Latest activity → Feed

April 2015

Short thought

A more formal update when I'm not dashing about on the train but it took just 45 minutes for the first UK institution to signup to OLH!

Short thought

I just donated all of my royalties from my first, non-OA book (sorry), /Pynchon and Philosophy/ to Save the Children.

Short thought

Metro wins cognitive dissonance headline of the year: "I can't go running for wolf whistles but what's the harm of the beach body ready ad?"

Short thought

Considering copyright & "intellectual property" as refashioning non-rivalrous knowledge into artificial rivalrous compatibility w/ markets.

Short thought

In other news, journals 2, 3 & 4 for @openlibhums should be transferred in the next month, ready for September launch #action

Short thought

So, should I bother writing a post called "why Jeffrey Beall is wrong and why he attacked me" or is it already totally obvious? @rmounce

Short thought

"Nick Clegg in public servants' pay pledge". Pledge now, apologise for pledging later is always a sound strategy.

Short thought

Visited Bletchley Park. I'm partial to a little Turing hagiography, so it was all good.

Short thought

That's not to say that there weren't unmet challenges. But approach was to figure them out in pursuit of that goal.

Short thought

Most refreshing conversation I had this week was at #baftss15. Didn't see point in any new subscription, print journals. #OA

Short thought

Sign on a Manchester bus gives route plan of next Conservative government: "hospitals via universities".

Short thought

DH question: if I want to match word stems, is best approach to derive stem and then use regex to allow wildcard to word boundary?

Short thought

Scholarly communications, in many instances, is an environment of write-only memory. Unread pages upon unread pages for certification.

Short thought

This "teaching excellence framework" proposed by Conservatives has no incentive in HSS unless they re-instate state funding for teaching.

Short thought

I'll be giving the professional plenary talk at the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies tomorrow. Do say hi if there!

Short thought

"In their 2015 election manifesto, the Liberal Democrats have said" ∗stops reading∗ #speculativefiction

Post

In the beginning was the Word

There is no single cause of the problems with the economics of scholarly communications. The expectation that we can publish more and more research on the same, or lesser, budgets is one factor. The rise of profiteering commercial publishers is another. There is also a group of smaller other…

Short thought

Felt most humbled this evening signing my book for @eferwerda, who has done so much for OA in the humanities.

Short thought

(And, of course, I am not involved in the process in any way, in accordance with COPE ethical standards.)

Short thought

Nervous as my own article goes through OLH peer review. A rejection would show the process's rigour but may say something else re my work!

Short thought

Some things I have been playing with today. "Literary fiction" emerges 10 years earlier than "genre fiction" in the Google Books corpus.

Post

It is never a good time to start a new journal

"It is never a good time to start a new journal. Even so, 1987 seems unpropitious to a remarkable degree. The academic world in general feels itself to be under attack. The Humanities in particular feel marginalized and underfunded. Outwardly querulous, inwardly riven, they sense themselves to be…

Short thought

One breach & mass peer-review/author fraud could occur (not to mention instances where user uses same password elsewhere). @ScholarOneNews

Short thought

ScholarOne follows poor practices for storing passwords. Plaintext or reversible encryption. Should be salted + hashed. @ScholarOneNews

Short thought

Can't wait to finally sit down with @Ted_Underwood's /Why Literary Periods Mattered/, which has now reached the top of my to-read pile.

Post

Publishers: Serving Authors or Readers?

The most common way in which we can re-conceive of the economics of gold open access is to think of the publisher as providing a service to the author. After all, in an academic environment (where open access is most likely to flourish) authors are not usually writing their books to receive huge…

Short thought

Also could @ORCID_Org get its logo included in @fontawesome? Would aid beautiful adoption. @ORCID_Support

Short thought

Why does ORCID itself use the term "ORCID ID" when it's an acronym for "Open Researcher and Contributor ID"?

Short thought

ScholarOne, you are a painful submission system. A centralized manuscript service that requires a different login for each journal.

Short thought

So, errr, everyone should get more money and only younger institutions should be punished if they slip a bit?”

Short thought

That improve their research but that institutions that did well historically but have "slipped a bit" shouldn't lose funding.

Short thought

The one decrying money to younger institutions: 1. The horror! Funding younger unis! 2. Suggests that must reward younger institutions

Short thought

Two letters in THE, one decrying REF for giving funding to younger institutions, the other for giving money always to older universities.

Short thought

Anyway, this is a little snarky on the subtweet front, so I'll stop and be more upbeat. It was just a reminder to me re. insularity.

Short thought

This person did not seem to care that people might have been interested but couldn't access work. It was about his right to limit access.

Short thought

In other words, while they're getting fewer and farther between, there are some who still think in a very different paradigm to OA movement.

Short thought

Argued that published work was his property (probably not true after (c) assignment) & that it was "theft" (err) for anyone to disseminate.

Short thought

You think attitudes are changing but they're still slow. Just came across an academic who didn't want his work disseminated more widely.

Short thought

Ploughing through many many budget spreadsheet models with Mark Knopfler's new album in the background. Basil is a particularly fine track.

Short thought

Elsevier says REF is ready for metrics despite HEFCE review panel saying otherwise. Conveniently, it would love to run them. @jameswilsdon

Short thought

Very behind on some emails and, excitingly, OLH sign-up announcements due to travelling. Please bear with me if waiting for an email!

Short thought

Oh god no. Small child throwing up on nauseating tilting train. Poor kid but this better not trigger anyone else (or me).

Short thought

Predictions from @carrieontweets: OA will never be as big as in STEM. I'm thinking never is a very long time! #uksg15

Short thought

Publication speed deemed a benefit of #OA by HSS. Except that it isn't necessarily. Biggest delay is review. #uksg15

Short thought

Wonder if these things listed at experiments in business models are just loss leaders. #uksg15

Short thought

. @carrieontweets says APC most popular mode. Think @DOAJplus stats show that it is not the most common... #uksg15

Short thought

Interestingly, OA books not growing at the same rate. Probably due to experiments and pilots says @carrieontweets #uksg15

Short thought

Big growth of fully OA humanities journals in recent days says @carrieontweets #uksg15

Short thought

Accreditation is based on individual academics. So much hidden labour: copyediting, proofreading. All production is collective. #uksg15

Short thought

I think difference is that a 3D printer creates something that can be monetized and the university will want to. #uksg15

Short thought

I've always wondered why academic written works aren't works for hire, though. #uksg15

Short thought

Right #uksg15, know you all went out partying last night, but I'll make the 9am session worth your time, headache or not!