Academic writing is often criticised for being overly complicated and impenetrable to anyone outside of a small circle of experts. In this post Gemma Sou reflects on how communicating her research in the form of a graphic novel transformed her research practice. Not only making her research more representative and accessible to those involved, but also through reshaping her research […]
Category: Academic Inspiration
Becoming a data steward
In this post Shalini Kurapati introduces the concept of data stewarding. Drawing on her own experience, she describes how data stewarding has developed an important role in delivering open science and research in higher education and research institutions and discusses how data stewarding also presents an important opportunity for post-doctoral researchers to develop careers within and beyond academia. Like most […]
How diverse is your reading list? (Probably not very…)
The dominance of scholars from the global North is widespread, and this extends to the student curriculum. Data on reading lists shows large authorial imbalances, which has consequences for the methodological tools available in research and allows dominant paradigms in disciplines to remain unchallenged. This post originally appeared on the Citing Africa Blog and is accompanied by a series of podcasts on […]
6 Insights into being a productive and happy academic author
The advice given to academics, at any stage of their career, on how to be productive is often contradictory. Drawing on the findings of his previous post and a new survey of 593 academics, Chris Smith presents 6 key insights into productive academic behaviours and suggests the key to productivity lies in developing a system of writing that is tailored to […]
Reshaping the tenure and promotion process so that it becomes a catalyst for innovative and invigorating scholarship
The metrics used to identify excellence, and on which current tenure and promotion decisions are based, have become a barrier to more exciting and innovative scholarship. Christopher P. Long suggests an overhaul of tenure and promotion practices, advocating a holistic approach in which structured mentoring plays a key role and values-based metrics that will empower faculty to tell more textured […]
Open-source, commercial, non-profit, for-profit: what power have you got?
A previous Impact Blog post expressed the view that scholarly communications shouldn’t just be open but non-profit too. Mark Hahnel responds to that contention, highlighting the technical and financial considerations that render many of the academic-led, grant-funded initiatives unsustainable. Moreover, the non-profit vs. for-profit dichotomy itself may be too simplistic; non-profit is not synonymous with good, and for-profit is not synonymous […]
The pace of academic life is not the problem—the lack of autonomy is
To many disgruntled with the quantification of scholarship, its impossible demands and meaningless metrics, it is the heightened pace of academic life that is the problem. For Alison Edwards, the crux of the problem is actually a lack of autonomy. Is it time for academics to take back control? This post is inspired in part by the Impact Blog’s Accelerated […]
Book Review: The Sustainable Economics of Elinor Ostrom: Commons, Contestation and Craft.
The threat posed by global warming and environmental degradation are the most pressing examples of what has become known over the past several decades as the ‘tragedy of the commons’. In this book, Derek Wall explores the work of the late Nobel Laureate, Elinor Ostrom, on how humans can overcome this problem, and sustain the commons over the long term. […]
The Organized Mind: How to better structure our time in the age of social media and constant distraction.
The information age is drowning us in a deluge of data, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate facts from pseudo-facts, objective from biased sources, and at the same time, we’re all being asked to do more at home and at work. Daniel Levitin reviews the cognitive neuroscience of attention and memory, presents the differences between mind-wandering mode and […]
A gift to readers for the festive season! Academic Inspiration Winter eBook
This originally appeared on LSE Review of Books. Is there a special novel that you return to every Christmas Eve? Did a book given as a gift start you thinking about a new angle on your research? Inside this Academic Inspiration … Continue reading →