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Why it’s time for the rebirth of the university press
<Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/miller-lowe/2179212600/> A long time ago, well, before Simon Cowell was a household name anyway, universities used to run university presses. These would print journals and books. They didn't really make a profit, in fact they often made a loss. Their titles were esoteric, academic and occassionally odd. But they did it because that was the best, indeed the only route often, to sharing knowledge publicly. Other universities and libraries would buy these journals, sometimes the production was very professional, other times less so and the glue and string would show. Then gradually, universities began to realise they weren't in the print business, and that they couldn't really compete with the…
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Punk, Queen & New Romantics in digital scholarship
It may be tired after the whole edupunk thing (curses to you Groom!), and has more than a whiff of old men reliving their youth about it, but nevertheless I'd like to revisit punk music as an analogy for current changes in ed tech. This time it is nothing to do with the approach or the values, but rather the lesson of what a revolution actually look like. In his book From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg, John Naughton makes the point that we are living through the midst of a revolution, and it's very difficult to see what the outcome will be. While I think that digital, networked and open approaches…
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Levels of friction in sharing
Over the past week or so I've had a couple of twitter discussions around 'frictionless sharing'. Brian Kelly captured some of this discussion in Storify and then followed up with this post (like a dog with a bone, Brian has also created a wikipedia stub 🙂 The term has been somewhat corrupted by Facebook, which has inevitably led to it being rather sneered at. Particularly worrying I think is unintentional sharing, ie Facebook simply broadcasting your actions. Sharing should always be a conscious decision I feel. Pete Johnston made the point about context, which is another concern around frictionless sharing. Consider the following examples: 1) You 'favourite' a number of offensive tweets…
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Earning every mile
The end of the year is time for my traditional running review post, much to the pleasure of absolutely no-one, including myself. Still, that's what traditions are for, so here goes. First, the data part, because you're worth it: Total distance: 1028 miles Number of runs: 136 Total duration: 182 hours Average distance: 7.56 miles Average duration: 1hr 16mins Average pace: 10.09 min/mile Compared with last year, where I was a bit lost and only did a total of 831 miles, this was a big improvement, and I finally broke that 1000 mile barrier. Even so, this still only comes in at just over half an hour a day on…
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How to undermine Facebook
Like many people, I have a Facebook profile, but it isn't something I use much. And like many people I've become increasingly uneasy about the way our interactions are monetised and manipulated. I don't mind this to an extent – I'm willing to trade off free use of something for some adverts I ignore, for example. But it's begun to feel all rather insidious with Facebook. Alan Levine posted that he wasn't going to dramatically quit Facebook, but his plan was to maintain a non-presence: But quitting seems to pointless. Or impactless. So I have an evil plot. I am keeping my facebook account, but I have completely neutralized its…
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The three ghosts of open access articles
WARNING – this post contains stretching of a flimsy idea to breaking point. Look away if you find strained literary metaphors distressing. In keeping with the festive season, I'm going to frame some thoughts on stages of academic publishing with a Dickensian motif. I'm trying to develop an approach that covers three phases of a journal article's life, so let's go for a Christmas Carol. The Ghost of Articles Past – Scrooge is shown his own past Christmases, and given to reflect and reinterpret them. The ghost says he is there for Scrooge's 'reclamation'. For articles, they are usually published in a journal, where they may receive an initial flurry…
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Launching Meta EdTech Journal
The other day I was trying to find a list of Open Access journals. I found this very useful open list from George Veletsianos. While looking through the journals it occurred to me that what would be useful would be a regular review of these, or a kind of meta-journal. Not one that just lists all the papers, but rather a filtered view. I mentioned it on Twitter and Doug Belshaw pointed me at the new Google/Wordpress collaboration, Annotum – a WordPress theme for creating open access journals. So in the a spirit of DIY, I have created Meta EdTech Journal. The idea is simple – three times a year…
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Yeah, but who pays?
My colleague, Gill Kirkup, asks this question of digital scholarship, and it is a frequent refrain of Alan Cann's. It's a good question, and one I usually try to have an answer for. I don't think I am guilty of Gill's charge of hoping for the "internet equivalent of the tooth fairy". In fact, one of my complaints about the current academic publishing model is that it's a poor economic one. Now, one can make many arguments about open access that don't address the economics, for example around it being a public good, or a more effective way of working for instance, many of which are compelling in their own…
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Digital scholar book launch
For those of you who found something better to do yesterday afternoon (I can't imagine what that could be), here the webcast of my book launch can be found here. The event seemed to go ok, although I fear I was a bit rambling, and didn't really do the elevator pitch thing for the book. John Naughton said some very kind words, and then we had a good discussion with the audience and wider twitter participants. And below is my Prezi, which I still don't think I've got the hang of – I just don't think I'm a visual kinda guy. Digital Scholar – book launch on Prezi
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Doomed, entombed and marooned
In my book launch yesterday (I'll blog that later), I used a Dad's Army clip to summarise some of the feelinsg of angst and criticism around digital scholarship: I think this is a pretty good summary of some of the anxieties: Doomed – a kind of technological dystopian view, such as Nicholas Carr's The Shallows. It doesn't matter what we do, we're all destined to become stupid, dysfunctional and somehow, lessened by the technology. Entombed – the 'we are slaves' to technology type view, for example Lanier's You are not a Gadget. We are placing technology in too powerful a position and dehumanising ourselves in the process. Some of…
