The downside is that all too often these papers are dismissed as being so
standardised that they take little skill or effort (Forum, 25 June 1994, p49),
or alternatively so arcane that they merit facetious comment (Forum, 10 December
1994, p46).

The truth is that writing papers is extremely hard work. As Derek de Solla
Price, the American science historian, notes in his essay “Little science, big
science and beyond” (Columbia University Press, 1986), out of every 165
scientists, 100 will only ever produce one paper. And only 10 will ever produce
more that 10 papers—the critical mass necessary to gain a bit of academic
gravitas.

So why is this? Most papers are based on experimental work, which requires
experience and is laborious. But this is the easy part. Harder by far is having
good, original questions for the experimental work to answer in the first place.
The necessary insights often arise without the conscious volition of the
individual—over tea, in the bath or while dreaming perhaps, but this
doesn’t make them free gifts. They pop to the surface of a rich mental soup only
after diverse ingredients have been added, years of stirring and plenty of heat.
It is unfortunate that there is no specific recipe for this vital creativity:
there is no collection of cut-and-dried facts waiting to be recorded as
carelessly as you like.

The paper itself develops by painstaking increments as it goes through
numerous revisions. Rereading and revising force the author to keep
thinking—an often painful and revelatory process. In the quest for
perfection more experiments may need to be done, any number of sections will
have to be slashed and burnt as unforeseen points arise, and a complete rethink
or two may well be necessary along the way.

A delay between revisions undoubtedly freshens the eye, but authors still get
jaded and often ask colleagues to read their work critically. Finally, it is
ready to be submitted for publication. This, of course, is illusory. Several
months later, the now dog-eared paper will come back littered with the referees’
comments and a new cycle will start as the author either struggles to
incorporate or rebut the criticisms.

Authors who publish prematurely, whether there is any alternative or not, are
degenerate because their work is not as good as it could be: they stunt their
academic development and risk repenting of their errors at leisure, or of having
their work ignored by peers. Research work and writing papers clearly involves
taking great pains. To do a good job, you have to be highly
motivated—something easily portrayed as the idealistic pursuit of
excellence. Aldous Huxley, for one, wasn’t convinced. In After many a
Summer, the philosophical William Propter says that scientists (and
artists)are “… devoted to what we vaguely call an ideal. But what is an
ideal—simply the projection, on an enormously large scale, of some aspect
of personality”.

This version of idealism boils down to obsessional neurosis. Then again,
Richard Feynman, the great physicist from Caltech, was fond of saying that he
did physics “for fun”, while the British astronomer Fred Hoyle described
Feynman’s motivation as a religious impulse (Review, 24 September, 1994, p 38).
Clearly, the motivation involves highly personal processes. In addition, the
capacity to persevere in science requires the personal qualities you would
expect to find in the infantry: stamina, organisational ability and ruthless
single-mindedness.

All in all, writing papers is a protracted and messy business, and evaluating
authors in time for any good to come from it, that is before they are
superannuated or otherwise lost, is notoriously difficult. Even at the best of
times, publications reflect past progress. Authors whose ideas are developing
rapidly or whose work is particularly original are likely to be even further
behind.

We should spare a thought for the administrators who fall back on dodgy
criteria such as “weight of publications per time” or citation rates in an
attempt to influence current progress. Given the hopelessness of the task, their
various displacement activities are understandable. They fiddle with priorities,
apply formulas, make audits and dole out money according to apparently rational
criteria.

But the odds are that they are buying activity, not achievement. The more
bath water they try to throw out, the worse it gets for delicate research
babies.

Now then, let me read this through just once more … Perhaps Mr Propter was
right when he went on to say that science may be bad for scientists. But then
again, could manoeuvring in business or selling piles of bricks to the Tate
Gallery be quite as satisfying as writing well-fashioned papers?

