An excellent article. I'm very much in agreement.

As an early career academic, I feel myself in a strange place.

I find myself caring vanishingly little about publishing in the traditional obscure-by-design academic literature. Yet I know I should care. Just about everything in modern academic culture says I will get nowhere without traditional journal publication.

Perhaps my lack of care is because of my discipline or because of the supportive environment around me. Perhaps it's because I'm peeved at a journal system that seems to make quite a lot of money out of the academic system in general.

I'm not certain - but I do know that cultural norms like 'publish or perish' (when taken to mean only in the traditional peer reviewed literature) disgust me. To me the traditional academic publishing system is starting to feel more and more like a stock-market bubble (or, less charitably, a pyramid scheme): designed to reward those who control that market by coercing others into thinking this is the only way it can be, the only way in academia to make a living / make a difference.

I don't know if I'm making a dangerous mistake by rejecting that system in favour of a more public face, but I'm seeing a lot more freedom, fun and opportunity for impact on the other side of the fence.

I think Dennis, same surname, no relation, makes important points that secure senior academics have to hammer home. Universities seem deeply conflicted, they need to demonstrate public benefit beyond teaching and research, but they fail to develop appropriate metrics to reward a host of activities including public education, professional service, contributions to policy formation (especially view transparent parliamentary review processes), media engagement and other forms of outreach such as participation in schools and civil society. There are only 24 hours, even in the academic's day, and recent events at the University of Sydney suggest it is not just a matter of choice about promotion, as Gavin Moodie suggests, but publication-only benchmarks (established ex post facto) being used to hire, fire and demote with potentially debilitating livelihood implications. Any 'clever' country needs sharp public debates; ideological wars that have seen the devaluation if not death of the expert in recent years need to be vigorously resisted by the academic community. Senior university management needs to take a less institution-centric approach and carefully consider whether universities can afford not to recognise 'outreach' that all pay lip service to; if enhanced public engagement is valued, as in my view it has to be, then it should not be beyond us to develop the recognition and reward frameworks to match the energy we expend in monitoring publications success and chasing competitive research grants. And then there is the other elephant in the room, teaching success that while increasingly monitored and measured is rarely given the status of research in considering performance.

This is a matter very close to my heart, and I feel strongly that we are in a time when the notion of the public intellectual is at best diminished, at worst dismissed.

Among the most critical roles academics can and should play in a society like ours are those of watchdog, critic and problem-solver. To not do so is, I would argue, failing to fulfil an important obligation we have to society. Possibly *the* most important. And focussing the majority of our attention on writing papers that few people read, or filling out forms that mean we are measured more and more, whilst being able to actually deliver less and less, is absurd.

It's not that we should be unaccountable: far from it. But any accountability should be reasonable and managed using efficient, relevant and well thought-through measures and processes that are fit-for-purpose.

I personally have been negatively affected by my own decisions to direct my energy and outputs towards more public communication venues and teaching efforts. It's an ill-advised strategy on the path to promotion. On this point I must also add my wry amusement at Gavin Moodie's questioning whether promotion is the point of academe... Is it so unreasonable that after years of training, research, teaching, consulting and myriad other contributions, we might seek to be paid something approaching the amount a newly minted EL 1 in any number of government departments receives?

Regardless, that we are rarely (or poorly) rewarded for overt, public activity based on our expertise and experience as academics is frankly bizarre. And a huge squandering of resources.

Academics (and the products of our work) should be in full public view wherever what we know and what we have done contributes to enhancing, or fixing, our world. That this is even contested beggars belief.

I'm delighted to have provoked this discussion: but I regret that Gavin has reduced intellectual debate to community service. Nor is it a matter of distinguishing between government, University administrations and academic policemen [such as our rather sclerotic learned Academies]: they all in different ways contribute to what I was talking about, namely the declining recognition of informed scholarly critical engagement in the public arena

Thanks, Dennis, for your very interesting article, and for provoking this discussion. It is a shame that it got bogged down in this accounting discussion. Yet, accounting and accountability lie at the heart of the issue. The most important aspect which has been left out of this discussion is the notion of one-size-fits-all accountability which combines with a chronic under-funding which has led to universities increasingly looking for funding though the research grant process.
In my particular area of research, I don't have much need for external funding. With the salary provided for my position as a lecturer, and the discretionary time Gavin Moody makes so much of, I am more than capable of delivering teaching outcomes as well as regular peer-reviewed research publications. That is, in fact, what I get paid for.
But that's not quite good enough; I am expected to spend a significant amount of time (which I could otherwise spend on the aforementioned activities) writing applications for grants to fund the aforementioned activities. [this cuts into my discretionary time]
Without understanding the Productivity Commission in any way, shape or form, it seems to me that any genuine productivity review of the Higher Ed sector would have to conclude that far greater productivity would be achieved if the grant application process was done away with completely, and the relevant funds were distributed to the relevant universities and research bodies do do with as they saw fit.