The Editors - The Future of Leisure Research

Hello everyone and welcome to the leisure society podcast. The leisure society podcast is an initiative from the editors of the following journals. Lajor studies, leisure sciences, word leisure journal, journal of leisure research, anos of leisure research, leisure loisier, an international journal of the sociology of leisure. In this podcast we will be talking to establishing emerging researchers in the field regarding their work and their views on the future of leisure. This is Sandra Caricelli, I'm the editor of the word leisure journal and in this final episode of season one, I welcome Belinda Whitton, who is the managing editor of Anos of leisure research, Ian Jones and Tom Fletcher, managing editors of leisure studies, and just in Harmon, editor in chief of leisure sciences. Today we will be talking about future topics, future types of conversation, and also the future of the field for early career researchers. So hello everyone, are you guys doing okay? How are you Tom today? I'm good. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks how are you Justin? Excellent, glad to be here. Great. Ian, how are you Ian? I'm very well. I'm equally glad to be here. Thanks Sandra. And Belinda, finally, how are you doing today? Very good. Thank you Sandra down here in southern hemisphere where it's beautiful morning. Great and it's just now is evening time here in UK and it's great to be talking to you all. So I think the first topic I wanted to explore with you guys today regards future of leisure research in terms of teams, topics, fields of research. You know, there is special issues happening in multiple journals. There is topics that we see emerging in editorial publications in the journals. What is what's happening in your journal in terms of topics? How do you see teams and topics in leisure studies evolving in your specific journal? So if I can start with Tom, what what you see in the leisure studies just now. Here's a tricky one for us I think because we're just having four managing editors. You tend to only see what you see. And so I get a quarter I get of submissions coming through. I think we obviously get a huge, a real eclectic mix of stuff. So it's very difficult to kind of pin down into a particular area. We could have anything from shopping to gambling to fishing to gardening to major sporting events. And we do get all of those things which I think is, which is really, you know, it's a real powerful mix for the journal and really does kind of showcase the interdisciplinarity within the journal and across leisure studies. I think something that I'll drop in and another might contribute to later on is the kind of papers that we get that we don't want. I guess that's a real challenge for us at the minute. We get a lot of submissions that probably don't belong with us. And I think that's something that we're going to have to think about moving forward in terms of how we shape the aims and scope and make it very, very clear what research and what papers we want and what papers chances are belong somewhere else. Yeah. And it's like because there was a time and not long ago where lots of papers were about COVID for example, right? Is that something that you still see coming to the journal in, for example, in your experience? Well, I mean, following up from from that, I want, I should be stepping down soon and one of the great benefits of stepping down as editor is I never ever have to see another COVID related paper in my entire life. We're still getting lots of COVID submissions. We are still getting, we're still publishing one or two just to sort of get them through the system. But in reality, we're getting a lot of COVID that is just outdated really and just doesn't have any any contemporary relevant. So that's my pick when it's just I don't ever want to see another COVID paper in my life. There probably is some some good one. There is still to dress up, but they're not for me really. See, I think that's an administrative joke because I am from cat because I don't get any COVID related paper. So I think they just, I think she just sends them to you just to just to frustrate you. They seem to be the same COVID paper, but in a slightly different context. So the impact of COVID on leisure in country X, country Y, country Z and it's, yeah. And it's just not really adding to the field at every think of the moment. Melinda, what's the review on that? I think the leaders are mute. Yeah, thanks, sorry, technology. So COVID, I think it's a double edged sword actually. So like you in we get a bunch of papers looking at what COVID did in a particular place or how a particular organization tried to mitigate the challenges. And yeah, I think we're all we've moved on from that. But I think it's probably symptom of some to a wider problem we have, which is what is people have such a broad understanding of what leisure is. And I think it's obviously it's a bigger question. The problem stuff for us and I think it sounds like it's similar for you guys too is when people think about leisure as somehow being either a constraint in a very quantitative normative sense or they think about an opportunity, particularly an opportunity for an organization or a place or particularly in tourism. I see this a lot. And I would say that these papers are not really critical leisure studies, which is where I think all of our journals are positioned. On the other hand, I would say that what COVID has done is push people to think about the leisure in different ways that can be productive. And so probably some of the positive things that we've seen in our journal that have come out of COVID indirectly is a focus on local versus global kind of issues. So we've had some great papers, for example, that