Reactions to Fourteen Alternative Academic Practices

Abstract Addressing the challenges facing students and researchers in academia requires reimagining academic traditions to make research and teaching more equitable and effective. Kemeny et al. (2024, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024cn000240 ) proposed 14 alternative academic practices, focused on the physical sciences in the United States, designed to launch discussion. These proposals spanned the graduate student experience, faculty careers, evaluation methods, peer review and publication, and conference norms. It is important to gauge levels of support for these practices in order to inform strategies for implementation. To assess support for the proposed alternative practices, Kemeny et al. included a survey that invited readers to share their quantitative and qualitative evaluations. The survey was open for 18 months and received 83 unique responses. Most practices received mean ratings above neutral, though only six were significantly above the scale midpoint after correction for multiple comparisons. The practice with the highest support was anonymous manuscript review (#9), followed by teaching‐focused faculty leading courses (#2), free conference attendance (#14), a lottery system for grant review (#7), decentralized graduate training by departments (#3), and rotating faculty editing appointments at journals (#10). Women were significantly more likely than men to support the practice of conferences not serving alcohol or hosting bar‐related events ( p , FDR‐corrected = 0.017). Respondents were also invited to propose alternative academic practices, most of which focused on reforms to the graduate student experience. While understanding public perceptions of reimagined academic practices is necessary, institutional constraints, cost, legality, and cultural resistance must also be considered when assessing implementation feasibility.