Rules for retirement

I am now retired, and nearly 80. My brain does not work at the same clock speed that it used to, and I am no longer paid for things which were part of the job sucuh as refereeing, conference attendance and collaboration. On the other hand, I have seen a big upsurge in the number of such requests. So for my own sanity, I have had to make some rules. These are not hard-and-fast rules; they are guidelines which can be overruled by special circumstances. Refereeing and reviewing Incidentally, people used to say “refereeing”; now more and more it is “reviewing”, which suggests to me going over something you have seen before. Does anyone know why? I no longer have funds for page charges, so I feel no obligation to referee papers for commercial journals which have such charges. Also, as I said, I can no longer count refereeing as part of the job for which I am paid. So I feel entitled to turn down refereeing requests. On the other hand, since I strongly support diamond open access journals,…