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November 2019

We're not on strike this week but I haven't been tweeting work things as many are. It's quite lonely doing research, though, with no social outlet. So I offer the following as a compromise workLOAD tweet: I have reached a first draft of this article after 42.5hrs.

This is a good piece that gets to the heart of it all: academics have been worked to the bone because of structural government funding decisions about HE that are also bad for students. https://x.com/lizmorrish/status/1200430342752092160

The environment it destroys is one where people are supposed to be able to think and conduct high-quality research, which requires focus, care, and attention, and teach to the best of their ability. They cannot under the conditions of pressure now created. It is anti-intellectual

At least one of the huge problems has been -- no surprise -- Brexit, which has totally dominated all political discourse for the last three years. (Not that it isn't catastrophic in its own right.) But to undo these structural problems in HE requires *political* action.

HE "Ivory Tower" column actually very funny this week.

"Alexander J., head of gaslighting, told the audience that sad though he was to see industrial action spreading across so many universities, there had never been a better time to invest in brand awareness by taking out a long-term contract with industry-leading image consultants"

'Oliver McCall, head of deadcatting, said: “It is wonderful to see so many rubes willing to shell out for the privilege of entering an awards ceremony that statistically only one per cent of entries can win.”'

The "Highly Commended" entry for the "@ChrisJParr Freedom of Information Award":

The Office for Students, on the request to release its impact analysis of the effects of a no-deal Brexit on higher education: “It is not in the public interest”.

Today's 8am Playbook from Research* instructive as always: 'UCEA also advises that if employers withhold pay for partial performance, any work done by staff during a period of non-payment should be considered “voluntary” and not be paid'

'UCEA take the view that ASOS represents breach of contract, encouraging universities to reject partial performance and “withhold full pay or, at their discretion, a lesser amount for partial performance of duties”'

'it's going to be a long cold lonely winter.'

UCEA basically the pantomime villain here.

Laughing a little at everyone on my Facebook feed sharing links to persuade young people to vote. As though young people are on Facebook.

If you had a spare day in Belfast, what would you do? (Titanic museum keeps coming up but seems a.) a little depressing and b.) £19)

I see there's the competitive "how many hours do you work" thing going around again. I am a pretty productive academic and people often joke to me: "haha, you mustn't sleep with the amount you do!" The reality is the opposite. I can do that much because I rest and exercise etc.

Not that you should rest and exercise so that you are productive for work. You should do those things because, errrm, we're human and they're good things. But realising that having a rested faculty is also much better for universities is also useful/important.

Read Murakami's utterly bonkers _The Elephant Vanishes_ this weekend. Best titled piece - even allowing for translation liberties - is "The Kangaroo Communique" but I think I enjoyed "The Bakery Attack" the most, just for its totally twisted logic.

Though clearly resonating with Pulp Fiction

Research progress: I am precisely 66.6% of the way through writing this article. How do I know this? Because I have just found the book that seems to do exactly the same thing as I am.

Can confirm as am now 70% of the way through the work as the book does not do what I am doing.

A few more notes on REF + illness and disability. There are some really good things about the new process. Except in the case of zero outputs, reduction is tied to UoA, not to the individual researcher. So it's not a thing where you say "I achieved less because I am ill".

This is good because it is not an attributive blame culture, but instead says to UoAs: if you have staff who are unwell and less able to conduct research, you need to create an environment to support those people.

So, for instance, I am a very productive researcher, while also being chronically extremely unwell. This is a testament to the fact that Birkbeck and my colleagues support my disabilities brilliantly.

But this may mean that other colleagues do teaching that I do not. Hence, sharing the output reduction to the UoA, rather than tying it to me, rewards the research environment.

(And I am so grateful to my colleagues and to Birkbeck btw.)

This doesn't mean it isn't still hard on an individual to go through this and document it all etc.

Many people have no idea of how burdensome it is completing REF special circumstances forms. Documenting stuff with hospital letters from years and years back, getting dates etc. is all hard on people with chronic health problems. Plus it's entirely the individual who must do it.

