One of the least plausible aspects of fantasy as a genre is that sorcerers NEVER seem to get bogged down in creating a new spell then spend the next three or four months muttering "I hate this, it's rubbish" under their breath.
The wizards-academics link is ancient, but a Stross toot got me thinking about the aspects of academia that don't get enough love in fantasy...
A grimoire that's just three hundred variations on Fireball from one mage who needed to pad his publication count for tenure.
Terrible wars fought over citation indices and co-author credits.
Spells are hard to come by, not because mages are loth to show off their cleverness, but because you have to pay thousands of gold for the privilege of publishing a new spell and hundreds more to read anybody else's.
Thousands dead after relying on a non-peer-reviewed preprint version of Protection From Dragons.
A wizard gets invited to the Grand Conclave of Archmages, "in recognition of your important work", but it's actually just a vanity scam to milk the naïve.
Everybody learns the Bigby's Hand spells, not because they're effective but because Bigby might be Reviewer 1 and he'll reject your work if you don't stroke his ego.
Reviewer 2 is Vecna.