Such slogans might be acceptable as boiled-down mission statements were it not that a university’s role is invariable, and is universally known. The University of Oxford promises “excellence in education and research”. Did you suspect otherwise?

Perhaps, if pushed, the creators of such slogans could justify their effort with a mission statement of their own: “To allay what we perceive to be public concern about academic standards and fiscal probity and, inter alia, to keep up with the Joneses.” But if that is the aim why not use a hard currency with wide consensus, such as research assessment ratings, rather than one which is so prone to inflation?

Today’s slogans are typically British and appear to be the product of conventional minds with strong herd instincts. And by the normal standards of advertising they leave much to be desired—for several reasons. First, changes in universities’ practice have been too rapid to be sustained by the reactions of the prospective staff or students who are the ostensible targets. Secondly, British companies, which are surely more media-savvy than universities, are considerably more circumspect when it comes to using reassuring all-purpose slogans. And in any case, most of the slogans are so dull as barely to warrant the name.

This being so, slogans are likely to evolve rapidly and become more grandiloquent. The University of Wales, Lampeter, which merely “promotes higher education”, is already well behind the field in the hyperbole stakes, and so appears to damn itself with faint praise. They will be pitching for ever more specific niche markets. The University of Kent at Canterbury is “Britain’s European university”, so presumably we can expect the University of Newcastle upon Tyne to pick up the challenge and style itself Britain’s Norwegian university.

The University of Birmingham “benefits society at large”, presumably leaving it to others to cater for the incarcerated. And there will be ever more variations on the theme of high standards. Sheffield Hallam University already offers “Education for business” while the University of Wolverhampton, in an apparent negation of the conventional role of a university as a place of intellectual excellence, provides “higher education services to all sections of the community”.

Other institutions, other approaches. The University of Aberdeen proclaims itself to be “within reach of some of Britain’s most attractive [scenery]”. So perhaps we can anticipate “Sunniest place in Britain” for the University of Kent at Canterbury, or “Miles from any motorway” for the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Some may move on to mudslinging, or the sort of innuendo beloved of commercial advertisers, restoring some of the original meaning of the word “slogan”—which began life as “a clan war cry”. The University of Oxford could be “The original University of Oxford”, while Cambridge could announce that it is “taking the Ox out of Oxbridge”. Some may gain by mentioning prestigious former students or sponsors: “By appointment to Margaret Thatcher” or, say, “Foster’s Lager”.

Some universities are diversifying into issues of wider contemporary interest. Hence the University of Nottingham’s “highest quality learning environment”, which to the naive might suggest luxuriously padded chairs in the library, or something of the sort. In fact, the important thing is that Nottingham is an actual environment, whatever kind it may be. Soon we may have hard-hitting new universities which “promote campus biodiversity” or are “sustainably managed”. The university that “recycles lectures” has an all too authentic ring to it.

As the number of issues per slogan increases, mean length will expand likewise, until they become so overloaded that they collapse under their own weight. We may then witness some radical developments of the kind already being pioneered by the University of Wolverhampton. It uses a number of symbols that look better suited to a fire extinguisher that has satisfied certain safety and design criteria. Its advertisements are franked and stamped with mysterious but impressive-looking devices: “Charter mark”, “Registered firm”, “National accreditation of certification bodies” and “FS 28 792”. The idea being promoted is presumably that the university meets the standards laid down by various regulatory bodies, offers a rigorously tested “product” and is unlikely to go bankrupt.

Such devices will become increasingly decorated with crowns, laurel leaves and so on. The University of Luton, for example, is a laureate of the “prestigious Investor in People award”. Eventually there will be so many accreditations, certifications, awards and attendant decorations that they will fuse into one composite but distinctive badge for each university. In the meantime, perhaps, the various issues addressed in the slogan will have been distilled down to buzzwords such as “image”, “reassurance”, “perception of quality” and so on, perhaps cast into Latin to make them sound a little less bald, and finally—bringing the process full-circle—arranged to form a heraldic university badge.