When Dr. Sarah’s first peer-reviewed article appeared in the Journal of Sustainability and Urban Policy, her social media announcements said: “Delighted to share my latest research on urban sustainability frameworks! Grateful to the reviewers and editors who helped strengthen this work. #Academia #Research”

The response was immediate and positive. Congratulations from colleagues, re-posts from her department, hearts and hugs from peers. But behind the polished public statement lay a far messier emotional reality that Sarah, like many early career scholars, would never dream of sharing online. Sarah’s article represented three years of research, countless revisions, two journal rejections, and more sleepless nights than she cared to count.

Yes Dr Sarah is made up and so is the journal, but we all recognise the truth in this fiction.

The performance of academic joy

Academic social media has created  a hidden rule for announcing publications. We’re always “thrilled,” “honoured,” or “excited to contribute.” These standardised responses are professionally appropriate, safely enthusiastic and very sanitised about the actual processes of publication.

Why do we default to these bland expressions of delight? The answer of course lies in part in the precarious nature of early career academia, as well as the profound vulnerability that comes with putting your intellectual work out into the world.

For early career scholars, the first or first few publications carry an almost unbearable weight. It’s not just an article, it’s proof of concept. Proof that you belong in the academy. Proof that your postgraduate education worked. Proof that those years of financial uncertainty, social isolation, and intellectual struggle were worth something.

So when Sarah finally saw  her work in print, her first emotion wasn’t just delight, it was also relief so profound it made her cry.

Relief comes from surviving what feels like an initiation ritual. The peer review process, with its anonymous critics and opaque timelines, can feel like a judgment not just of your work, but of your worthiness to participate in scholarly discourse. When you’re still establishing your identity as a researcher, every “major revisions” feels personal. Every reviewer comment questioning your methodology or challenging your conclusions doesn’t just critique your work, it seems to question your competence and your very identity as a scholar.

The imposter amplifier

Back to Sarah. Sarah refreshed Google Scholar obsessively in her article’s first months online, watching for citations like a day trader monitoring stock prices. Each citation felt like validation and the stretches without new ones felt like evidence of irrelevance.

Publication amplifies imposter feelings in ways that we can forget to acknowledge. When your work is publicly available, the anxiety increases: What if people realise I don’t know what I’m talking about? What if someone notices the gap in my literature review? What if a senior scholar in my field thinks this contribution is trivial? These fears aren’t entirely irrational. Academic careers are built on reputation, and early career scholars have very little reputational capital to spend. A poorly-received first publication can cast a long shadow, while a well-received one can open doors for years to come.

Academic culture demands a pretty tricky balance: you must be humble enough to acknowledge your work’s limitations while confident enough to argue for its significance. This contradiction becomes especially acute for early career scholars who feel simultaneously proud of their achievement and terrified of overstepping.

The standard “delighted” response serves as a perfect diplomatic solution. It expresses appropriate enthusiasm without claiming too much importance, acknowledges gratitude without appearing weak, and projects confidence without seeming arrogant. But this language obscures genuine emotions that might actually be more relatable and human. What if Sarah had written instead: “My first article is out and I’m honestly a mess of emotions – proud but scared, relieved but anxious about what comes next. Still can’t quite believe I’m now a published researcher”.

Mixed emotions

Early career publishing also involves navigating complex feelings about collaboration and mentorship. Most first publications emerge from dissertation research, involving supervisors who provided crucial guidance but whose involvement can complicate feelings of ownership and achievement.

Sarah felt genuine gratitude toward her supervisor whose feedback had transformed her scattered initial draft into a coherent argument. But she also wondered how much of this success was really hers. Would anyone have paid attention to her work without her supervisors’ established reputation lending it credibility?

These questions don’t have clean answers, and the “grateful to my collaborators” tag in publication announcements only hints at their complexity.

Academic culture’s competitive nature adds another layer of emotional complexity. While scholars celebrate each other’s successes publicly, the private experience often involves uncomfortable comparisons. Why did their article get accepted on the first try when mine took two years? Why does their work seem to generate more attention? These competitive feelings conflict with the collaborative ideals of academic community, creating additional emotional labour that gets buried under public expressions of professional enthusiasm.

And publications aren’t just intellectual contributions, they’re currency in a brutal job market. Each article is a line on the CV that might make the difference between landing a permanent position and leaving academia entirely. This instrumental view of research can create cognitive dissonance. You want to care about knowledge for its own sake, but you also desperately need this work to advance your career. The “excited to contribute to the field” language masks this very practical anxiety about professional survival.

Toward more honest academic pronouncements?

Sarah’s real feelings about her publication, pride mixed with terror, the relief tinged with anxiety about what comes next, are probably more representative of the early career experience than her polished public announcement suggested.

And because relief and anxiety are such shared emotions, perhaps there’s value in occasionally breaking from the “delighted” script. Acknowledging the emotional complexity of publishing might help normalise the anxiety and uncertainty that are actually universal experiences, and affect even the most senior academics. Yes me too. Academic culture would benefit from more space for vulnerability alongside expertise. The scholars who shape their fields aren’t emotionless knowledge-producing machines, they are humans navigating doubt, ambition, fear and hope too.

The next time you see a scholar announce they’re “delighted” about their latest publication, know that behind that language might be someone experiencing one of the most emotionally complex moments of their professional life. And maybe that’s something worth acknowledging, even perhaps saying it out loud.