Nothing but Bluesky Ahead – Farewell Twitter/X

Writing about web page https://bsky.app/profile/exchangesjournal.bsky.social

Exchanges moves its primary microblogging output over to Bluesky, as Twitter/X diminishes

If you’re any kind of social media user, you can’t have avoided the debates around the downturn in Twitter/X as the preeminent social media discussion site. While I’ve been mulling Exchanges presence for some months now [1], with the recent US election fallout, it’s become an even more acute question about remaining on site which is increasingly swaying away from any pretence at ‘fairness’ or ‘balance’. It is a shame, as personally I joined Twitter way back in the late 00s and back in the early days it was a brilliant tool for finding likeminded people. I had more than a few beneficial, and surprise, collaborations emerging as a result of being on there. Not to mention creating many long running professional friendships too. Hence, when I took over running Exchanges in April 2018, one of the very first things I did, during my first week, was set up our Twitter account. At the time it was totally a no-brainer in terms of trying to reach out to potential contributors around the world.

Back in the 2010s Twitter was clearly a major channel of communication for academics and those in higher education alike. However, over the years, as the platform shifted to more of a mass market, the signal to noise ratio certainly changed, and not for the better. Personally, I suspect we passed ‘peak Twitter’ during the pandemic years, as we all reached out to one another for some human contact. With Twitter’s sale in late 2022, and the actions of its new owner, I started to have more than a few concerns about it as a channel and started asking myself if it was one we should continue to be associated. However, as a small journal, with limited marketing impact and visibility staying on the platform even then remained one of the major routes we had to reach potential contributors to the journal.

That said, over the past 18 months Musk’s ‘X’ has continued to remove many of the safeguards which are an essential part of any reliable communication channel. Consequently, I set up a Mastodon instance last year, although I will confess I found that a challenging platform to find new followers. Our account’s over there is still live but currently dormant in terms of new content. As soon as I was able though I set up a Bluesky account, as everything I heard about this platform pointed towards it being a viable alternative to Twitter/X, and being run more along the lines of that platform in its ‘better’ days. Since then, I’ve been running the two instances in tandem – posting to Twitter/X and Bluesky at the same time.

However, then the US election happened, with the run up to this making Twitter/X’s owner’s political leanings becoming…more overt. The resultant increased migration of notable bodies, organisations and peoples away from Twitter/X and onto Bluesky argues that the time to close down one account and focus on another is here.

Now, as I drafted this article last week we had 452 followers on Twitter/X (fallen to 447 today) and around 21 on Bluesky.[2] Getting those ~450 followers took us a good two years, and while I am loathed to leave them, something interesting has been happening in the four days since I started writing this piece. Without me posting anything our Bluesky followers has increased to 31. Still small-beer, but a reinforcement that our potential audience there is growing. Such a growth rate in followers seems to argue to me that we’re on the cusp of enough people with interest in the journal migrating across to Bluesky to make the transition I’ve been mulling not only agreeable but logical.

I set up the Twitter/X account to create and sustain conversations around the Exchanges journal, and scholarly publishing. And to my mind, Bluesky is where these conversations are going to be able to continue, without (as) a concerning political dimension. There’s also my slight concern that continuing to associate with Twitter/X lends credibility to its owner and the political bed into which he’s (literally) jumped. That, is just one more thing which makes me believe this is the right move to do!

So, from today we’re going to be scaling back our Twitter/X output to an effective minimum – probably mostly using it to encourage people to come find us on Bluesky. We’ll keep the domain alive, given were I to delete it, after a month or so, someone else could register our handle. I really don’t want to be dealing with ‘fake’ Exchanges, so that’s account will be retained.[3]

Hence, it’s farewell to Twitter/X, and hello to Bluesky in a big way now. I hope you’ll come join us there!

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Follow Exchanges on Bluesky at: @ExchangesJournal (https://bsky.app/profile/exchangesjournal.bsky.social)

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Endnotes

[1] I confess personally, I departed from it during 2023 once Musk’s agenda became pretty apparent. It’s not a decision I regret at all. It’s noticeable my personal account followers has been swelling in the last week too – and that’s a place I only talk about social rather than work things!

