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June 2018

This evening I have been sitting in the garden reading @histoftech's brilliant Programmed Inequality. Can't wait to teach this on our MA programme this Autumn.

(I actually called someone out on DORA just this week. Mentoring training advocated for encouraging a staff member, as an example of a SMART goal, to "submit to a 3-4* journal". There's no such thing.)

Institutional IT can be very frustrating. Current status: launching a Virtual Machine, so that I can run a remote desktop to work, so that I can get onto the "M" drive.

This Braidotti citation seems problematic:"At the height of the Cold War, when dogs and monkeys were being launched into orbit... Orwell ironically stated that 'all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others' (Orwell, 1946)." The very very early space race?

"the minister continues to double down on his claims about censorship on campus, even if his remarks demonstrate his inability to tell the difference between the unpopularity of the Conservative Party in universities and a crisis in Enlightenment values." - the 8am Playbook

The most confusing time of the year for my crossover twitter worlds is when the Current Research in Speculative Fiction (CRSF) conference runs in parallel to tweets about Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities.

What's most impressive in that article is the way that @CRostvik and @AileenFyfe get inside processes that are usually totally inaccessible. Some of the counter-intuitive historical trends in the piece are also remarkable.

A *really* important article out today at @openlibhums. On (the exclusion of) women in editorial roles at the Royal Society. Ladies, Gentlemen, and Scientific Publication at the Royal Society, 1945–1990. by @CRostvik and @AileenFyfe https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.265

Someone from Clarivate Analytics yesterday told me that they very much know, internally, the problems with the Impact Factor. My response: "I'm sure, but you keep publishing it anyway".

One of the fun things about working with @ajrbyers is that we get a Trello card called "scope creep" before a project has even started. Doing pessimism right.

And how am I spending my afternoon you ask? Going to the shop to buy apple juice to make antibiotics more palatable for guinea pigs. Seriously.

Very excited that @RoseHarrisB's David Mitchell's Post-Secular World: Buddhism, Belief and the Urgency of Compassion has gone into production in our book series!

Relatedly: unsure whether I want to edit another book/collection ever again, though. (Although I'm v. pleased with how this has turned out.)

I also got a really nice letter from the AHRC noting service to the closing Technical Peer Review College, where I conducted 28 reviews in the past few years.

It looks as though I will be giving an inaugural professorial lecture at Birkbeck in September; details to follow -- I hope many of you can attend!

I've been thinking long and hard about it, but my talk at Jisc/CNI in 2 weeks - panel with Don Waters and @Graham_Stone - will be on THE set of actual practical options for the Research England OA mandate for monographs for REF 2026.

To newly concerned re refugees, a reminder that in 2015 one of Britain's top-selling newspapers published this: "Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad." This is just one outrage atop pervasive culture.

Watched an episode of the UK crime series Vera the other day in which a student character claims that it will take him 70 years to repay his student loan. Now, the loan system is _very_ flawed, but loans are written off after 30 years. I am not a good person with whom to watch TV

"The data show that the greatest lack of compliance is in the most research-intensive institutions, where 21 per cent of outputs neither meet open-access requirements nor are covered by an exception, compared with a range of 16 to 18 per cent non-compliance" elsewhere.

Today is a fun split between interview presentations for our lecturer in creative-critical stuff and neuro-otology tests.

The TOTAL ASSHOLE MEN who have a problem with calling women with PhDs "Dr" are the reason I always introduce my female colleagues formally, by title. Part of a conjoined culture, on the rise, that demeans both women and academia. (And heaven forbid you are in both categories.)

Interviewed this afternoon for our editorial officer at OLH. Such a strong field and hope to have an announcement on that soon. While we were in the panel, two institutions signed up to the new Jisc OLH deal. Thank you for your support! #OLHFriday

Went out with some new folks in Broadstairs last night who joked about the extensive summer holidays that academics receive. Tssk.

"Could the minister be misremembering the facts of the case? Or were they perhaps exaggerated when told to him?"

Kings replies: “We have looked into this matter and have found absolutely no evidence of any complaint or allegation of hate speech made against any of our lecturers by students or anyone else in relation to this topic.”

Lol from today's Research* playbook. Minister for HE tells audience at Buckingham that free speech is a real problem at universities. Recounts story of Prof at Kings reported for hate speech.

There's a very clear message there that if you value social mobility and lifelong learning, there is demand out there and you can implement to policies that enable people of all ages and backgrounds to access higher education. - @matt1nnes

And in Wales, where there are fees but the Welsh government offers targetted grants to allow students from low income households to access part-time study, numbers have been steady. @matt1nnes

In Scotland, where the Scottish government kept education free for Scottish students, part-time numbers have increased by 9% in the same period. @matt1nnes

Some stats from @matt1nnes: Since fees went up to £9K in 2012 and loans were introduced, part-time student numbers in England have gone down by a third - that's 63,000 fewer students. A catastophe for social mobility and lifelong learning.

Does anybody know if there is any scholarship on the compositional order of Dracula? I have some potentially interesting computational stylistic findings but don't know the secondary literature well enough to know if we know in which order Stoker wrote the chapters. Please do RT!

My old next-door neighbours' young son coined a fantastic phrase for today's weather: it's as grey as a mouse can be.

But in better news, I am re-listening to Fluke's wonderful 2003 album, Puppy. Switch/Twitch is a particular highlight, although Snapshot and Blue Sky come close. @jon_fugler

Going through final edits to our (to be OA) book on pasts/presents/futures of open scholcomms ahead of imminent submission deadline. Really excited re-reading chapters from @CharlotteRock, @AprilHathcock, @pennyb, @nowviskie, @AileenFyfe, @LibSkrat, @jfwinters, @kfitz and others.

Right. Closing down email. I am going to finish the editing of this book this afternoon. If you see me on here, rebuke me.

"Rebel Tory MPs appeared on Saturday to be backing away from defeating Theresa May in crucial parliamentary votes this week – because they fear the resulting humiliation could threaten her leadership and let in Boris Johnson." Oh great.

It's not OA, but subscribing to the Research Pro daily 8am playbook is one of the top things you can do to get up to date on UK HE policy. You email client.services@researchresearch.com with SUBSCRIBE 8AM PLAYBOOK in the subject line to do so. It would be worth your time.

"I know there are more good ideas out there from providers we do not even know exist."

[No, we are struggling to make sense of that sentence as well.]

"And while I am on The Open University, let me be clear that I see it not just as a great national institution but as essential to our future higher-education landscape."

[This is the same Open University that is closing 10 degree programmes to save £30 million a year?]

Research Professional's playbook brutal this morning on HE Minister, Sam G.'s, focus on "problem institutions" where graduates earn below the average salary: "Let’s say it again very slowly: not—everyone—can—earn—the—average—graduate—salary".

Something I found interesting: as part of my stroke investigations, I had to wear a 24hr heart rate monitor. I was giving an academic talk that day. I do lots of these and don't feel stressed by them. Or so I thought. Heart rate shot up to 180bpm for most of talk!

It can be cheaper, better for society, etc. etc. but if it isn't _competitive_ it seems it can't be trusted.

In that last post I get cross: basically, governments are legislating against consortial funding of open access because it isn't _market based_. This is a _real world_ example of the damage of seepage of market terminologies into education + research.