Published: Fri 06 June 2025
By Iain Dillingham
In Essays .
You’re a junior academic at a British university.
You know it’s important to publish your research in high-impact journals.
You’re already the first author on several papers.
But you’re worried:
you need more.
And the journals aren’t high-impact enough.
Someone from the university’s Department of People is organising a half-day workshop called
“The hitchhiker’s guide to getting your research published”.
Other junior academics will discuss their perspectives on publishing their research.
A senior academic will give a short presentation.
It’s just what you’re looking for!
You arrive early.
There’s tea and coffee.
Someone mentions pastries.
The senior academic gives a short presentation
— more of an introduction, really —
and departs,
muttering something about a committee.
You’re put into a group with two other junior academics.
One is a historian.
You learn that historians don’t publish papers in journals.
Instead, they publish books.
The other is a computer scientist.
You learn that computer scientists publish short papers in conference proceedings.
You’ve been told that conference proceedings are low-impact,
but not in the fast-paced world of computer science,
where you learn that they’re high-impact.
The three of you end up discussing
how much teaching you’re doing,
how hard it is to find a parking space,
and how yeasty the beer is at the recently-opened micro-brewery.
When the person from the university’s Department of People asks each group to report back,
the historian and the computer scientist look at you.
When it’s your group’s turn,
you say something vague about different disciplines having different norms
and make a joke about not needing a car parking space:
if you like a yeasty beer or two after a day spent teaching,
then it’s better to take the bus home.
You promise to stay in touch with the historian and the computer scientist.
Whilst you’re grateful for the coffee and the pastry,
you’re left with the nagging feeling that you don’t have much to show for your time.
You have experienced the victory of form over content .
It’s easy to spot form-over-content events.
Is the form , or structure, of the event planned in advance?
Does it emphasise group work?
Is the content not planned in advance?
Should it emerge from within the groups?
Are there several rounds of group work,
bookended by “Opening remarks” and “Closing remarks”?
If you answered “Yes” to these questions,
then you’ve spotted a form-over-content event.
It isn’t expensive to organise form-over-content events.
The organiser need only understand the structure,
and the structure of the event is the same as the structure of each round of group work:
someone says something to start;
people do something; and
someone says something to stop.
The organiser need not understand the content.
Indeed, the organiser need not have much
interaction with anyone who understands the content in advance of the event.
Successful form-over-content events rely on the participants,
who should be able to compare their perspectives quickly and clearly.
If the event is about getting your research published,
then the participants should be able to compare their perspectives on,
for example, reading, writing, and note-taking strategies.
Ideally, the participants should have diverse perspectives,
both in kind and in degree.
In the previous example,
some participants should have well developed note-taking strategies
— index cards, pin boards, a means of cross-referencing —
others, less so.
Perhaps they have a stream-of-consciousness Google Doc,
into which they pour whatever they’re thinking, whenever they’re thinking it.
All this is to say that form-over-content events are more likely to benefit the organiser than the participants.
What to do?
As the organiser,
ask yourself what you can do to ensure the participants have diverse perspectives.
You could randomly assign participants to groups.
As a participant,
ask the organiser how the content should emerge from within the groups.
Who will report back?
Could the task of reporting back be rotated within each group?
Good luck!