[2] I think we’re still niche enough to be ‘indy’ or ‘underground’, which while cool is a bit frustrating when I’d like us to be a heck of lot more visible. Maybe the mass-migration to Bluesky might end up seeing us increase in followers a lot faster?

[3] It is exactly what I did with my own account for the same reasons.

Gareth Johnson : 19 Nov 2024 09:39 |  Tags: Announcement Bluesky Media Microblogging Migration Social Twitter X |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New Podcast Episodes Focus in on Researcher Development

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

It’s a two for one deal as two new episodes consider issues around developing researchers and experiences with peer-reviewers too.

I was rather fortunate to be able to host not one but two guests on recent episodes of the Exchanges Discourse podcast, and even more delighted to discover the episodes rather complimented each other. I would like to pretend this was clever planning, but I don’t think anyone actually would be fooled!

In the first episode I talk with Anna Fancett (Warwick) about her varied and exciting international career, as well as her current work at the University of Warwick where she’s helping to develop postgraduate researchers’ writing skills: a topic close to my editorial heart! Alongside looking into the paper she authored on this topic for our Research Culture special issue, we also consider the lessons which can be drawn from developing effective workshops. Anna also talks about her thoughts on engaging positively with the peer-review process. We touch particularly here on issues of dealing with more negative feedback and of course our own thoughts on how we approaching reviewing ourselves.

In the other episode, out today, I chat to Taryn Bell (Leeds) about her life as an archaeology academic, but mainly about her work with colleagues in Leeds and York in developing researchers. Again, centred around a paper in our Research Culture issue, we exchange thoughts on the tricky matter of offering focused, bespoke workshops suitable for particular career stages, versus the emergent benefits in getting scholars across the board to exchange experiences. We even touch a little on the issue of agism – why, for example, do so many universities seem to assume all PhD students and early career researchers are ‘young’? And does this speak to some concerning biases which we need to challenge in our own thinking and development planning? Similarly to Anna’s episode, we talk about peer-review and getting the most out of it and thankfully uncover some more positive examples along the way.

Both episodes of course contain our signature discussions concerning advice for new authors looking to publish, from experienced authors who’ve known the growing pains themselves.

You can listen to the episodes here:

Anna: https://spotifycreators-web.app.link/e/L1K8f0VFuOb

Taryn: https://spotifycreators-web.app.link/e/40VKqZVFuOb

Or to catch up with all the past episodes of the podcast – and there’ve been a lot lately – visit:

https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/podcast

We’ll be taking a short break from new episodes now – but hopefully will have one or two more to round out the year/season in the coming weeks.

Gareth Johnson : 13 Nov 2024 15:11 |  Tags: Developing Episodes New Peer-Reviewers Podcast Postgraduates Researchers |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Discussing Reviewer Suitability & Citation Justice with Early Stage Scholars

The first training session of the new academic session brought discussions around reviewer quality.

This week I had the pleasure of contributing to Harriet Richmond’s early-stage researcher session focussing on publication. As blog readers will be aware, I’ve been feeding into these sessions for almost three years now, around once a term generally. As always it was a pleasure to collaborate with Harriet, who is a great teacher and all round good-egg. Certainly I always come away with some thoughts on improving my own teaching, or new piece of information to ruminate upon, so being involved is always a win-win for me.

I also enjoy participating because these workshop sessions are also a wonderful opportunity to share some of my personal experiences as an editor and reviewer with researchers who are a little earlier in their career track than I. The hope is – like this week’s cohort – that it sparks some conversation and perhaps demystifies the area a little. I do often feel it’s a shame that in the post-pandemic period we’ve kept the workshops online only, which perhaps slightly curtails a more free-flowing exchange of thoughts and ideas. That might be a personal preference for ‘live’ performance in my teaching, and I can see why the delegates enjoy not having to schlep into campus for the sessions: less time away from the lab and office probably pays them dividends in a busy schedule. No matter, as always, this week’s exchange online was still good enough to pick up on a few new threads of conversation.