That's in addition to the mental distress of having to go back through half a decade's worth of elevatingly catastrophic health news, written up in objectifying medicalese.

“transient evoked otoacoustic emissions are abnormal and very reduced in both ears as are his distortion product otoacoustic emissions in both ears indicating a cochlear inner ear problem”

The earliest broad critique of the PDF that I can find is from 2001, so almost a decade after the format was developed. Does anyone know of any earlier?

Sweet work from @ajrbyers and @Mauro__MSL__ as we approach Janeway 1.3.7. A new feature: pulling article citations from Crossref!

On my way to #CISPC2019 much later than I had planned - the immunoglobulin in hospital yesterday knocked me for six. With apologies to other speakers, also, I'm doing that bad etiquette thing of speaking and then leaving [for health reasons (need to shield my immune system)].

The immune replacement therapy is working! Normal range for iG is 6.0 - 16.0g/L. My levels before treatment: 0.1g/L. Level now is 5g/L.

This was deemed "significant panhypogammaglobulinemia". Top diagnostic term.

pan = all/systemic
hypo = low
gammaglobulin = a type of immunoglobulin
emia = in the blood

Off to hospital for immunoglobulin drip and reading Tove Jansson's _Fair Play_. Disappointing lack of Moomins thus far. 4/10.

Also realised that I can't remember whether the advert with the bunny is for Duracell or Energizer, so it's a pretty bad ad.

Midway through The Secret Commonwealth. The Hyoerchorasmians is Atlas Shrugged, right? And there's also a false alias called Peterson who interrogates the nihilistic Professor of amoral relativism... 😂

Spent all afternoon chipping away at an article in between admin. Then suddenly, 6.30pm, the whole structure suddenly hit me. Unfortunately, it's not the structure I currently have, but I now know what to do.

and I have now chopped and changed all the material into the new structure. Still needs some blurring at the edges etc. but this is most pleasing.

Delivering a lecture to our MA Contemporary students tonight on "Reading Digitally". As I'm still in partial chemo recovery/immune isolation, I will be delivering this... digitally. #DigitalHealthHumanities

So department.chair99@gmail.com wants me to buy £500 of iTunes vouchers on behalf of @Heike_Bauer. Sounds plausible. Signing up now.

This morning's WonkHE briefing rhetorically asks "Why would anyone want to be a vice chancellor?" and I would tentatively suggest that as much as such people might want to do good, massive salaries aren't exactly an afterthought.

Hmm. This is what happens when you think "a bit of exercise will be good for my recovery" but you're not as over the cyclophosphamide as you hoped.

I'm getting increasingly grumpy with conference organisers taking the piss. Last week was the "you may not criticise any organisation by name in your talk", this week there's "we'd like to video you but may not credit you by name".

A thought just occurred to me re.: "It would be unlawful to deposit, or request the deposit of, the output."

Does this include author-publisher contract violation? Doesn't specify "criminally unlawful".

mind you, since you can already have an exemption for the venue disallowing deposit anyway, it's pretty much a moot point

Gotta say, given what the bloke next to me on this ward is going through for cannulation and given how often I have to have this done, I am so grateful that I have really good veins.

Had a good day but very tired now and almost home. 4am start tomorrow for final cyclophosphamide infusion. I'll probably be on here tomorrow AM but otherwise, PSA, see you on the other side next week.

An epistemo-ontological thought on the status of referencing forthcoming work. I have been criticised for this on the grounds it was unavailable for verification to the reviewer. But what of other readers who lack access to cited material on, say, financial grounds?

The usual answer is that the former type is absolutely inaccessible, the latter contingent. If you were me, though, and had access to the prior manuscript, you could verify the former case. It is not absolutely inaccessible. It is still a spectrum of access.

Working on an article and doing that "where's the right place for this?" questioning, including the self-interest calculation of prestige. Then realised I haven't submitted to OLHJ for a while and that one of my most highly-cited papers appears there and the OA will be free. 👍👍

Reckon I'm a-gonna do it.

