Issues of work–life balance among JASIST authors and editors

Many dedicated scientists reject the concept of maintaining a “work–life balance.” They argue that work is actually a huge part of life. In the mind-set of these scientists, weekdays and weekends are equally appropriate for working on their research. Although we all have encountered such people, we may wonder how widespread this condition is with other scientists in our field. This brief communication probes work–life balance issues among JASIST authors and editors. We collected and examined the publication histories for 1,533 of the 2,402 articles published in JASIST between 2001 and 2012. Although there is no rush to submit, revise, or accept papers, we found that 11% of these events happened during weekends and that this trend has been increasing since 2005. Our findings suggest that working during the weekend may be one of the ways that scientists cope with the highly demanding era of “publish or perish.” We hope that our findings will raise an awareness of the steady increases in work among scientists before it affects our work–life balance even more.