Scholarly Communication

Listen to this interview of Aaron Clauset, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder and in the BioFrontiers Institute. Aaron is also External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. We talk about what the science of science can contribute to your career in research. Aaron Clauset : "In science, having good ideas is, in the end, the most important part. You can go a long wa...

Listen to this interview of Nicolas Christin, Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, jointly appointed in the School of Computer Science and in the department of Engineering and Public Policy. We talk about the luck it takes to succeed in research, and of course too about the initiative shown by successful researchers to seize that luck. Nicolas Christin : "You will get a pretty good understandi...

In this lively and far-reaching text, Nick Witham (University College London) tells the stories of five postwar historians who changed the way ordinary Americans thought about their nation’s history. For decades, critics of the discipline have argued that the historical profession is dominated by scholars unable, or perhaps even unwilling, to write for the public. In Popularizing the Past: Histori...

Listen to this interview of Yuval Yarom, Professor of Computer Science at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. We talk about how authors interpret the data and the facts, and we talk, too, about how readers interpret the authors' words about those data and facts. Yuval Yarom: "I like to think that the question whether the Title is boring or not does not affect me, just like I like to think that advert...

Listen to this interview of Daniel Gruss, Associate Professor in the Secure Systems group at Graz University of Technology, Institute of Applied Information Processing and Communications, Austria. We talk about asking the right questions when writing, for example, asking not "How should I write that?" but asking instead "How would someone else write that?" Daniel Gruss: "Actual methods and results...

Listen to this interview of Thorsten Holz, Professor for computer science and faculty at CISPA, the Helmholtz Center for Information Security, in Saarbrücken, Germany. We talk about mentoring, collaboration, writing, and a little more about writing again. Thorsten Holz : "I'm rather open in just sharing ideas with other researchers, even with researchers whom I haven't yet collaborated with. I hav...

Listen to this interview of Peng Liu, Professor at the College of Information Science and Technology at Pennsylvania State University, and also Director of the Cyber Security Lab. We talk about cold proposals to potential collaborators, we talk about reading across areas and through time, and we talk about how to write as an author and how to write as a reader. Peng Liu : "There's not really any o...

Listen to this interview of Sascha Fahl, Professor for Computer Science and Faculty for Usable Security and Privacy at CISPA, the Helmholtz Center for Information Security, in Saarbrücken, Germany. We talk about replicable methods, we talk about critical reading, and we talk about the necessity of a network to your research. Sascha Fahl : "I myself practise — and I encourage my PhDs to practice it...

Many library project plans, from small projects to institution-wide strategic planning committees, follow a linear trajectory: create the plan, do the plan, then review the outcome. While this can be effective, it also sometimes leads to disregarding new information that emerges while executing the plan, making the outcome less effective. Planning processes can also feel forced and predetermined i...

A clear-eyed examination of the open access movement: past history, current conflicts, and future possibilities. Open access (OA) could one day put the sum of human knowledge at our fingertips. But the goal of allowing everyone to read everything faces fierce resistance. In Athena Unbound: Why and How Scholarly Knowledge Should Be Free for All (MIT Press, 2023), Peter Baldwin offers an up-to-date...

Listen to this interview of Mathias Payer, a security researcher and associate professor at the EPFL School of Computer and Communication Science, leading the HexHive group. We talk about research as a social activity — No researcher can go it alone! Mathias Payer: "Reading and writing are integral parts to the research process. I would even say that there's a split one-third, one-third, one-third...

Anthony Wilks discusses his career heading up audio-visual projects for the London Review of Books. He tells the story of his winding career, in addition to some great musings about the future of the greater book world. Anthony Wilks is head of audio and video at the London Review of Books. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit mega...

Listen to this interview of Nick Enfield, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney for Language Research and the Sydney Initiative for Truth. We talk about communication as you think it is and also, about communication as it really is. Enfield is the author of Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists (MIT Press, 2022). Nick Enfield : "Every scientis...