Two points on this:

1. Whenever I have submitted anything to any OLH journal, we have strict conflict-of-interest lockdown procedures to ensure the integrity of the peer-review process.

2. It's a real heart-in-mouth experience for me as rejections here are twice as galling!

2010 Start PhD
2012 Got PhD
2013 Lectr. at Lincoln
2014 Published 2 books
2015 Snr. Lectr. Birkbeck. OLH launch
2016 Made full Prof. Had a stroke. Published 2 books
2017 Sepsis + hearing loss
2018 KU Leuven award
2019 Published book. Leverhulme Prize. Serious autoimmune problems https://x.com/stfutony/status/1193954501620690944

yes, sorry, it's a bit boastful now I've written it out. It made me feel good to do it though. And brought back a load of grim health memories too, so a mixed blessing.

I keep choosing research projects that are really hard to find digital sources on because of the ubiquity of the terms employed. Passwords and PDFs. Try searching for their histories. "Forgotten your password"/"download PDF".

Last cyclophosphamide treatment this week so took a lunch break on the exercise bike so I'm in the best shape to deal with the chemical misery. Went pretty well!

An additional note: I suspect, given its practical unworkability, that the idea of geoblocked OA that keeps surfacing is more a rhetorical move than any reality-based project. I find the principle utterly antithetical to why I work on OA though, hence the critique.

I see the ALPSP confererence, members normally so keen to defend academic freedom, has this stipulation: "All comments or criticisms regarding third party individuals or organizations should be avoided, where possible, in favour of making anonymized general comments."

In fact, I am not going to speak at this event if this condition remains in place.

Preparing OLH end-of-year accounts is my annual kick in the gut sense of gratitude to those institutions, both old and new, that continue to financially support us. We are still growing relatively fast and it wouldn't be possible without the ongoing goodwill of libraries.

When the first hour of your external examination task is taken up just with downloading the things you are supposed to read from a terrible VLE, there's something really wrong with the whole setup. 🤔🤨

Someone nearby in ward keeps referring, with great emphasis on the first word, to a "medical endoscopy". As though there are recreational endoscopies or similar.

Bloke in front of me on the train doing institutional internal REF2021 scoring. Oh what larks on the early morning London trains.

Can anyone in LIS or archival studies please recommend me any theoretical background literature on digital archival presentational practice with regard to historical material that contains racially offensive terms?

My fluctuations in hearing have now got to the point on the bad days where my wife and I are considering learning British Sign Language. Local course would cost us £800 together though. Can anyone recommend beginner books or affordable web resources/courses please?

What's that Skippy? Defining and creating relationships between archival entities with varying levels of sourcing and ontological certainty is hard? Don't be silly... Oh.

@sarahinthepark

Lord Asriel's funding application would blatantly be denied at the peer review phase #HisDarkMaterials

Definitely going to end my next application with "who will stand against me?!"

A few health notes. I feel much better! I've had the roughest time in years in 2019, but cyclophosphamide, immunoglobulin, and iron IV infusions have me back on my feet. Infections still very dangerous but by January this risk should be much lessened.

Further, gastro are now unsure that I have Crohn's! I had a massive ulcer near to bowel perforation, but there is the _possibility_ this was caused by my previous treatment regime. I will know more in early 2020.

I'm having a great weekend and reminding myself that nobody dies if I take proper time off. Although I might die after this cycle...

This morning's reading is another on my "shame list" of things I should have read ages ago. Philip K. Dick's _The Man in the High Castle_.

Can report that it was very good. Has anyone written a fan fiction edition of _The Grasshopper Lies Heavy_?

I have just archived the Facebook group 'A PLOS-Style Model for the Humanities and Social Sciences' that @the_blochian and I created, six years ago.

@openlibhums

Hey! Most of my anaemia markers are much better this month. That must be why I'm bouncing off the walls. Lots of messed-up immune blood results still, but even these are improving.

it's probably some horrible for-profit outsourced money leech on the NHS, but the Patient Access app and the instant availability of my medical records is really great. I love a graph.