reconceptualize travel tourism, the outdoors, but within a country or within a place. So what are people doing in their micro environments, for example? And we've had a great special issue that came out last year around the outdoors. In fact, it turned out to be three issues because there were so many papers. And many were inspired by what people saw in COVID, but didn't necessarily talk about the COVID pandemic, I guess. And just focus on one other thing. And I think the two other areas which kind of relates to your first question, Sandra, about what are the interesting things that are emerging that I think are again related to maybe people's lives in COVID is technology, particularly the way in which virtual leisure worlds are changing. I would actually like to see more around this. There's lots of great stuff about this out there in publishing and I don't think we're getting enough of it within our journals. The metaverse aspects of video games that are still so ever shifting, particularly around who's playing them the ways in which people create identities, money from them. These are huge parts of the leisure industry that I don't think we're really getting enough cool stuff on. Many young people, their lives are so different now that they were even 10 years ago. If we think about some of the classic leisure studies stuff, 10, 15 years ago television, yeah, okay, TV is still big in terms of big sports events, but I don't think many young people sit in front of the television at all. Certainly my students are anything to go by and my own teenage plus children. So yeah, I think leisure has such a key place right now and I don't think the way that leisure studies is being understood by communities is necessarily something that is being reflected and what's coming into our journals as the majority. That's very interesting and I hear I'll make the most do a promotional point saying that we actually have a special issue on leisure and metaverse for the word leisure journal coming up soon. I'm not sure if abstracts in the deadline by mid of December, but just I want to go to just going to you just just think what are the things that you've seen in leisure sciences that you know, called your attention and so on. Well similar to Ian, I could work really Rasul and I are all happy to never see another COVID paper again. We've been desk rejecting all COVID papers for a good year now and even have a little thing where you have to technically check box that your paper is not about COVID yet people still submit it. And we're also we're about to enter our final two years so we're trying to move everything forward. and get of all of our special issues situated. And it's actually an interesting regarding the COVID issue because our predecessors, Corey Johnson and Diana Perry and Brett Lashua, did that rapid response special issue on COVID, right at the heart of it, which was probably one of the most successful issues that we've ever had and drove our impact factor up significantly, which has come down now on our watch. So we're trying to figure out if there's a way that we can strike lightning twice or not, probably won't happen, but we're always looking for different ways to get another special issue in there and drive research and attention and traffic to certain topics. We just proved one with Diana Perry as guest editor for a leisure in trauma. And we are looking at another rapid release idea, whether or not we're able to get it off, or not we'll see. But in terms of just submissions, it seems like we are a dumping ground for tourism journal rejections and then every tangential of sport or event or hospitality. So I don't know, I imagine our desk reject is still well over 50%. But we still get a lot of interesting and diverse submissions. One thing that I haven't seen in the three years I've been doing this for really is any big data stuff. So that's one area where I think where is underrepresented. I would really, you know, I've been really moved by a couple of books outside of our field, but tangential to our field that use big data sets to really explain things in a more sociological level, which is personally more interesting to me than sociopsychological stuff and psychological. So I don't know if we'll start to see some changes in that area, I mean, but I would like to see more people starting to take these from different countries and look at like the bigger picture as it relates to leisure and trends and issues and problems, et cetera. - That's interesting because that's the other point. I see us at word leisures we getting lots of quantitative papers, but a lot of them very basic quantitative papers and you know, it lacks some level of complexity even in that aspect. Tom. - I was gonna throw the question back to you, Sandra, and that's what the situation is with word leisure and then make it an observation based on what the Lindrid said around kind of youth cultures, you know, post COVID and all that and tech as well. But I will throw it back to you and say, what's the situation with word leisure? - So it's interesting, I think we've been back to organising some special issues and I agree we are still getting some COVID related papers but we're also getting some papers that related to post COVID consequences. So, you know, we organise a special issue on digital nomadism that has been, I believe fueled a lot post COVID as well. So it was interesting to see some leisure practices that came after COVID now being represented more widely in the papers as well as things like, you know, Anthropocene and, you know, non-human relations with leisure and technology. So it's almost interesting to see that a lot of leisure practices are during COVID are now starting to be expressed somehow in research and that's the, as I said, like, you know, interaction between humans and on humans that was actually fueled a lot in terms of COVID as well during that time, as well as technology and the way we work. It's being quite interesting to see some of that in our journal. - But I think that's the key, isn't it? I think Belinda's really, she's really hidden the nail on the head there in that, you know, what we don't want is kind of case to do is of the impact of COVID on there and now at a particular moment in time. You know, COVID is, it's still, there's always going to be a legacy of it because of the dramatic impact that it's had on kind of our everyday practices and relationships and relationship with one another, but also relationship with tech, relationship with leisure, I guess, you know, my dad is, he's still frightened to go outdoors. And I'm not entirely sure why, but he doesn't go anywhere. Now he's a proper little nomad that stays at home. And he's quite happy in his own space. But, you know, mustn't forget that in terms of, you know, impacts on the elderly in terms of isolation and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, I, you know, Belinda talked about video games, for example. And, you know, the biggest example I've seen around how video games is, you know, it's clearly important sociologically is that, you know, a very good friend to legislate is Professor Gary Crawford and Sulford Uni. He's secured a grant of about four million pounds to research video gaming. Now, in normal times, would you get four million quits to research video games? I don't think that you would, but I think there's a kind of post-COVID legacy around the use of tech and changing leisure practices. And I think it's going to, the irony, of course, is that we don't want papers now. But in five years, you might, where you could generally say, what, you know, what has the impact been? Almost like an event legacy. If you treat COVID like a major event, which we wouldn't do. But if you think of COVID as a major event, it fits the bill. It's a media spectacle. Impact, lots of people has, you know, massive commercial impact. It's a mega event in the same way as a FIFA World Cup is. Just it's some planned. But you wouldn't look at the impact of a FIFA World Cup within two to 12 months, or indeed, whilst it was happening. You'd say, well, that's going to have a look five years on. And I think we need to do a similar thing when it comes to COVID. I don't think we need to chuck it out just yet. But it's got to be situated within a much bigger debate. It can't just be an impact on this community or this leisure center. It's like, OK, how do COVID shape our understanding of leisure? I'd love to think peace like that. You know, I'd be quite happy to consider something like that. I don't want to write it, but I'd quite happily consider one. Just think. Yeah, no, I think Tom hit it on the head quite nicely. Yeah, like it's impact down the line would certainly be in the United States. I mean, I would think about that as it relates to like 9/11 or the Great Recession, like other things that in the moment certainly are important, but can be overly focused on and overly saturated, but certainly have a lasting impact in ways that we don't know, right? 9/11 changed the way that people traveled and people's understanding of travel. So it certainly has some impact to today. And certainly, you could draw parallels with what happened in Israel, right? You could make an argument about, all right, so what is the relationship between these major terrorist events and these different parts of the country at different times? What have we learned and how does that affect leisure scholarship? So those sorts of things would be interesting. But I mean, to Tom's point, it's just over saturation of COVID for a time is like, let's set it aside and see how people adjust and then see what can be made of it a little bit further down the line. And once it's sort of out of the everyday dialogue, I guess. Hey, Ian. Just sort of moving on. I mean, I think we're all sort of clear that we sort of publish quite an eclectic mix between us. And I don't know if this is a question we can really answer today. But I wondered-- not so much about the types of work we're publishing, but I wondered if anybody had any thoughts about the quality of work that we're publishing. OK, so I'll ask Belinda to make her point and then also answer your question. That's cool, because that fits quite nicely. I was going to say, and it will answer your question, Ian, which is a great question. I think one of my big bug bairs for both Louise and myself is a sense of perhaps academic amnesia, which I think is probably to do in part with the academic environments we work in. In some parts of the world, not all, there's need to publish. And it's all about the quantity and not about the quality. I recognize that is variable in different countries. But what we find a lot in our journal that frustrates us immensely is a paper that speaks to a topic, but frames it in a really narrow set of literature or a really contemporary set of literature that doesn't show the historical development of ideas. Now, maybe I'm showing my age here. But if I get a paper, let's say, on some sort of feminist claim or something, even let's say about gender power, or masculinity, but doesn't actually go back to show where these debates started to impact leisure more broadly. I think that's a real problem for us as a discipline. Now, I'm not saying that that means we all, necessarily, should be going back to citing a bunch of old, white men from the past. I'm absolutely not suggesting that on the contrary. I think we have to be really careful about how we use our citations, who we saw and why. And I don't think that's because I'm an old stuffy academic, I just think that actually it's so important because that way we can feel like Leisure Studies has the potential, as I think Tom, you said it's so interdisciplinary now and I think that's both the strength and a challenge in some ways. Just to give a specific example, for example, we may get a paper from somebody in, let's say, education/outdoor education that makes no connection whatsoever to the same thing that's happening in the sport literature on the same topic and we could all think of multiple examples of that. So maybe this is partly what Justin was saying earlier, which is, what are the overarching theories of that Leisure Studies is developing in this post-COVID or moving from or learning from COVID era? And for me, that's one of the things that frustrates me most and we really push in our journal with reviewers to say, "Look, we've actually moved to the word length of the article, being quite separate to the references, I'm not sure how you are all doing that now because I don't want people to be constrained in how much they cite, I want them to be able to knock out citations so that they've got more room to make their point because I think it's so important to keep building the history of our field and its development." I would agree with you strongly, Belinda, around that. I don't so much notice a lack of engagement with the history of the literature or that history, founding literature, that seminal work, if we're allowed to use that term. What I do find is that authors struggle a lot to articulate what their contribution is when you say, "Well, what is the contribution of this paper?" And they can say, "Oh, well, it's new and it's this." No, no, no. How does this contribute to the field of leisure specifically? So in terms of that situation, in terms of how the work is situated as being aimed at Leisure Studies? And I think that's one of the core weaknesses that we've got in that I think, from my point of view, a lot of the papers that I deal with, I think it's quite evident that you're not necessarily the first journal of choice. And I think Justin, you said, you know, you're kind of a dumping ground. And I don't mean that, I don't think that we are, I don't feel like a dump, or to the journal and the field, from what we get. But I think when you have authors that are struggling to situate their paper with a wider debate of leisure or how they've advanced the field, then that tells me that maybe they were thinking of the field when they wrote that paper. And I think that's something, again, that we grappling with it. How do you push that along, or how do you indeed, how do you batter way those kinds of papers and those authors that haven't really chosen you? How do you build that affinity with the field and the journal? I think is a is a real challenge for us. But then Tom, I agree with you, but then how do we, I think one of the things that we want to keep the dialogue with other fields, right? And we want papers from other fields and we want them to, you know, to have this dialogue with us and we with them and so on. So how then we appreciate what you're saying and I struggle with that in the word leisure journal in terms of the volume of two recent papers and how actually we're trying to stop a little bit that. But then how do we don't become insular in terms of of of of of field, right? In terms of actually excluding anything that could be related, maybe not well articulated and and and and not become insular. And actually, if you have an answer for that. Well, sort of, I mean, one of the things sort of perhaps leading up to an answer is one thing I mean when I first started many years ago, people seem to focus much more on particular topics, on particular areas, which I've noticed in some ways is is just a lot of the papers, you know, I may get a paper from an author on sustainability and then three months later I'll get a paper from the same author on leisure and well being and then six months later I'll get a paper from the same author on leisure constraints. And I think something I've noticed over the years is people not focusing on particular areas and actually being incredibly eclectic in their own research. And I just wonder whether that makes it harder to do what Belinda suggested in terms of really getting that engagement with the literature and quite often I wonder whether it leads to quite superficial examination. I mean, I've always said if I was a vice chancellor of I university, I would restrict people to publishing two first author articles per year. I don't know how well that would go down but that would go down too well. I think we're all guilty of that though aren't we? Those superficial analyses which goes back to Belinda's got a handle it goes back to that kind of public that kind of vast academia. I know Sandra I've seen you tweet about this and let's just slow down academia, you know, and it's like you know I've been trying since the first of September to start a paper that I'd said to myself I'm prioritising that paper. I'm going to read really rigorously around this paper and it's now almost Christmas and I've read one journal article for it because I just can't get to it and what will happen is that I will produce that paper but it will not be what I wanted it to be. It'll I would like to think it'll get published but it's not going to go into the depth that I want it to do because there's no time to do it. I think there's the thing about maturation of ideas and concepts as well, you know, so you know, I do have a paper that is being on the making for a couple of years, you know, and it's sometimes that we work on it and we polish and we advance and then we stop and we think and we discuss and it's not an easy practice to have it. Sometimes it's needed maybe not for every