Bret Devereaux

I suppose I must seem to be the exception - I've managed to crowdfund my research. Except I haven't really - I've created a public engagement history/classics presence which throws off enough money for my research. That's a meaningful difference, I think. 7/20

While my patrons know they are helping me to do my research work and get monthly updates on my work, the nature of academic publishing means I can only rarely share the final products of that research with them directly, b/c I don't hold the copyright unencumbered. 8/20

And the response I frequently get is "why not publish open-access?" but the answer goes back to incentives: because I'm on the job market every year, instead of being in a permanent position, I have to aim my activity towards 'prestige'... 9/20

...because that is the kind of thing that hiring committees value (even if it is no guarentee of actually getting a job) and I can't afford to deviate from that because - again - I must face them every year. Academic freedom doesn't exist in the precariate. 10/20

In theory, of course, history and classics departments - and their permanent faculty - want to be hiring. They blame university administration, which is fair. 11/20

But then, at the same time, what are they willing to do? Are they willing to hire scholars with non-traditional publications? Or with less prestigous pedigrees? Or who focus more on public engagement than on prestige scholarship? Of course not. 12/20

Are they going to reach out to independent and precarious scholars? Stop treating conference badges with SLCs or 'independent researcher' as the academic affiliation as pariahs? Of course not. 13/20

What about job applications with less onerous required documents, since precarious scholars need to do dozens each year? It is literally a zero-cost intervention and - of course not. "Here is our one-year adjunct position, please supply complete teaching portfolio and..." 14/20