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January 2016

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Institutional Finance and Academic Freedom

An article in the Times Higher Education yesterday got me thinking about institutional stability, finance, and the ongoing "reforms" to UK higher education. For those who don't know the background: until recently, universities who wanted their students to be able to get the government-underwritten…

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Had good news today as a major bigwig infosec figure gave me a great blurb for my book on passwords!

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But I also love the "outsiderness", the liminality, of blogging and especially so when it can make it back into the academy.

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Of course, there's a place for peer review, and I want the digital preservation & labour of formal publishing cf @openlibhums.

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Instead: how can you bring your training and critical faculties to material that doesn't have these signposts? What do YOU think?

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Because really, that's what we should be teaching students. Not "it's in a journal, it's peer-reviewed, so it's good".

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... how will we evaluate? What are the prestige markers? For a colleague to disregard these and say: I think this is good...

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... it's so nice that colleagues can recommend blogs. I spend so much time in circles that ask: with the rise of the internet...

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This was particularly nice as that keynote transcription underpins the book work I'm doing but also because...

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Incredible that a university replied to the Green Paper arguing for a pure metrics REF every ten years based on impact factor of journals.

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And now, in the green paper, the marketised precarity is to be used against institution to precipitate their "market exit" (bankruptcy).

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Many in universities were and are appalled by the reorientation of education as a private consumer good and marched against this policy.

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I'm speaking on the 4th Feb at @QMULsed on the history of passwords. 5.30pm, Lock Keeper's Cottage; do join us!

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And just sent out an awfully tautologically titled email to a large number of people. Whoops. Please do RSVP though.

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"So what does the future hold for passwords? Most likely a sysadmin will electrify a banana in order to enable a 1-time wifi key."

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I did not predict that the future of passwords would involve a wired-up banana in my @objectsobjects book. I feel like such a failure.

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Had a pretty laidback Saturday, but I have managed to get most of the DOI metadata retrieval functionality built for @MLACommons CORE.

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Ph.D. criterion: to 'merit publication'

Yesterday, I attended my university's official training course for Ph.D. examiners. It was an extremely useful day to familiarize myself with the regulations at the University of London and to hear about incoming procedures for independent viva chairs.

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Went to hear Prof David Latchman's Master's Address at @BirkbeckNews this afternoon with colleagues. A kind of state of the union address.

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Read this today and it inspired me to get more semantic on my website. Commissioned by @iceskatingbears!

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Pro poetry tip: get that Keston Sutherland vibe and rhythm by proofreading your manuscript backwards while accentuating arbitrary words.

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"We're happy you're here" says MS Windows on a first boot. Little did it know it's the only boot before I rip it out and replace with Linux.

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Those following my "history of redaction/blanks" quest might like to know that I was recommended Craig Dworkin's /No Medium/ this evening.

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I've heard that if I were to give up caffeine, I would eventually feel better. Not that I feel bad at the moment. How long is "eventually"?

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Password proofs w/ penultimate draft of The Anxiety of Academia. A good day, if only Alan Rickman hadn't just died.

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The methodology of literary taxonomy: HARKing and p-hacking

A central anxiety for literary studies in the era of scientific dominance pertains to the extent to which groupings, taxonomies and classifications are methodologically derived and how far they help us to understand literary production. We all invariably use and create such classifications as…

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And as though those with a mission have less of a reason to ensure the ongoing operation of the thing they believe in.

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I disagree w/ "for profit is the only way to sustainability" rationale. As though the only reason anyone would act is out of self interest.

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I don't know any academic colleagues who feel so time rich that they can take breaks to play football in the day, as that viral article says

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These games we play (in ScholComms)

Today, I gave a talk at Royal Holloway for the TECHNE consortium of Ph.D. students on open access and scholarly communications. In the second part of the session, as I often do, I opened up into a "blue-skies" game where I ask those present, in groups, to think through what they want from a system…

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"We have heard from the sector that they expect that the TEF will offer significant reputational advantage" [CITATION NEEDED]

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Was going to hit the ground running today back to work but got hit by some awful migraine in the night and now feel terrible. Urgh.

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Quite liked "Skyfall" but never really "got" Adele. Very much like her track "River Lea", though, which flows near to my home.

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Same logic there with TEF etc for HE: gov logic is that best way to improve substandard institutions is to withdraw their resources.