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October 2013

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Greece downgraded to an "emerging market". Yes, that's right, not a receding market. All markets are emerging.

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Reading Sarah Gorman's (@AnyaBeez) excellent "How to avoid reading 4.48 Psychosis as a Suicide Note" this morn in prep. for my Kane lecture.

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Seen that Jeremy Hunt wants to curb high NHS pay because it risks losing confidence. How about curbing high MPs pay in case we lose faith?

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Some interesting stuff on post-publication peer-review from @easternblot from @F1000Research #OAEdin

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Clarification: SAGE Open started at $695. Held at $99 for some time. My figures were off when speaking live. Still a large reduction #OAEdin

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Speaking today on open access and the humanities in Edinburgh. Specifically, the question: what is our "data"? (& why some dislike the term)

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The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them.

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Every time I re-read Moby Dick I find I have forgotten some of its amazing power. It always outshines my memories' high expectations.

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I can't believe Mandler is still repeating claims CC BY is plagiarism. Requires attribution. Academic norms for citation unaffected #HSSOA

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Re. Mandler's comment: journal subs /do/ favour one party over another. They favour institutions with MASSIVE subscription budgets! #HSSOA

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I see critique of CC-BY on #HSSOA as allowing resale for profit. Shock. Remember: Informa Group (Taylor & Francis) made £47m profit in 2011.

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Hope everyone at #HSSOA has a blast -- will be listening in on hashtag but am teaching today! #EDOA #pubconf event tomorrow though.

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Robin Osborne, remember, argued (paraphrased) that "if students have to pay for tuition then we should have to pay for research articles".

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Heading off now for a Jisc National Monograph Strategy panel meeting. Should be interesting & nice coincidence with #OAWeek.

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I don't get (well, I do) why the fact that it's a "young blonde" girl who may have been abducted by Roma couple is in any way relevant.

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Record time for me of 16 mins for Guardian cryptic crossword today. Suspect it was easy, not that I'm improving, though.

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Also, for last post on this, I'll add that often the areas they think can be cut can't and the ones they think should be preserved shouldn't

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In all areas, Cons seem to think there is wasteful spending that can be cut w/out anything suffering. This just simply isn't true.

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I'm going to rant a little more about WIlletts and teaching because it's Conservative ideology all through.

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on "control" and looks at coercive influence of future-proofing/safety. This works really well w/ (then unwritten) P. novel: Against the Day

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Was reading Kit Hume's 1993 article on Ishmael Reed today. Situates group of pomo writers as contra-"control". Hume has interesting take...

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Other things today though: it's Open Access week! Would be nice to see harmony and consolidation of all the movement has achieved.

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per student. Colleagues also write substantial amounts. At least anecdotally, I'm seeing a different world.

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I also think a lot of WIllett's claim is rubbish.Yes, we have a lot of research pressure, but I usually write > 1.5 sides of A4 feedback

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Furthermore, to recruit, universities need to have a good research standing so they can make viable claims for students.

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There is NO teaching grant for students in humanities subjects. Only gov. funding comes from research.

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Willetts speaks of how universities are overly weighted towards research... Isn't it obvious why this is (if true)?

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How ironic are the open access irony awards?

I saw, going around on Twitter today, a 2012 article on the Open Access Irony Awards. This site is dedicated to the practice of humorously exposing articles/editorials that are pro-open access, but locked behind paywalls. As someone who has written in support of OA in closed venues, I wanted to…

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Review of the day: Katy Perry's latest album is her most spiritual to date – but it's still mostly just songs about having it off

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In case your feed doesn't look like mine, I'll just note that next week is open access week & there are loads of events planned!

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Continuing the good day vibe, just handed back MA dissertations to my great supervisees. Great to see such innovative work.

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Really enjoyed getting them to close read the initial scene with Hepzibah. Great erotic tension juxtaposed with puritan ethos. Modernity.

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Had a pretty good morning! A great research chat with one of our profs followed by a brilliant seminar on Hawthorne's House of 7 Gables.

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Very pleased to note, in between illness, that by invitation I've joined the SCONUL Strategy Group on Academic Content and Communications!

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I then wasn't allowed infusion b/c I have respiratory tract infection. Now have mega antibiotics, chest X-ray & await to hear if pneumonia!

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The good news is that my book manuscript is done and ready to send! The bad news is that I spent 6 hours in hospital waiting for infusion.

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This week's teaching includes Peter Handke, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five. So it goes.

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I'm just going to put it out there that Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables is great. And not just because of all the Pyncheons in it!

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A pretty intense MA session on contemporary reworkings of Foucault through Kant today. A mental workout for me, let alone the students!

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Today would be apt to remember, in Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, "Mr. Higgs's Obsessedness as to Loose Ends", the character being the boatswain.

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. @EastCoastUK 15 mins delayed, so missed xfer to Lincoln at Peterborough. Then waited for an hour for @EMTrains. Then they cancelled it.

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Looking forward to discussing Colin Koopman on genealogy as critique in Foucault with our MA students. I will say: "isolable depth episteme"

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Laughing at Bohannnon's assertion that critics haven't read his article or that it was only a little bit critical of OA. Seemed clear to me.

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Next week I'm looking forward to a seminar on The Crying of Lot 49 with my third years. For now, I'm off to Brixton to see Fat Freddy's Drop

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While it would have been nice to have had more time for editorial negotiation, the editing is pretty rigorous, also.

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Worth saying that I enjoyed writing for @ConversationUK. Nice markdown platform & forces you into non-academic style.

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As @MikeTaylor put it to me, there's an air of shooting fish in barrels given how flawed the piece was.

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What's "open" got to do with it?

The below is a piece that I wrote for The Conversation in the state before it was edited for publication there. While the version published there captures better the sense of the sting article and the general background, I wanted to post my unadulterated version here as it shows my true thoughts…

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Does Science actually do science? I'm not a scientist but even I can see the methodological flaw in their #journalssting. No control.

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Does anybody remember that article earlier this year where they re-submitted articles under new names & were rejected violently?

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These universities, in these cases, aren't reducing their workforce; they're just using it as an opportunity to re-stock. Grim.

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The term "redundancy" seems to be replacing all forms of dismissal. If you miss targets and are dismissed, that's not "redundancy".

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"Ed Miliband, who bears an uncanny resemblance to a badger". Thanks for the clarification, Guardian.

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Teaching John Barth's /Lost in the Funhouse/ this morning, the eponymous text after which my experimental Am. Fic. module is named. Excited!

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Discovery of the morning. The first Library of Congress Catalog category for Cather's My Ántonia is "Farmers' spouses".

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"The rebellion has been led by Sen. Ted Cruz, a fundamentalist lawmaker from the Texas region, known as a hotbed of separatist activity."