This piece is a runaway tangent from a prior post. While I embrace nonlinear writing and short tangents, sometimes a tangent builds too much steam and calls too much attention to itself. So I gave it its own space. I begin with a quote that emerged in a game of Claude-Kindle tag. In short, I uploaded my Kindle highlights to Readwise, I write one paragraph at a time, and I ask Claude to search my Kindle highlights for a complicating or challenging quote. I write. I rinse. I repeat. This one came from a recent editorial:
“Writing for this readership means making the argument clear. It means explaining what is at stake. It means avoiding the kind of specialized performance where readers have to excavate the contribution. We value complexity, while also valuing precision, accessibility, and a clear sense of why the article deserves the reader’s time…” (McKinley & Zhou 2026, p. 8).
On LinkedIn, I feel inundated with academics bemoaning the accelerating collapse of the peer review system. In this deluge, many argue that incentive structures curled around productivity and citation produce (some) academics who lean on GenAI to produce and submit large volumes of low-quality papers. The expectation is that most such papers will get rejected, a few will sneak past gatekeepers, and the researcher will be more productive than they would have been without GenAI. In economists’ terms, the expected value is positive, and the practice gets rewarded (Veletsianos et al., 2025).
On the other side, academics get unsustainable and at times wildly mismatched inquiries for peer review. Many have loudly quit the peer review process altogether, finding their labor legs, saying they refuse to offer their expertise for free. I question how many of those academics (1) have benefited from the free labor of peer reviewers to publish their papers and earn tenure or (2) had fewer public quarrels with peer review before the rise of GenAI. As a result, we have a peer review system under unsustainable strain because the benefits of publication remains asymmetric to the benefits of peer review (Manabu, 2026), and the reward structure of publication valorizes quantity over quality (Kramsch, 2026). And I am a PhD student standing on the outside of the academic keep while the drawbridge raises.
If we take this writer-reviewer relationship to the reader-writer relationship outlined by McKinley and Zhou (2026), I have to ask: Should I write for a reader who likes reading? Or to a reader who wants to acquire information? Whose time matters more?
Many of us complain that undergraduate students in their classes are functionally illiterate, will not read, and remain dependent on GenAI to complete assignments. And even the completed assignments feel like slop. I reduce course readings to three pages over one week and still feel disheartened when a plurality of students submit responses that sound the exact same – not just the same passages or similar ideas – but the same smooth, hollow sound (Jandrić, 2026).
Is the same true for PhD students and professors? Does everyone love reading so much that they no one depends on GenAI to summarize articles or generate sources for their claims? I wish I could believe that. But if GenAI can relieve undergraduates of the burden of reading, how many academics are eager to escape that same burden (Manabu, 2026)? And what does that realization mean when journal editors urge me to write for the intended audience? Or write with a reader in mind? Or write in a way that is “worth a reader’s time?” How do I write with a reader in mind when the reader does not read?
In short, why would I write something worth a reader’s time if I cannot trust a reader will take time to read. Hell, many peer reviewers these days do not take the time to read. In an era where scholars can upload my manuscript into ChatGPT and receive a summary in a style amenable to them, whose time really gets wasted? And why would I cater my writing to that crowd of non-readers when they can get what they need via several keyboard clickety-clacks and a flick of the mouse?
Writing with a reader’s time in mind assumes an outdated model where everyone needed to read – where the experience of reading was inescapable. Today, those who wish to escape can escape. The people who remain are those who like to read. So instead, I now write for a different kind of reader – one who wants an experience – one who enjoys reading. It is messier, it is less coherent, but it feels real. I imagine GenAI will sweep up many (if not most) academics into a technological language cyborg apparatus. And if we bow down to information at the expense of experience (Sandelowski, 2015), that is what we deserve. But do we not deserve better? In an era where reading and writing is a luxury, what is really worth our time?
References:
Jandrić, P. (2026). GenAI and academic writing. Postdigital Science and Education, 8(2), 372–386. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-026-00641-9
Kramsch, C. (2026). A critical reflection on where applied linguistics is taking us. Language Teaching, 1–8. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444826101244
Manabu, T. (2026). The machine consumes itself: Artificial intelligence and the end of publish-or-perish. Postdigital Science and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-026-00666-0
McKinley, J., & Zhou, S. (2026). From relevant to publishable in TESOL research: Contribution, access, and accountability: An editorial statement from the incoming editors of TESOL Quarterly. TESOL Quarterly, 60(3), 1021–1032. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.70212
Sandelowski, M. (2015). A matter of taste: Evaluating the quality of qualitative research. Nursing Inquiry, 22(2), 86–94. https://doi.org/10.1111/nin.12080
Veletsianos, G., Arabadzhy, G., Athilat, V., Bartucz, J., Dogra, S., Fredrickson, N. R., Goeke, M. T., Jeon, S. T., Urena, M., Jandrić, P., Green, B. J., & Jackson, L. (2025). Postdigital peer review: A vulnerable space between freedom and responsibility. Postdigital Science and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-025-00604-6
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