Newest thoughts →

July 2015

I mean, this doesn't even make any sense from the logic that it's about marketisation. Deny "consumers" price knowledge.

I am sure that nobody will ever be deterred from going to university by knowing that they may have to pay an arbitrary amount to do so.

To those designing the next user interface for journal/editorial management: if it isn't basically Trello, I don't want to hear about it.

Given this situation, why not make the thesis of the future into something we actually use and value? Find a different proxy for hiring.

You must revise your thesis into a book because we don't have time to read people's thesis work & there are lots of good theses.

Because we made you produce an object in the first place that is insufficient as a proxy for hiring as it's unconstrained by market scarcity

Seen the Palgrave advice for ECRs on publishing. I have a different response to first question: "Why do I need to revise my thesis?"

Just realised how good my eyesight is as I know the bottom line of the chart is KZOH and I'm not even in the opticians yet.

"Unfortunately we are not permitted to scan the following item as it has been excluded from our CLA scanning licence".

Spent ages trying to work out why a CSS general sibling selector was so aggressive. Tamed it with div.main h1 ~ p:first-of-type.

In-app game purchases bring games ever closer to societal reality. Those that have money needn't have talent.

It's Friday night. It's 7pm. The music is on. You know what this means. Yes, it's time to populate my institutional repository record.

Update on earlier tweet about @hypothes_is and Javascript blockers. No way around it, it seems. Bookmarklets run in remote page context.

I tend to have JS blocked by default, but when I want to annotate I have to re-enable for that site. @hypothes_is

It's a shame that @hypothes_is bookmarklet runs in the Javascript context of the remote page (probably necessary for same-origin stuff).

Other thing about proposed TEF: only institutions that feel they can realistically charge more than current cap benefit?

Very much looking forward to attending the workshop on cooperative governance for higher education tomorrow with @josswinn and others.

"Crisis of the humanities" inheres neither in staffing nor enrollment but in dwindling of critique by debt with which we are now complicit.

. @MeeraSabaratnam asks about blinding REF process. I foresee procedural difficulties. Big papers/books known. #hefcemetrics

Many people have asked for examples of good use of metrics. Responses demonstrate it's far easier to show the damaging ones. #hefcemetrics

Talking about input/output at #hefcemetrics. As core driver of metrics is allocation of scarce resources, seems valid to ask.

Brilliant answer to #hefcemetrics q there. Institutions bang on about researcher autonomy and then cede it all to university rankings.

Strikes me, as ever at such events, that we have a very low turnout from humanities disciplines. Important that we speak. #hefcemetrics

Worth saying that the thing in arts & hums of asking "who published it?" as proxy for quality is an unformalised metric system #hefcemetrics

. @MeeraSabaratnam says key problem of metrics to-date is supply-driven economy. Ooh, new shiny metric toy etc. #hefcemetrics

David Sweeney says asking questions of those selling metrics & league tables is important. Asks if @Phil_Baty is in the room! #hefcemetrics

Recommendation 13 of #HEFCEmetrics is interesting. DOIs for all REF items. This requires investment in digital preservation architecture.

Tedious denial of service attack mounted against @openlibhums website this morning. So boring having to block IPs.

Just seen an advert for the "9TH CONGRESS OF THE EUROPEAN
PAIN FEDERATION". Some kind of fiscal austerity body?

. @lcale2 et al. are crowdsourcing questions for 19C Digital Archive Interview with @Lost_Visions, 8 July. Do tweet her your questions!

Andrew Rowcroft of @LincolnEnglish now up at #AW15 on contingency vs orthodoxy in Robinson's Mars trilogy.

If you're not at #DH2015, the Utopian Studies thing, or @CHARNOCKRUTH's Joni-fest, the next best place is Action Writing event at Birkbeck!

Most important question about everything in a piece of writing: why is the reader being told this? @lizmsage

Sticking to a specific kind of editing is important since eyes "see" in different ways (proofing vs copyedit vs edit) says @lizmsage