Tuesday, 24 April 2018

career path - Does my work in industry carry any weight in academia?


I have no academic (peer-reviewed) publications to my credit but close to 6 years of industry-based experience. I have just completed a PhD in sociology.


Does my work in industry carry any weight in academia?


My work in industry included activities such as developing codes and operational manuals in a particular field to be used by operators in that field (e.g., a health and safety manual).



Answer



Weight in academia is carried mostly by peer-reviewed research publications, published in academically reputable venues such as research journals, conferences, books with reputable publishers, reputable preprint servers, ... If you get these publications from industry research, you get academic weight. A famous example for prominent research in electrical engineering done in industry are the Bell laboratories.


Codes and operational manuals are not academic publications, and typically carry little weight. In order to get that, you have to publish academic papers about the codes and manuals, or publish papers about research results obtained with them.


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