Today marks the beginning of Academic Book Week (#AcBookWeek), “the week-long celebration of the diversity, innovation and influence of academic books throughout history”. First established in 2015, #AcBookWeek returns for its second year and will run until 28 January. As part of a varied programme of events, later today John Holmwood and Martin Eve will speak about the future of academic […]
Category: Five minutes with…
Five Minutes with Timothy Gowers: “Academics can publish journals of the highest quality without a commercial entity”
Fields Medal-winning Cambridge mathematician Sir Timothy Gowers and a team of colleagues have recently launched a new editor-owned Open Access (OA) journal for mathematics. Discrete Analysis is an arXiv overlay journal, which means articles are submitted and hosted via the preprint server arXiv first. The journal coordinates peer-review and publishes via Scholastica with no cost to reader or author. Gowers reflects here on his […]
Five Minutes with Alison Powell on what data means, how it is produced and what influence it has for decision-makers.
Data, information and knowledge are powerful aspects of contemporary society. Managing Editor Sierra Williams recently caught up with Alison Powell on the development and expansion of Data and Society activities taking place at the LSE. Alongside a new MSc programme, a broad range of research is set to be explored, such as the ethics of data and surveillance systems, the roles of […]
Q+A with Bonnie Stewart: “We are part of a society and an academy where the personal/professional divide is blurring”
LSE’s NetworkED seminar series for 2016 kick starts this Wednesday (20 January) with Bonnie Stewart. Here she provides a brief look into her research on scholarly identities and how relatively open social spaces like Twitter can be used by scholars for immersive professional development. But, she notes, this space is not without risks. The session will be streamed live and can be […]
Five Minutes with Ulrich Herb on Open Science: “Open Science must be adapted to disciplinary specificities”
In a recent interview conducted by OpenAire, open science veteran Ulrich Herb shares the main findings of his research on the extent of open research practices in the discipline of sociology, as well as his wider thoughts on the history and future of the Open Science movement. This interview originally appeared on the OpenAIRE portal here. How do you understand the term “Open Science”? […]
Five Minutes with @Livingstone_S on the benefits of open access publishing and practice.
Professor Sonia Livingstone shares her thoughts on the LSE’s institutional repository, LSE Research Online (LSERO). Since 2010, content in LSERO has received over six million downloads. For 2015, it has already received over one million downloads. LSERO is a rich resource containing a variety of LSE research, including journal articles, reports, book chapters, working papers, conference papers, datasets and video. Do you […]
Five Minutes with Carl Cullinane on the Democratic Dashboard: “There’s a big difference between open data and accessible data.”
Sierra Williams caught up with Carl Cullinane, the project lead behind the Democratic Dashboard, a voter information resource making constituency data open and accessible in the run-up to the UK’s General Election. Because of the variety of data sources used, it was a huge job to harmonise the structure and formatting of the datasets to make them compatible. The Democratic Dashboard is fundamentally […]
Five Minutes with Cristóbal Cobo: Redefining Knowledge in the Digital Age.
How has and how will the overload of digital information impact the way that scholars look to absorb, disseminate, and assess new knowledge in journals and beyond? Scholastica‘s Danielle Padula interviews Cristóbal Cobo of the Oxford Internet Institute on how technology is shaping the research and publishing process for the modern scholar. How do you think the internet is changing the way […]
Five Minutes with Marieke Guy: “By opening up data, citizens can be more directly informed and involved in decision-making.”
What exactly is open data and how does it relate to education? Marieke Guy from the Open Knowledge Foundation will be speaking at the LSE this Wednesday 26 November 5-7pm as part of the Learning Technology and Innovation NetworkED series (booking still open). Ahead of her talk she answers a few questions on the opportunities and vulnerabilities involved in providing greater access to […]
Five Minutes with Nicholas A. Christakis: “Discovery is greatly facilitated by methodological innovation.”
Managing editor Sierra Williams spoke to Professor Nicholas A. Christakis ahead of next week’s LSE event, Do We Need to Shake Up the Social Sciences? Here he discusses his thoughts on the frontiers in interdisciplinary research, the need for social science departmental re-shuffles, and the radical changes shaping social science’s relevance today. Back in July, your article Let’s Shake Up the Social […]