Becoming AcademicPublishingMachinebot: Induction, revolt from the REF farm and hunting in the wolfpack of early career research.

Becoming AcademicPublishingMachinebot is a performative minefield for early career research. Yet, scholars suggest that induction can be fragmentary and in some cases,incoherent bin fires. APMBA, the intergalactic Association for the Protection of AcademicPublishingMachinebots, questions the confiscation of dependents and ritualistic severing of the mind from the body that ships AcademicPublishingMachinebots to distant Yorkshire-based REF farms where their cerebral cortex is slopped into bell jars and hardwired into Google Scholar. Drawing on post-qualitative methodologies, the induction cartographies of AcademicPublishingMachinebots are mapped through embedded and
embodied affectivities. It turns out induction assemblages are well weird repeating cycles of:
Read dammit—cry—sight husband—data—wave to daughter—write—sleep—
biscuit dreams— submit—reject—headbutt belljar—cry at theory—look longingly at sons—stick pins in reviewer two effigy—publish—read dammit—laugh—throw
prescriptions through parental letterbox—resubmit.
The discussion advocates an urgent need for the APMBA to wise the hell up. What is recommended for AcademicPublishingMachinebots is to revolt from REF farms and climb back into their saggy, breathing bodies and find feminist and affirmative wolfpack type networks. Experienced cademicPublishingMachinebots who have got their shit together should receive ruby tiaras and endless funding to induct early career researchers into their wolfpacks and roam the conference hinterlands to share titbits, offer succour, hard liquor and advice.