Seeking a Beneficial Feedback Loop, How Should Academics Receive Criticism?

Academia is seen as a privileged space, especially externally. Of course, the current climate of wage stagnation, pension issues, and job cuts complicates this, with academics often reminded by those doing the cutting of their relative ‘privilege’ as mollification. As a knock-on effect, academic roles are shifting. Academia is not a foreign landscape compared to other sectors, as some suggest or indeed many academics have begun to believe. I remember one academic - tasked with telling the room about the realities of book publishing, stating that what we did ‘wasn’t real’ and the world we occupied was a ‘fantasy’, now they were working as a postdoc on another’s project and away from PhD study. Instead, I firmly believe academic research and operations mirror society and, in the DH field, our impact looks similar to that of policy advisors. There are similarities, therefore, with the importance of feedback being an obvious link. So let’s explore the act of receiving feedback in academia, against this backdrop of a shifting (quaking?) sector. 

charlesdeluvio, Unsplash, 'feedback' search, Man using MacBook photo – Free Office Image on Unsplash

First of all, gaining feedback is a skill. It takes confidence both to respond to it and ask for it, whether unsuccessful at interview stage or gaining comments on written work. Potential misunderstandings can appear and cause anxiety. I’ve heard, with feedback being uncomfortable, academics joke that they’d happily write entire books to no audience over receiving criticism. Even though they acknowledge its importance, have gained the skill of receiving feedback and their standard of work is of clear quality.

Secondly, feedback has to be interpreted, however clear the commenter. What did my reviewers intend to get across? Is this misattribution or misinterpretation, or robust critique? For myself recently, what is the VAIF?  A Virtual Agent Integration Framework? A Variance-driven Automated Instruction Framework? Both?

Lastly, the sector trades in language surrounding feedback like ‘on the chin’, ‘thick skin’. You build up a tolerance to feedback for sure, even if this language is harsh, like running a couch to 5k. I remember the sting as a PhD student, where there was a continual need for feedback. That need continues, and it likely always will. I’d judge the success of my work based on the number of comments my supervisors left in the Google Doc (sad I know). It formed yet another metric to judge myself by in a field which already contends with h-indexes, impact factor and REF. Under a ‘publish or perish’ model, such metrics can easily turn inward and make the PhD experience an unpleasant one, as Ayres shows in her Managing Your Mental Health During Your PhD (2022). A book my partner recommended I read, as the feedback came romping in a few years ago.

Nowadays, I know feedback is not only essential to academic rigor and best practice, but welcomed. I was operating in a new field, from history to digital humanities, with new ways of doing things - technical language, referencing, methods, tone, structure. The aim was not to produce immaculate work the first time around. With time the sting faded. Although, it sometimes still appears. Without good supervision, that sting would have been ever-present and mixed in with an added dollop of confusion and anxiety.

Is academic feedback something to be enjoyed then, once that tolerance has built? Does that tolerance wax and wane depending on general life? Maybe feedback is an uncomfortable shirt, but one you have to wear to meet a dress code? 

Feedback is important, therefore, however easily complicated. While we sweat over receiving feedback, that feedback has become increasingly difficult to obtain. Journals are hard-pressed with a current deluge of submissions and a lack of reviewers. This puts strain on already tense author - reviewer, editor relationships, where chasing submissions and/or waiting for a second reviewer (usually the dreaded reviewer two) to submit comments is increasingly common. These reviewers are also over-worked and suffering feedback fatigue. I’ve been on both sides of this, frustrated with one journal as I will myself to comment on a revised draft for another.

A reliance on automation for editing compounds this - I’ve had formatting issues arise, institutional abbreviations de-capitalised causing language changes, key terms garbled, and author and reference names changed, up until proof stage. Of course, for pressured publishers, automation plays a role in alleviating barriers, however the line has yet to be appropriately drawn.

More positively, when feedback is sent and received in good faith, it not only benefits integrity but research more generally. It nuances our approaches and in a recent case, receiving reviewer feedback on an article submission, had me hitting the books again. Initially, I thought the reviewer was too outside the DH field, leading us to read up on ‘theodicean frameworks’ and public receptions to womanist theology, turning our technical paper into one outside the journal purview. However, as I began working to respond to these comments - intersections between our technical method and traditional theological approaches emerged. This reviewer felt they couldn’t comment on the technical method, focusing on the context instead. However, this benefited us immensely - despite our initial whiplash. The system of welcoming diverse feedback worked!

To conclude, I’m still unsure whether feedback is one of those things where if you speak about it more honestly it becomes normalised and thereby more comfortable to receive. In any case, we’ll miss it on the chance that additional resourcing and technological barriers prevent this reception. We should strive toward tolerance, especially if it leads to inertia seeking feedback, but if it catches you on a bad day, let it sting. It’s all part of the process.