asking of you. With that in mind, Liza Thompson of Bloomsbury thought the most useful thing to do would be to work through the main sections of a proposal form and hopefully ‘decode’ them.

‘Coming Out’ as Working Class in Academia | Lex Academic Blog
'Since my "coming out", I’ve been told by middle-class academics I don’t belong in academia. And people I’ve known most of my life have accused me of being a class traitor.' We spoke to Dr Paul Craddock about getting on (and getting along) in academia.

The Necessity of Subject Matter Expertise for Academic Translation | Lex Academic Blog
Mistranslations are often funny...until they're not. Here's our view on why it's worth hiring a subject matter expert to translate your text.

The Transition to Writing in English in Non-Anglophone Institutions
The internationalisation of research has undeniably resulted in its Anglicisation. This raises the question of when researchers in non-Anglophone institutions begin to write academically in English.

Why a Great Thesis Doesn’t Always Make a Great Book | Lex Academic Blog
One of the most common reasons why publishers reject proposals for PhD-derived monographs is that they give the impression that the author does not understand the difference between a thesis and a book. In this post, we will look at some of the differences.

On Writing ‘I’: The First Person in Academic Prose | Lex Academic Blog
The use of the first person ‘I’ has traditionally been associated with arrogance and poor scholarship. Today, however, the first person appears regularly in academic writing, particularly in the humanities. In this post, we dissect the arguments against writing ‘I’ and suggest occasions where it might be used productively.

Why Research Outputs Should Be Open Access | Lex Academic Blog
Open access publishing is increasingly common and is often perceived as a more positive and inclusive way of disseminating academic research. In this post, we explore types of open access publishing and the benefits of this model.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Open Peer Review | Lex Academic Blog
Concerns about implicit bias in traditional methods of peer review, including double-blind, have prompted some journal publishers such as PLOS and Frontiers to implement an open peer review policy. In this post, we discuss the potential benefits and drawbacks of this system.

Peer Review and Gender | Lex Academic Blog
Male academics outnumber their female counterparts as authors, journal editors and peer reviewers. To what extent is the peer review process responsible for this?

Peer Review Bias: What Is It, and What Causes It? | Lex Academic Blog
Although vital for ensuring the quality of publications, peer review is a far from perfect process. In this post, we discuss the concept of peer review bias, its forms and the ways different peer review processes enable and prevent it.

Viva, Soutenance, Disputation: How PhD Students around the World Defend Their Thesis | Lex Academic Blog
In the UK, it's called a 'viva'. In the US, it's a 'defense'. Have you ever wondered how PhD students around the world defend their thesis?

Levelling the Linguistic Playing Field within Academic Philosophy | Lex Academic Blog
Stylistic norms for writing affect philosophers’ professional prospects in unfair ways, and what one thinks should be done about this may be tied to one’s conception of what philosophy is supposed to do. (This piece first appeared in Daily Nous.)

“Publish or perish”: fact or fiction? | Lex Academic Blog
The perception that scholarly success depends on publishing frequently is pervasive across the disciplines. That this remains the case, despite the fact that there is an increasing body of evidence to suggest that ‘publishing’ can still lead to ‘perishing’, is worthy of investigation.

Should you format your paper for peer review? | Lex Academic Blog
Formatting a paper for peer review can be tedious and time-consuming, especially when there is no certainty that it will be accepted. So, should you bother?

5 Things Publishers Look For in Book Proposals | Lex Academic Blog
Understanding how to present your research in such a light that it appears outstanding from the perspective of a publishing professional is the key to getting noticed (and a contract).

Linguistic Bias in Academic Publishing | Lex Academic Blog
It’s no secret that the peer review process can be biased. Over the past several decades, there has been growing awareness of peer review bias and its effects on the careers of scholars. Efforts have been made to address bias, but it may be even more pervasive than realised.