This time around I introduced ideas of citation justice, as discussed in our recent podcast, into the debate. This arose out of a delegate discussion about questionable citation habits and bias within them. It was handy to be able to talk a little about these concepts and highlight some of the ideas around introducing a ‘beneficial bias’: although, I should note that for now Exchanges has no hard and fast policy in this area. All the same, I’ll be looking forward to reading the Reinvention report, and perhaps kicking off some policy discussions with my Board as a result. Getting better and broader representation within article citations can only benefit readers, researchers and authors alike in my opinion.

We also got into an interesting debate over journals/editors and their ability to pick ‘quality’ reviewers. Now, if you’re an editor you probably don’t need me to tell you how challenging it can be, with the hundreds of thousands [1] of manuscripts annually in need of multiple reviewers, especially with academics’ time increasingly stretched across so many research, teaching and administration priorities. With this initial hill to climb just to get >any< reviewers on board, conceptualisations of also judging their quality beyond a simple visit to their personal/professional website [2] sounds like an even bigger slope to ascend. As journal editors we offer lots of guidance to reviewers on how to do a quality job, as well as advising reviewers about those times when they feel they might be out-of-scope for a particular paper [3]. Truth be told though, much of the responsibility for invalidating a reviewer does seem to fall on the prospective reviewers’ shoulders themselves. It’s a bit of a sector norm, and perhaps one which deserves some greater consideration – I’ve certainly been inspired to look around and see what other journals are doing. Perhaps a small debate among my editorial team is also worthwhile following up on these conversations too – we do have a Board meeting scheduled for next month after all!

This week’s session also saw the second running of my ‘you are the reviewer!’ case study challenge, wherein the delegates had to make a judgement on several not-so-hypothetical reviewing problems. Once again the delegates rose to the challenge well, and it was good to see that the approach we had adopted in each case – the examples being anonymised but real ones – seemed to chime with the views of the scholars present. I might tweak the examples for the next running of the course in the new year though, just to avoid things becoming too staid or stale.

So, a good session from my perspective, and I hope from the delegates too. I think my next task is to take that annual look at my teaching notes and think about how my contribution could be tweaked or improved. I certainly got the feeling this time, that another refresh of the slides and accompanying interactions could do with another polish!

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Endnotes

[1] Almost certainly more when you consider how many articles are rejected annually. With a ~50% decline rate for Exchanges the 68 articles we published this years therefore equates to ~140 submissions as a back of the envelope calculation. And we’re a relatively small journal with a small ingest of article submissions!

[2] Or of course knowing them in person.

[3] Doubly tricky for interdisciplinary papers where few, if anyone other than the author, will be entirely conversant with the paper’s themes, methodologies and methods.

Gareth Johnson : 07 Nov 2024 09:13 |  Tags: 2024 Development Early November Researchers Stage Training |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New Episode: Celebrating the MRC at 50

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

Two guests in one episode reflect back on the ground breaking Modern Records Centre’s first fifty years

Delighted to report another in our series of recent podcast episodes, which this time takes a look at both the special issue and events which celebrated the Modern Records Centre (MRC) at 50 years old. Talking with Pierre Bothcherby and Rachel MacGregor we use the framing of their lead article in the issue as a stepping stone to consider what the issue and symposium has to tell us about the famous archive. Along the way we touch on what are our favourite talks and papers in the issue – although acknowledging that we secretly have a soft spot for them all. We also take the chance to look forward to what’s next for the MRC, and while we can’t look at what’s going to happen in 2073 for the centennial, at least we look to the next big date for the university!

Listen in here:

• https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/xBHEom268Nb[34:36]

Gareth Johnson : 05 Nov 2024 13:47 |  Tags: Anniversary Centre Episode Modern Mrc Podcast Records |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New Issue Published: Welcoming our Thirtieth Issue of Exchanges

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/issue/view/101

Another month and another new issue of Exchanges arrives, although this time it’s not a special issue

Delighted and slightly relieved to announce the latest issue of Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal has just been published (Vol 12.1). This marks the third issue in as many months and caps off what has been a frantically busy half year for myself (and the editors working on the issue). This is – should you be counting - our thirtieth issue, and unlike the two previous ones, this time it’s one of our regular issues containing a collection of articles from across the disciplinary spectrum, from scholars at Warwick and around the world.

