I have dreams unlike most people. Not to mention nightmares. So to provide a context. I use variations of initials and portions of my surname for a variety of reasons, including my blog addresses. So in this dream, I stumble across this item in effect: "I'm looking for R.A. Guilleme. He published this [2007] article [in some agricultural research journal] that has some bad data in it and has led to some bad outcomes in the real world. Guilleme needs to correct his errors before any more damage is done."
Now the real me is saying, "Wait a minute. First of all, that's not my surname; second, I didn't publish anything in 2007. Third, I certainly didn't publish anything in any agriculture journal. It couldn't possibly be me." Now a number of journals often feature a short biographical blurb, sometimes with an author photo, and I'm shocked to see the article has a blurb just like me, other than the typo surname. Why would someone engage in an academic hoax at my expense? How do I clear my name and reputation?
If you've read any of my publications, you know they are meticulously written. I have impossibly high standards. I've mentioned in past posts. I once got a conditional acceptance: I would have to cut my bibliography section of some 450 citations in half. Of course I did what I had to do to get the acceptance, but who to leave in, who to cut out? I was almost paranoid that anyone I cut out might read the article and demand to know why I wasn't crediting his work.
I worked very hard to establish my reputation through my articles and book chapters. And it was thrilling to see others appreciate my efforts. One of my journal article reviewers commented to the effect that my comprehensive write-up left nothing relevant out; While I was at UWM, a faculty recruiter from the technical communication program at the University of Washington told me about an unpublished faculty position I should apply for. Keep in mind I had never taken a single related course, had any academic contacts in the field--this unsolicited offer was solely based on the quality of my scholarship. (If they would have let me also teach some MIS courses, I would likely have applied. To be honest, it had been a dream of mine to get a position at a land grant "name" university, but I never got approached (and my dissertation chair was of the opinion that I would do fine without his help). I did get one call from Dartmouth by a faculty recruiter impressed I was invited to 2 top doctoral consortia, but there was no followup. Then a third example was from a UW friend I had met at ICIS; he got a position at Illinois Institute of Technology.. He came across some colleague from their technical communication program and casually asked him if he ever heard of me. "Oh, yes, he's written some of the classic articles in the field.' What a boost to the ego of a young faculty member!
It was never my intent to be simply a solo researcher. I had offered to put my dissertation chair's name on a few of my early articles, and he refused, pointing out he had not contributed to the effort. I had tried to flesh out some research ideas with other UH alumni. I remember one idea I floated out at UTEP was doing a critical success factors of maquiladoras. But it was a difficult time for me, having to be on the market my last 3 years in academia, various time-consuming administrative issues, etc. A lot of it was I was having to play more of a leadership role and trying to find some meeting ground between research areas.
I do remember befriending an African junior professor at Illinois State who was interested in doing joint research. But after a series of events I've recently described elsewhere (a power play by senior faculty enraged I wasn't requiring students to program in PL/1 in a data structures course) I just didn't have the time. He was actually nice about it and offered to put my name on anything he and his other partners put out. I quickly objected to that; The idea that someone would put my name on something I didn't do and/or didn't conform to my high standards was totally unacceptable. I wanted to protect my brand. Every once in a while I'll Google myself just to make sure that's not happening.
I did put another's name on a paper I wrote. Minnie had the same dissertation chair and her research topic involved query languages. I was intrigued by John Carroll's work on minimal manuals (think of a strategy based on getting a learner up and running using software productively in small, self-contained chunks). So I wrote a minimal manual on SQL (IBM's Structured Query Language); Minnie had a student who was learning SQL, and I wanted to measure qualitative aspects to the student's learning experience using the manual. So Minnie was a contributing partner, including data collection. [One of these days I should get around to rewriting and publishing my original manual.]
