In my recent experience, people have a really terrible success rate in getting back to me. This is in cases where a specific agreement is made to exchange some kind of information, usually academically related, via email. I would hazard that I actually provide such information more than 99% of the times that I say I will, though perhaps not immediately. Based on two weeks of tracking, the rate for people who have promised me such information – ranging from notes to paper citations to club information – is a dismal figure of about 10%.
Even among people who I send an email asking again for the information they were meant to provide, the success rate has been no better than 50%. I understand that not everybody is as computationally active as I am, but it is extremely frustrating to be working in a place where almost all academic work flows through some sort of electronic channel, but people’s willingness to uphold basic commitments seems so low.
Hopefully, those rates will pick up a bit with regard to the Reading conference. Some of the things people mentioned sounded very useful and interesting indeed.