My teachers apparently didn't realize that this is actually original work in a neurodiversity stuff, and that that's a field with not a lot of people. Once they realized that not only was I writing about stuff that's not their field, but I'm actually published in it and was writing new original ideas, they were like "You should try to get that published!"
I pointed out that it was in Chinese, and no USA-based journals for disability studies stuff that I know of publish articles in Chinese. Also, the articles I've written so far aren't that long- they're like 1200-1600 characters each. If I combined them, I might be into the length range that's reasonable for publication, but they're still in Chinese.
So now they might be looking into how one goes about publishing academic work in China? Which means that I'll be waiting to put it up on my blog until I know what's up with that, since academic journals usually don't want to reprint blog posts. If it goes up, I will put a copy on Academia.edu, which people can get at for free, and I'll see if I'm allowed to put the text here too. But since it's written in Chinese, I figure I have a better shot at getting people who read the language to see it if the initial place of publication is, you know, not blocked in China. Not everyone has the software, computer know-how, or money to get around the great firewall, and not everyone is willing to cite blogs, so when it comes to bringing new things into academia, publishing in academic channels can be useful.
Yes I'm a bit of a pragmatist sometimes. Also, I probably should translate the thing into English at some point. Chinese academic articles require an English abstract anyways (imperialism much?) and a decent number of articles are actually in English (again, imperialism much?) There's also a decent bit of Chinese academia citing English-language stuff, but I don't see much USA stuff citing things that aren't written in English. USA, why not? Why do we not cite stuff from other languages much? Is it just that a lot of us can't actually read other languages? /meh.
I pointed out that it was in Chinese, and no USA-based journals for disability studies stuff that I know of publish articles in Chinese. Also, the articles I've written so far aren't that long- they're like 1200-1600 characters each. If I combined them, I might be into the length range that's reasonable for publication, but they're still in Chinese.
So now they might be looking into how one goes about publishing academic work in China? Which means that I'll be waiting to put it up on my blog until I know what's up with that, since academic journals usually don't want to reprint blog posts. If it goes up, I will put a copy on Academia.edu, which people can get at for free, and I'll see if I'm allowed to put the text here too. But since it's written in Chinese, I figure I have a better shot at getting people who read the language to see it if the initial place of publication is, you know, not blocked in China. Not everyone has the software, computer know-how, or money to get around the great firewall, and not everyone is willing to cite blogs, so when it comes to bringing new things into academia, publishing in academic channels can be useful.
Yes I'm a bit of a pragmatist sometimes. Also, I probably should translate the thing into English at some point. Chinese academic articles require an English abstract anyways (imperialism much?) and a decent number of articles are actually in English (again, imperialism much?) There's also a decent bit of Chinese academia citing English-language stuff, but I don't see much USA stuff citing things that aren't written in English. USA, why not? Why do we not cite stuff from other languages much? Is it just that a lot of us can't actually read other languages? /meh.
As an English-speaking psych student, I would have to say that yes, not knowing the language is a huge barrier to using non-English works, especially if I can find English works on the same topic. Sure, I could run it through Google translate, but the result isn't always comprehensible, and even if it appears to be, I'm always worried that some important details will be wrong. I do speak French, but my French is not quite good enough to read French-language research papers easily. So unless my only source is a non-English one, I generally go for an English article instead.
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