It seems that fewer and fewer professions offer people the kind of 9-5 lifestyle that was the bedrock of previous generations working lives.  This transition has prompted wide ranging discussions around work-life balance, and whether changes in digital technology are resulting in us getting things wrong.

On the flip side, researchers have banged the drum for a shorter working week, arguing that a more punctual work week would be sufficient as it would focus our energies and boost our productivity, whilst freeing us up to make greater use of our increased leisure time.

Where does the academic world sit on this spectrum?  New research from Queensland University of Technology strives to find out.  The researcher trawled through nearly 50,000 manuscripts and 76,000 peer review online submissions to both the BMJ and BMJ Open journals to assess whether the submissions were made outside of traditional working hours.

“Clear and consistent differences were seen between countries,” the researcher explains.  “Chinese researchers most often worked at weekends and after midnight, whereas researchers in Scandinavian countries, which have a greater focus on work-life balance, were more likely to submit their papers during 9 to 5 on weekdays.”

Norway, India and Denmark were among the country for whom academics were least likely to work unsociable hours, with Australian researchers broadly in the middle of the pack.

“China and Japan had the highest probabilities for submitting manuscripts and peer reviews late at night,” the paper says. “Manuscripts from China were 86% higher than the average during the hours of midnight to just before 1 am, and peer reviews were 57% higher during the same time.”

The author suggests this is likely to be because of the hard-working academic culture across Asian countries, and suggests that while the study has clear limitations, it does nonetheless point to the fact that a culture of overwork may be more than just a figure of speech.