It has been a great year for the Impact of Social Sciences blog and we look forward to the exciting times ahead – particularly with the launch of our Research Book next month! But it wouldn’t be the new year without a … Continue reading →
Category: Academic communication
Confronting the anxiety of academic writing: tips for the new year.
It can be difficult to move beyond the anxiety that so often accompanies academic writing and into a more productive mindset. Rachael Cayley argues that by employing concrete strategies designed to reconceptualise the process, writers can become more proficient and … Continue reading →
Continuous Publishing and the rise of the Open-Source Academic
Mark Carrigan shares excerpts from the academic blog written by Professor of Philosophy and University Chancellor, Daniel Little and reflects on the professional development and rising influence of the open-source academic. For both Little and Carrigan, the integration of blogging … Continue reading →
Upheavals to scholarly communication have not embraced Robert Merton’s normative guide to good scientific research.
An impact-driven scholarly communication system may offer new levels of views for research and new metrics to assess these works, but are the upheavals actually reinforcing the cumulative advantage of those already in power? Drawing on Robert Merton’s norms for … Continue reading →
Can MOOCs and Open Badges provide an alternative to the so-called ‘inflation of educational credentials’?
Learning takes place in a variety of settings as an ongoing process of skills and knowledge development in changing contexts. With the growing popularity of technology-enhanced learning initiatives, Cristóbal Cobo makes the case for more flexible methods for skills and knowledge recognition. … Continue reading →
Academic blogging is part of a complex online academic attention economy, leading to unprecedented readership.
Given the far-reaching attention of their paper on the nature of academic blogging, Inger Mewburn and Pat Thomson find blogging is now part of a complex online ‘attention economy’ where social media can help your work travel further. But in this … Continue reading →
How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang
Academic systems rely on the existence of a supply of “outsiders” ready to forgo wages and employment security in exchange for the prospect of uncertain security, prestige, freedom and reasonably high salaries that tenured positions entail. Drawing on data from the US, … Continue reading →
With altmetrics on the rise, the education community can capture insights into how pedagogy research is being used.
The number of citations an article receives is often used as an indicator of impact but there are many instances where this metric fails to capture the wider results of how ideas are distributed. Adele Wolfson and Megan Brooks look particularly at … Continue reading →
Impact Round-Up 7th December: Academic blogging under threat, statistical literacy, and sexism in science communication.
Managing Editor Sierra Williams presents a round up of popular stories from around the web on higher education, academic impact, and trends in scholarly communication. Earlier this week Chris Tyler and colleagues from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (who have recently … Continue reading →
Are academics working harder than they did before? Or just differently?
In this time of accountability and assessment, are academics working harder than they did before? And how might we tell? James Hartley reviews the literature and argues that while the data on this issue remain inconclusive, new technology may be responsible for … Continue reading →