All entries for May 2024

By General Acknowledgement

What do authors write in their article acknowledgements? The answer may surprise you!

I found myself having a discussion with a colleague yesterday, one who hails from the STEM fields, about the role which acknowledgements play in academic papers. I had been commenting how intrigued I’d been by the extensive, structured and sub-sectioned series of acknowledgments I’d witnessed in a paper I was reading earlier that day. Now my colleague works in a medical-adjacent field these days and they were less surprised. They pointed out to me ‘Well, there is a standard form you’re expected to contribute – don’t the UKRI have rules about this?’

All that aside, this conversation got me thinking. While some journals or fields will have a particular tradition or requirement in terms of what must be stated in your paper’s acknowledgments we have no such requirement for acknowledgement in an Exchanges article. I do however encourage editors as they pass manuscripts through the final stages of copyediting, pre-publication, to remind and encourage authors to add them if wished. I have no figures, but if if I were to hazard an educated guess, I’d say less than half of our final papers have acknowledgements in them. This lack of directed imperative though might be emblematic of the Exchanges’ heritage. Some of our authors thank their reviewers and editors, some their non-directly-contributing colleagues, supervisors or general collaborators. A few do, it is true, directly thank their funders. A very few gracious souls even thank me [1]. Where funders are thanked, I’ve made it a policy to include this statement on the landing page of the article, so that hopefully search engines can easily find it, along with any casual readers. Afterall, very little research [2] is conducted without an injection of capital from some organisation or the other.

Now, Exchanges as a journal was founded by a multitude of interdisciplinary scholars. However, over the years for whatever reason, our editorial base has a pronounced tendency to skew more to the arts, humanities and social sciences. This said, when last I recruited actively for our Board, I made sure to add in more from the scientific disciplines to try and redress that balance a little more. Nevertheless, I suspect my colleague’s comments about acknowledgement practices were accurate more for the STEM disciplines than those with which I am personally more familiar would be no great surprise [3]. Science papers more commonly than those in the humanities for example have multiple authors, who likely contribute to different sections (results, analysis, methods etc.,). Where we do have multiple authors from the arts and humanities, my impression is such contributions are more evenly distributed throughout a manuscript. I could of course, be mistaken!

Nevertheless, the question remains what guidance, advice or requirements does the UKRI [4] set in place then? Hidden in their catchily titled UK Research and Innovation FEC grants: standard terms and conditions of grant document (item RCG 12.4) it reads:

Publications and other forms of media communication, including media appearances, press releases and conferences, must acknowledge the support received from Us [UKRI], quoting the Grant reference number if appropriate.

There’s also a link to a page which outlines guidance in terms of the specific phrasing too.[5] However, nothing there about declaring who wrote what, and how many people you should thank. I suspect in general practice this comes down to individual journals to make such stipulations or requirements. I would be loathed to do this for Exchanges, not for the extra workload in terms of defining the policy [6] – but rather because making additional requirements feels like adding yet another hurdle for authors. The more streamlined and effective we can make their publishing experience, the better, I would argue. Should we introduce more formal acknowledgement requirements for contributors though? I’d be interested in readers thoughts in the comments below – or drop me a line.

So, for now, who, what and how you acknowledge in your paper for Exchanges is very much in the author’s court. Keeping those who helped and supported you out on side is always a good plan, because who doesn’t like to see their own name in print? It’s also a handy guide, retrospectively as you pass through your career, to look back at earlier articles and spot names who once played a closer role in your research. [7] Although, as detailed above, you’d do well to double check with what your funder wants! Keeping them happy, could be the key to keeping a strong record of successful grant acquisition!

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Endnotes

[1] Which I’ll acknowledge here, is very kind of them and I am deeply touched when authors do this.

[2] Some is though, and we’ve certainly published a few independent scholars over the years who have self-funded their efforts. Never in the sciences mind you!

[3] These days at least – I began my academic career as a biomedical research scientist, truth be told.

[4] The UK research councils, source of much of today’s research funding.

[5] Glancing at the Wellcome Trust, their acknowledgement phrasing is near identical. I suspect that means most, if not all, major UK funders follow a similar pattern. But don’t take my word for it – check your own funder!

[6] Ideally, putting an acknowledgement box as part of the submission wizard would be useful, but making changes to OJS’ implementation is, regrettably, still beyond us currently until the Warwick University Press sorts out a lot of long pending support and infrastructure questions.

[7] To the best of my knowledge, no one has, yet, thanked their pet gerbil or ferret for contributions above and beyond in our pages. I suspect this is a situation which may one day be challenged.

Gareth Johnson : 29 May 2024 14:26 |  Tags: Acknowlegements Advice Formatting Funders Guidance Submissions Thanking |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Early Stage Researchers, Peer Review and Editorial Skills Reflections

Reflecting back on early stage researcher training, and thinking about where it might go next year.

Last week I took part in the final workshop of this academic session’s Early Stage Researchers programme. As readers may recall, I’ve been contributing to this programme for the past two years and pop up during the session focussing on publication. My role here is to firstly contribute to the general discussions led by the estimated Harriet Richmond, who facilitates the programme as a whole with great skill. I’m also on-hand to present my own thoughts, reflections and experience on the subtle art of journal editing and peer-reviewing: something about which I do know a thing or two. I will note as well that the session delegates this times were particularly engaged and engaging, which meant contributing was even more of a genuine pleasure than normal.

