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Why don’t academic authors self-publish?
<Photo by MonsierLui http://www.flickr.com/photos/monsieurlui/316350341/> I got an invite from Frank Rennie the other week to contribute a chapter to a book he is thinking of putting together around the subject of the mismatch (or distance) between academic thinking and the potential of new tools. Frank is a big fan of the self-publish sites and has suggested we eschew an academic publisher, and just publish ourselves via Lulu or Blurb. This got me thinking as to why more academics don't do this, and still chase the book contract. It certainly isn't for the money, so it must be for the prestige. This can be broken down into personal and external I think.…
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A Couros birthday and user generated content
I'm sure many of you will have seen this, but it's worth showing again. Below is a video that Dean Shareski compiled for blogger Alec Couros's 40th Birthday (Dean describes the process here). It's fun and heartwarming, but it's also a great example to show people about the power of the network. As I understand it someone suggested the idea on twitter, Dean then put together a Google Doc with the lyrics and contacted people in Alec's network to assign them lines. They then uploaded or emailed him the video clips, which he then compiled together. Here's why I think it's interesting, beyond it being for Alec who's a…
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A marathon not a sprint
So, yesterday, after talking about it for a few years, I finally got around to doing a marathon, over in Llanelli. It was a warm day, along the coastal path, with only about 600 runners. I've been following a training plan since the beginning of the year, so was reasonably confident. I was aiming for a 4 hour finish, and was on target for this until mile 17 when I hit a bit of a psychological as well as physical wall. The route is two loops of a figure of eight and this was the furthest point out, and suddenly, the thought of having to come back all the way…
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A quick and dirty REF
I am currently engaged with working on the REF submission for my Institute. I fully understand why we do this, in cash strapped time in particular, research money will make a big difference. It is also almost impossible not to play the game if you want to be recognised as a research institution and attract staff. But it is a horrible, pernicious process that seems deliberately designed to kill innovation, perpetuate existing models, waste time, focus energy on gaming the system and keep publishers happy. If you wanted to design a process with the sole aim of restricting the adoption of new methods and technology, then you could do a…
