2. Disability Studies Scholars and their Impact

Disability studies scholars face numerous impact challenges such as: (1) who to serve (academia, or disabled people, or both); (2) which field of academics to impact; (3) which problems to tackle; (4) which space to influence; and (5) the ghettoization of the disability studies field and its impact.

2.1. Challenge 1

The first challenge is whether disability studies scholars want to serve their own academic field, or whether they want to serve disabled people, or both? In order to serve academia scholars have to fulfil their impact expectations which are, among others, about publishing in high impact journals whereby impact factors are not generated by the amount of people reading an article but by how often one article is cited by other academics [12]. If scholars want to serve disabled people, the question is whether they can do so by not interacting with disabled people. Indeed many disability studies scholars are also activists [13], which goes against the “detached objectivity” [13], an expectation in many research fields. It also leads to a reorientation of where one tries to publish. Publication in high impact academic journals would only make sense if they are: (a) open access allowing a broad group of disabled people to have access to the writings, and (b) the time from submission to notice of decision (whether the decision is positive or negative) is reasonable (e.g., less than 3 month) and the time from notice of acceptance to publication in an open access format is shortly thereafter (e.g., less than 4 weeks). Fulfilling these two characteristics ensures one’s impact is as timely and as broad as possible. Furthermore, to serve disabled people as a scholar, the publication strategy would also have to include other venues of publication such as blogs and social networking sites in a more non-academic language given that the level of education of disabled people varies so much. In the end, the disability studies scholar will have to be a hybrid, trying to serve academia and disabled people. However, this is not an easy undertaking as the often-present conflict between disability studies scholars and non-academic disabled people [13] shows.

The impact dilemma does not stop here.

2.2. Challenge 2

In order to have impact as an academic one needs money to do research. This leads to the question for disability studies scholars which granting agency to apply to and how to phrase the research question. Non-medical research topics pertaining to disabled people can be a hard sell (e.g., ongoing discussions in Canada [14]). As the medical field has a strong influence on how disable people are perceived and treated, a disability studies scholar has to engage with the medical and rehabilitation field and understand the existing dynamics. This might be fundable by health research related granting agencies