The powers-that-be nowadays call this “contemporary” academic a “high impact contributor in academia” while the traditional academic will probably be referred to as just “an unfortunate troublemaker and an underachiever”. The strangest criterion for me in academia is book publishing. The highest marks for a book goes to what is known as a “research” book. What the hell is a “research book”? But in Malaysian academia, key performance indicators deem that popular books are “not as important” as a “research” book.