journal, not every paper but sometimes, you know, I feel that sometimes we we also need to is also a process of of self-development I see and we can talk about, you know, a communicating knowledge and communicating science and communicating research as a process of also learning Belinda. Yeah, I just think it's important to recognise the politics, you know, behind this structural issues that are contributing. So, you know, certainly as individuals and I think all academics were guilty of this, you know, we have a certain amount of time we make choices about what we research and why but it's always in this context of who we are, we're all fairly privileged, you know, we're we're all in relatively stable employment, etc. I certainly can speak to some of the differences of from the UK to Australia and New Zealand where there's a much greater emphasis down here in young academics having loads of publications. I mean, when we look at our when we're ranking PhD students to employ, you know, they don't already have a publication, they kind of don't get a scholarship which from a UK perspective, I think would be very different. So, to some extent, you know, we're a product of the system and I guess for me as someone who's very interested in challenging social justice is how can journals contribute to that in a way that changes the system. It doesn't just reproduce that need for young academics, whether they don't be young, age wise, I mean, you know, newer academics, ECRs, particularly, to not have to do that jumping that you just spoken about in, you know, I know a bit about well being so I'll check out a paper on it, you know, etc, etc. And I see, you know, in the UK something like with that because it does talk about a narrative of someone's personal development. But, you know, what could we do? I think it's a question to all of us, what can we do within the publishing world to try to help in that process, not perpetuate it? I think it's an important question. Excellent. I think that's a good link to the next point then, but like, you know, if you're talking about all these ways of communicating knowledge, communicating discoveries, research and so on, where do we go next in terms of science communication, knowledge communication, research communication. So we see nowadays journals, you know, we publish research notes, we publish commentaries, we publish, you know, four articles, we are publishing other types of ways of communication, have different ways of communicating, you know, science, thoughts, ideas, knowledge, where are we going next? Tom? That was so cruel. I'm the least like creative person on the call. You're asking me that. I'll throw it back and say, we should do podcasts, Sandra, we should get colleagues with two proposed podcast ideas, reach out to you and create series two of the legislative podcasts. I mean, ultimately, you know, I kind of mown and grown and, you know, I'm not an old academic, but I feel old when my PhD students come in and they talk about the way which they learn of the way which they gather their knowledge. And I have a PhD student at the minute who he does read. I don't think he reads as much as what I would probably like him to read because he watches a lot of the key authors delivering stuff on YouTube or he listens to one of their podcasts. And he'll say to me, you know, why would I read that entire book covered to cover when I can listen to a summary of it over YouTube for two hours? And I cringe when, you know, when I have those conversations and then think, what a sensible use of your time in hindsight, where it might take me a week to read that book. And so I think that when we recognize how young scholars and students are consuming academic work, then we need to diversify how we communicate it. And I don't think our students read as much as we would like in a way would be counterintuitive to not create stuff for them to read, because you're kind of trying to get them to read more. But we do have to think about alternative ways in a way which we might add a two minute summary or five minute summary or a discussion around the paper that we've written, and it might be a little commentary along with it to guide the reader through it, perhaps, with students in mind. I don't think many academics are like that, but I think particularly with students in mind, we have to think through those communication routes. Billing that. Tom, that's a really good point. And actually it reminded me I've had recently a couple of neurodiverse masters and PhD students, super smart, but fine reading and absolute challenged. And they too use their listening to podcasts and videos. And it's a important point about inclusion, because academia was set up in particular ways to include particular types of people. So yes, I like that idea and what I want to add to that is something that's a constant tension down here in Altharoh, New Zealand, which is particularly for Indigenous Maori academics who are the minority because of smaller population and for constant colonization and because of exposure and blah blah within our institutions, but are seen to play an incredibly important role. And they are always compromised because for lots of the Maori that I speak to, they're what they want to do with their research is make a difference in their communities. They don't want to be in a whatever round journal. In fact, often they are quite fearful of being in those journals in case their papers are white washed or read by academics who don't understand the context. And that it's not because they don't want to contribute to those debates. They do, but what's much more important to them is contributing to their communities. So again, you know, thinking about marginalized groups within academia, how do we create the space