In our view, academia is more than its academic component, it is as much our lived experiences in relation to it. Our aim is to, first, make a compendium of these lived experiences and, second, be a platform for critical examination of the structures that have shaped them.

With this in mind, Notes on the Academy is a quarterly journal and a website which will host all of the following:

1. Testimonials:
   We would like you to tell your story, properly anonymised, to the world, about all the harsh realities that have for so long been neglected by our community. These realities can relate to discrimination based on identity, or even simple academic negligence; whatever the specifics, your story is important. Our place in this is merely to act as a platform, to make minimal necessary edits and publish. We believe this is an important step towards critically examining the structures of academia, and the only people qualified to talk about it are those who have lived through it — you.
   We do not expect that you will personally receive any benefits from sharing your experiences, but we do expect that the compendium of such experiences that we aim to collect will be extremely beneficial to academia as a whole. We hope that this act of collection will in and of itself spur some sorely needed introspection on the part of the community, so that we can finally get to the business of doing something about it.
2. Articles:
   These are articles about anything and everything regarding life in academia. Some of the possibilities for articles are
   – Reviews of relevant books.
   – Critical analysis of some aspect of the functioning of academia.
   – Essays on campus life, cultural events, mess issues, hostel issues, segregation, education and research policy, funding etc
   – Interviews of activists across India/abroad that are involved in educational or academic issues. We will publish these either in a written Q&A format and/or video/audio format.
   
   We have a word limit of roughly 1500 words. Articles detailed enough to warrant greater length can be broken up into parts.
   
   We will demand that these meet a minimum level of quality, especially in terms of research, and we will pay writers an honorarium of Rs. 500/- for their trouble.
   
   Finally, if you decide to take on the burden of writing an article, please discuss the subject and focus with us beforehand.
3. Art and Cartoons:
   Spill your artistic gut! Participate and Contribute!
   
   For these as well, we will require a minimum level of quality, and pay an honorarium of Rs 500/- for their trouble.
4. Resources:
   We are also collecting a few important resources for anyone interested in looking into these issues more. These currently include other organisations with aligned goals, key data sources, foundational academic literature on academia in India. See our resources page for more details, and please e-mail us if you feel there is something more that should be on the list.
5. Even more!

If you have some suggestions of the things we should do, please write to us!