We all recognise that academia has its power dynamics, but that can’t be used to normalise it as “just the way things are.” If this happens to you: please don’t take it as “normal” in our community. There are always people who understands and stands with integrity.

Of course, people often disagree on many things, but questioning the competence of our authors and volume editors for such reasons is not acceptable and is plainly harmful to our community and to the integrity of research.

I was told repeatedly that the book would not proceed unless our contributors removed critiques, substantially rewrote their chapters in the direction requested by the series editor, and incorporated 7 of the editor’s own papers into various chapters.

I still regret that our contributors and I were put through this.

During the clearance stage, the series editor opposed the project after noticing that one of our authors had written a critical review of their work.

My upcoming co-edited volume for Palgrave unfortunately ran into deeply unprofessional handling from a series editor, who tried to block our manuscript during internal processing. While the publisher has been exceptionally supportive and is continuing with our book,

And looking forward to keeping the conversations going and building even more collaborations ahead!
@drjanehayward.bsky.social
@lauchinainstitute.bsky.social
@tsinghuauniversity.bsky.social
@kingshistory.bsky.social

Very interesting!

Terminators with Chinese characteristics!