and the place for, you know, different voices? And when Louise and I took over as editors in Annals, one of the first things we did was really tried to diversify our board and we explicitly targeted as many of the Maori academics, Pacifica, as well as, you know, women and so on. And what was really frustrating was very few Maori academics wanted to be on the board because they just don't see it as a priority for their time. And I get that, I get that. Sorry, I'm raising more challenges. I'm not coming up with solutions, but I think that leads to what Tom, what you're talking about, you know, it's really important to think about all of these questions in the context of what a journal could or should or might even be able to do. That's a point I think. Sorry. No, I think that's the point. I think like it's like, are we, the question is, are we actually, are we any close to being close to being close to being? And I don't think we are, right? I don't think, you know, I don't think we do enough to be inclusive to, you know, the diverse people, thinkers, researchers and so on that there is around the world studying leisure. And I think the question is always like, how can we be more inclusive of this all, like, you know, other groups that are doing research on leisure that are valuable. And we are not including them. Sorry, Tom. No, no, I was going to pose a question and then, you know, leave and go and put the kids to bed, which, which is a bit unkind. But it was going back to Belinda, I suppose, and asking, you know, do you, do you, do you, do you think that from a communication point of view, do you think there's a job to do within, not just leisure studies, but across kind of mainstream and inverted commas academia to, to communicate to Maori communities and others that actually, these are viable places to publish and that we want these communities to be part of the debates happening within these journals. Or do you think that, unfortunately, that my, those opportunities might be lost because of those legacies of colonisation and a lack of trust within, you know, across the, the, the academy, so to speak. Oh, God, it's such a complex issue. And I couldn't really get into it in, you know, a short chat, but all the things that you just raised are some of the issues, trust is an issue. It's also, you know, the Maori academics from the experiences I've seen in institutions, I work in, also overwhelmed by the different things they're having to do, you know, cultural rising on this and that and the other bar. It's also about different ways of seeing the world. It's about the different ontologies, different epistemologies and different ideas of what knowledge is and what it's for. So, you know, they're not simple, there's, there's stuff I don't think is simple answers. But I think being aware of those issues and different contacts is important. And my own work, it's, you know, it's taken me eight years to develop relationships to start to do the kind of work I wanted to do. And I have, for example, an article, a chapter in a book with a Maori colleague around the ocean. And to get to that, you know, took time, but also wreck, you know, having long conversations with my colleagues saying is, is it obviously making sure that person was the first author? Is this something you want to, is this where you want this to be seen? Is this important? And that, and he recognised and agreed, yes, it was. He wanted that Maori knowledge to be in this international collection. So supporting him to do that. And, you know, so again, it goes back to what are our roles and sometimes it's not about publishing. It's about supporting others. And, but again, that's, that's a challenge, depending on your own situation and environments and, yeah, the kind of crazy world we live in feeling that if you know, published 100 things, you know, longer productive or. And that's very good point. And I just want to bring you here just because I know that the leisure sciences try to diversify a little bit of the type of of publications they have and you guys created the other sections and things like that, if not critical parts or something like that, would you be able to tell us a little bit about what was behind creating that type of, of course, the piece. Yeah, the parting thoughts thing is just sort of. Yeah, it's the end of the end of every issue. It's just some either an invited or submitted scholar chooses a picture of their own and then they can put 500 or 1000 words on it. And most of the time we try to ask that it's obviously connected to leisure and supported in some way with scholarship and not necessarily. And this is an open invitation to anyone who is on this call or listening to it to submit because it hasn't quite picked up the steam that we'd hoped it would. It seems that everybody that we invite is super into it, but it hasn't generated as many opens we would like. But yeah, really, it's just another opportunity to create conversations around everyday aspects of leisure or things that have some impact on leisure even if tangentially or indirectly. So it's just, you know, again, it's just another opportunity to invite other voices in and change the direction of discussion. Typically they don't have a theme beside, aside from what the off or the submitter chooses, but when we do our special issues, we try to coordinate a specific image with that to sort of make it the book end to the traditional scholarship. And like I said, we'd like to see it be more successful. So it may run its course at the end of our 10 year here in a couple of years, but it's something that we'd like to see picked up. So yeah, please submit. And on that side of inviting new voices and new perspectives and so on, I want to move to a kind of a final point here, which is