Mushtaq Bilal is an academic, content creator, thought leader, and public intellectual. Mushtaq discusses how he built an audience of more than 185,000 followers on Twitter and more than 30,000 on LinkedIn over the last year by helping to simplify the writing process for early career academics. A must-listen for anyone who is thinking about building a community and an author platform online around...

Listen to this interview of James Gee, Regents' Professor and Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University. We talk about too much communication, about too much specialization, and about too much narrativization. We also talk about his books Introducing Discourse Analysis: From Grammar to Society (Routledge, 2018) and What Is a Human?: Language, Mind, and...

This episode features discussions with Thomas Weaver (Senior Acquisitions Editor for Art and Architecture) and Victoria Hindley (Acquisitions Editor in Visual Culture and Design) about publishing in the fields of art, architecture, and visual culture, as part of our virtual attendance of the 2021 College Art Association Conference.  Hosted and produced by Sam Kelly; Mixed by Samantha Doyle; Soundt...

Myra Tawfik's book For the Encouragement of Learning: The Origins of Canadian Copyright Law (U Toronto Press, 2023) addresses the contested history of copyright law in Canada, where the economic and reputational interests of authors and the commercial interests of publishers often conflict with the public interest in access to knowledge. It chronicles Canada’s earliest copyright law to explain how...

Medieval books that survive today have been through a lot: singed by fire, mottled by mold, eaten by insects, annotated by readers, cut into fragments, or damaged through well-intentioned preservation efforts. In Holy Digital Grail: A Medieval Book on the Internet (Stanford UP, 2022), Michelle Warren tells the story of one such manuscript—an Arthurian romance with textual origins in twelfth-centur...

As social media is increasingly becoming a standard feature of sociological practice, this timely book The Public and Their Platforms: Public Sociology in an Era of Social Media (Bristol UP, 2021) rethinks the role of these mediums in public sociology and what they can contribute to the discipline in the post-COVID world. It reconsiders the history and current conceptualizations of what sociology...

Rapid Reviews: COVID-19 brings together urgency and scientific rigor so the world’s researchers can quickly disseminate new discoveries that the public can trust. Amy Brand (Director, The MIT Press) and Vilas Dhar (Trustee, The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation) discuss this new overlay journal, its innovative goals, and its role as a proof-of-concept for new models of peer-review and rapid publishin...

Listen to this interview of Helen Sword, professor emerita in the School of Humanities and the Centre for Arts and Social Transformation at the University of Auckland, founder of WriteSPACE, an international virtual writing community, and author of Writing with Pleasure (Princeton UP, 2023). We talk about how pleasure is difficult-but-good. Helen Sword : "If you have a text that has not been writt...

Listen to this interview of Jan Recker, Professor for Information Systems and Digital Innovation at the University of Hamburg, Germany and author of Scientific Research in Information Systems: A Beginner's Guide (Springer, 2021). We talk about how your research is what you write. Jan Recker : "Very few of us scientists are gifted readers, and very few of us are gifted writers, but those who are, I...

State censorship and cancel culture, trigger warnings and safe spaces, pseudoscience, First Amendment hardball, as well as orthodoxy and groupthink: universities remain a site for important battles in the culture wars. What is the larger meaning of these debates? Are American universities at risk of conceding to mobs and cuddled “snowflake” students and sacrifice the hallowed values of free speech...

Writing and publishing are at the heart of most academic and research pursuits. Many potential authors, however, feel lost in the seemingly Everest climbing-like process. There is little formal education that authors receive during their education. In this regard, John Bond’s new book's The Little Guide to Getting Your Journal Article Published: Simple Steps to Success (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)...

Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship After State Violence (Fordham UP, 2023) investigates how histories of exclusion and silencing are written and rewritten in a postcolonial context that lacks organized and accessible archives. The book draws on cultural production concerning the “years of lead”—a period of authoritarianism and political violence between Morocco’s independence in 1956...