Academics don¡¯t half spout shit (as in stuff, not rubbish. Well, most of the time anyway). Not the view of ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ, you understand, but an opinion regularly expressed on the aptly named Twitter account Shit Academics Say (). Follow it on the microblogging social network and you will be treated to a series of quotes that might sound familiar to anyone working within the academy.

¡°I am away from the office and checking email intermittently. If your email is not urgent, I¡¯ll probably still reply. I have a problem,¡± reads one of the account¡¯s most popular tweets, which was retweeted by other Twitter users more than 360 times.

¡°I will not work on the weekend. Except for maybe some reading, emails, meeting prep, and a bit of writing. But I wouldn¡¯t call that work,¡± says another. While a third popular example states: ¡°I now return to work, safe in the knowledge that my family still does not know what I do for [a] living.¡±

There are tales of long days battling with papers (¡°Three hours. Two sentences. Sounds about right¡±); the need for constant clarification when speaking to those from outside the world of academia (¡°I¡¯m not that kind of doctor¡±); and of the wisdom bestowed on postgraduates by their supervisors (¡°You¡¯re not supposed to have a life ¨C you¡¯re a grad student¡±).

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There are even examples of what academics might sound like if they rapped. ¡°I like big grants, I cannot lie. Scholars cannot deny: A peer walks in with a smirk and a gait puts that paper in your face you get jealous,¡± says one of the tweets ¨C presumably designed to be read along to the backing track from Sir Mix-a-Lot¡¯s 1992 hit Baby Got Back.

Another tweet, featuring the hashtag , reads: ¡°1. More time. 2. More time. 3. More time. 4. More pens.¡±

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@AcademicsSay also got involved with a separate Twitter conversation carrying the hashtag . It was started by Lucianne Walkowicz (), Henry Norris Russell fellow in the department of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University, who wanted to see what six-word phrases people could come up with that might constitute ¡°peer review¡±.

To get the ball rolling she gave her own example. ¡°It¡¯s a long and idiosyncratic paper,¡± she tweeted, while @AcademicsSay chipped in with ¡°You tried your best. I¡¯m sorry.¡±

¡°Why didn¡¯t I think of this?¡± was University of Brighton senior lecturer John Canning¡¯s first idea of a pithy peer review, suggesting that the imaginary paper he was reviewing was really rather good. His second six-word review, however, was less complimentary: ¡°Rubbish, nonsense, preposterous, wrong, stupid. Reject.¡±

¡°Paperr visbly writeen in haste. Rweject,¡± was the verdict of Alexandre Afonso (), King¡¯s College London politics lecturer, while a biological sciences researcher calling herself NatC () tweeted: ¡°Your data contradict my theory. Reject.¡±

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The negative theme continued with a user called Odyssey (), a molecular biophysicist in a biochemistry department, who tweeted: ¡°Manuscript reads like James Joyce. Reject¡±, while Alex Parker (), an astronomer and planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, summed up what no doubt goes through many reviewers¡¯ heads while reviewing a particularly strong paper: ¡°Cite me cite me cite me.¡±

Send links to topical, insightful and quirky online comment by and about academics to chris.parr@tsleducation.com