about early career researchers or people interested in writing to leisure studies or leisure journals. What would you say to them? You know, what are the things that we encourage them to think? What are the ways they encourage them to approach their topics and research fields in order to get published and get a conversation going in our journals? Ian? Good, it's a difficult question. I mean, I think my first answer, would perhaps build on some of the stuff that Linda said earlier, is take some time, get to know your field. And I know the idea, especially at the start of Slough academia, I think, which you know about, actually sort of focusing very much on the quality of the work, focusing on the contribution of the work, trying to move away from the sort of metrics that, you know, I work with a lot of early career researchers and they've got advice that they should get their first publication into an ABS, three-star journal and they should look at the impact factors. I did. I'd sort of encourage people to move away from those sort of metrics at least at the start. So they can be really intimidating to ECRs and marginalised groups and get them to focus on the value with the work itself because if the work has a value then it will fulfil all of those criteria. But again, there will be under a lot of institutional pressure which makes it a difficult piece of advice to give, not one that all ECRs for example have the time or the opportunities to take on board. So I think it's a really difficult question. Yeah, I know it is always very challenging. I always felt that for early career special issues is always a good point to start as well if they can find a special issue online to their research topics or so on. I think you always establish more clear communication with editors as well which is really good. Belinda, what would you be your recommendation for early career researchers or marginalised groups or people who are interested in the leisure research? Yeah, I would say, Ago know and I'm sure I'm speaking for most of us, are really delighted to have any topic that somebody thinks might be about leisure if they make a case for it. However crazy it might seem and I'm quite a little statistic is that for and also for leisure research we have only recently had an official impact factor but what's interesting is that impact factors are very high within cultural studies and social science and not quite as not as high in leisure which is quite interesting. We will see now that we have this impact factor whether it makes any difference for people submitting but I love these papers that come in from other fields. We can direct those authors to make to help them with and in a leisure debate which will be there, will be there and then it really helps them to develop their own identity as a researcher, create that kind of coherence to their work. So I would encourage people to be bold with their ideas and work with us as editors. All of our journals I think are really developmental. We all really work with authors to help them to get through the process. And we've got great reviewers as well and some very experienced ones that can help people to really ground their work within leisure debates that I think are important and relevant. I think that's where ECOs really can start to make a mark, not just by picking up on the latest fantasy theory or you know I don't think that's the way to go personally. Brandy topics, justine. Yeah. You have always a very unique writing style approach to writing a research. What would be your thoughts to early career researchers, people who are keen to write to lecture journals? Yeah. Well, I would say expect some bumps and some disappointment along the way but don't get discouraged because it's a learning process as is anything. And rejection is not always a bad thing because it gives as long as you get good feedback for it, it gives you the opportunity to reorient and take from, well, didn't work out and build on what did to make the path forward. In terms of my writing approach, I mean, I definitely go swim upstream when it comes to writing and I've definitely had a number of editors and AEs and reviewers along the way, you know, call out my opinion journalism or whatever it is that my writing style could be considered. But I think it's been important. My most enjoyable part of the job is writing and being able to nurture and evolve my writing style. So even if I don't fit the mold, I mean, I guess I would tell others buck against it as you can defend your position. And whenever I submit a paper, I spend way more time on the rebuttal than I do on the revisions. So just stand your ground and make your case, expect to not win at every opportunity, but you'll get over it if you stick with it, get through the hardships and grow with it. It's just part of the process. And at times you'll cut curse people under your breath, but that's okay. It just comes with the process. I think that has been fascinating. And I wanted to also say to the people listening to us, you know, people from the Global South, people from marginalized communities, people who English is not their first language, to know that, you know, the editors are here to talk to you, to support you, to learn from you, and the journals are there for you as well. And I think this, I hope this podcast series showed you that. I'd like to say a big thank you to Ian, Tom, Justin and Billianda for today. This was the first season of the leisure society podcast. A podcast that was brought to you by the following journals, Anos of leisure research, Journal of leisure research, International Journal of the Sociology of leisure, leisure leisure sciences, leisure studies and word leisure journal. Thank you for listening and I hope to see you in season two.