Now like any good lecturer. each time I’ve presented this session my notes, slides and interactions have subtly evolved. This time around was different. Although I wasn’t planning a major overhaul, alongside a few informational updates, I did find myself doing a revision of the running order for my slides which I felt made for a more coherent narrative. [1] Certainly the reactions in the room on the day were positive, so I’ll take that as a win.

As I have 30 minutes to specifically contribute during the three-hour session, I do like to break up my monologue with some small interactive engagements. These breaks are partly to keep everyone’s attention because the programme is taught online, but also because not even I want to keep hearing my own voice for 30 unbroken minutes: I suspect the session delegates might agree with that point too. As Harriet deploys a lot of breakout group work during her own segments, I didn’t want to adapt the same approach, being ever mindful of offering a variety of content and engagement opportunities. I also realised that even a brief 10-15 minute breakout and any reporting back would use up most of my time. Much as it might create some interesting conversations, I concluded it did seem to be the most effective way to offer a rich vein of content to the delegates.

The first exercise which focussed on delegate perceptions of editorial key skills, and mapping them back to their own attitudes, has worked well as an ice breaker for a few iterations of my session now. I am certainly quite pleased about how it’s worked, so don’t feel there is any great need to change it up – currently anyway. Conversely, the peer-reviewer exercise I’ve used, which is where I got delegates to rank a number of statements on an axis never quite clicked the way I hoped it would. I’ve concluded while a useful tool, it is actually an exercise which would probably work better in a physical classroom environment - somewhere where we could dig into the perceptions and reactions in a lot more detail and perhaps spark off some debate. Hence, this time I decided to retired this venerable session tool, and move to a new intervention.

This new excersise centred on the introduction of some peer-reviewer case study conundrums – based on real world examples I’ve encountered – and then asked the delegates to offer their own solutions. Given most of the delegates had limited peer-reviewing experience, I estimated how exposing them to some real-world challenges would better contextualise what I had to say about reviewing praxis in the rest of the talk. Obviously, I had example answers on hand for how I actually approached the reviewing challenges, but I was delighted to see the delegates really getting to grips with these: in some cases offering some very enlightened solutions.

Notably, as I’d been talking through the ideas of ‘ethical reviewing practices’ just ahead of the exercise, I was rather hoping they might step away from purely functional answers and offer solutions embracing these sort of practices. I am pleased to report in this and other regards the exercise seemed to be a success. It also served to spark some ideas in my mind for a longer peer-review focussed workshop [2] alongside helping shape an excellent discussion among the delegate group. Indeed, I’ve also been talking to one or two them post-event about these areas, so I’m definitely happy with how it worked in engendering some great conversations.

Anyway, as the next iteration of this course isn’t now until the autumn term I can safely retire my notes for now. Well, – aside from thinking at the back of my head quite how I’ll reshape my contribution for the next version [3].

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Endnotes

[1] Since imploring authors for a coherent narrative is a common feedback request I send out, I thought I should really practice what I preach here.

[2] Perhaps this might pop up in Accolade or elsewhere. Who knows – not overly sure I’ve sufficient time currently to really develop it anyway. Maybe if there’s a big demand for it from the researcher community…

[3] And this is assuming I’m asked back to contribute to the programme. I do hope so, but nothing’s set in stone!

Gareth Johnson : 21 May 2024 16:28 |  Tags: Early Peer-Review Reflections Researchers Stage Training Workshops |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New Episode: In Conversation with Simona Di Martino

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/podcast

After a break the first in a new series of Exchanges podcast episodes goes live.

It’s been a while since our last episode – mainly because I’ve been focussed in supporting our numerous special issues and editors over this time, and also because we’ve been awaiting a new issue of the journal. Now that’s out, I’ve been chatting informally with a few of the authors about coming onto the podcast to talk about their lives, research and publications – so hopefully a few more episodes are on their way.

Before that though, I was delighted to be approached by one of the IAS’ associate fellows to talk about a conference she was recently involved in hosting. While for once this isn’t directly related to any publications or issues of Exchanges, I think you’ll find there’s a strong resonance with a number of the projects we’ve got underway for future special issues.

Listen in here (or on most major podcast platforms):

Voices of Transnational Girlhood(s) on Identity, Gender, and Culture: In Conversation with Simona Di Martino [22:23]

This episode we talk with Associate Fellow ⁠Simona Di Martino⁠ (⁠@SimoDiMa1⁠) about the ⁠recent conference event⁠ she organised at Warwick which tackled questions of girlhood, transnationalism, identify, gender and culture. We talk about the challenges and delights of hosting such an event, and Simona reflects on the emergent themes and key messages discussed by the participants. Girlhood is, Simona argues, a neglected area of study, making an event such as this not just a crucial forum for current scholars, but a way to energise and enthuse the next generation of researchers in the topic.

Podcasts of the conference talks will be coming soon on the conference site.

Gareth Johnson : 08 May 2024 09:25 |  Tags: Conference Episode Girlhood New Podcast |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem