Amid the pressure to ‘publish or perish’ and the cutthroat competition of academia, junior researchers are finding novel ways to express their discontent
The exciting eureka moments that are so often romanticised exist as rare islands in a vast sea of drudgery and boredom, a buzzing fluorescent light above your head and a droning brightness shining on your repeated failures. That is, if the world would allow them. These researchers perform their research only because they are useful to someone else.
In a recent commentary published on the website of the journal Nature, You Xiaoying tells of the phenomenon of junior researchers in Chinese academia establishing satirical journals as a way to vent their frustrations. These journals are given names that are a spin on those of top-tier academic journals such as Science and Nature. For example, there is Call, a take on the prestigious journal Cell.
Source: News - South China Morning Post