Access the issue via the links below:

https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/issue/view/101

or

https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v12i1

As this is a regular, autumn issue, there’s no central theme this time – although I should note many of the articles continue and develop conversations from prior issues. This is partly by chance, rather than design although at least a couple of articles were invited under a specific theme tied to a workshop at the IAS earlier this year. You can read more about the topics in the issue in the editorial, or indeed in the issue description. Naturally, the editorial briefly introduces the issue as well as updating readers on other forthcoming issues, and opportunities to contribute to future volumes of the journal.

While I mention this in the issue, I would naturally like to thank all our contributors, reviewers and editors for their hard work on this issue. The considerable effort behind the scenes to review, revise and format each article – not to mention the effort we expend on those which don’t quite make it too – is not inconsiderable. So much of what we do on the journal feels like an iceberg – the issue you see being only the tip floating above the ocean’s surface with so much of that scholarly labour is hidden below.

With the publication of this issue, our last for 2024, I am personally delighted to note that for the first time since the early summer I don’t have the prospect of a new issue to produce in just a few short weeks. Not that I’ll be idling my time away, as we have four special issues currently brewing, and work towards the April 2025 issue continues apace too. Nevertheless, it will be nice to have a little more time on my hands to catch up with all those regular tasks I normally work on over the summer!

Hope you enjoy the issue, or are even inspired to contribute an article for a future issue – I’ll very much look forward to reading it.

Gareth Johnson : 31 Oct 2024 09:15 |  Tags: Announcement Issue Journal New Published |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New Episode: Talking Citational Justice with Osamu Miyamae

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

A new podcast episode takes a look at a project being run by our sister journal, Reinvention.

In a slight change of pace we have a new podcast episode talking with someone who isn’t one of our authors, but rather is a recent graduate who’s been working on a project with our sister journal Reinvention. Osamu and colleagues have been exploring the world of ‘citational justice’ and asking questions about best practices and the ways in which journals can be seen to be enabling otherwise marginalised voices and underrepresented regional scholars – though citation policy.

While the project report is a few weeks away as of yet, Osamu was able to share with us the highlights of the project and more than a few interesting points of consideration for anyone working in the journal publication field. Certainly, after our chat I’ll be fascinated to see what Reinvention does in the light of the report, and if there’s a similar policy approach Exchanges might explore.

Listen to the episode here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/ARYh9b2pVNb [21:34]

Or catch up with all our past episodes here:

https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/podcast

Plenty more new episodes to follow over the next couple of weeks – so keep your ears open!

Gareth Johnson : 23 Oct 2024 10:24 |  Tags: Citations Cocreation Decolonisation Project Reinvention |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New Episode: Teacher Practitioners as Researchers

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

A second episode promoted by the research culture special issue of the podcast is released.

After many months of it being rather quiet on the podcasting front, I’m genuinely pleased we seem to have moved into a fruitful period of production. With the third episode in as many weeks now live, listeners have a chance to take a deeper diver into the paper by Elizabeth Hidson (Faculty of Education and Society, University of Sunderland) which featured in our research culture special issue just over a month ago. Elizabeth, or Liz as she prefers, works in the area of educational research and teacher training, with a particular interest in international teaching experiences.

Listen in here: International Teacher Practitioners as Researchers: In Conversation with Elizabeth Hidson [24:21]

Her paper (Developing a Research Culture with Trainee Teachers on International Initial Teacher Training Programmes) talks about ideas of installing research culture ideas into a community of practitioners who might not normally consider themselves as ‘researchers’. As such, our conversation looks at the challenges she and her students face, not least of which come from the changing environments, perceptions and insights which arise when we step outside our western educational cultural norms.

We move on then to talk about some of Liz’s other work and forthcoming publications, touching on I’m pleased to say ideas around the benefits of open access publishing – to authors and readers around the world. Naturally, we also explore some of Liz’s experiences in publishing, and the advice she has to offer others approaching their earliest formal publications: not least of which being her suggestion to ‘find your tribe’ in creating an effective research discourse.

I hope you enjoy the episode, because I’m recording three more episodes next week – so there’s plenty more to come this year in terms of episodes. And naturally, if you’re a past author of Exchanges and keen to appear as a guest to talk about your work and publications, then get in touch, as we’d love to have you on the podcast show!

Gareth Johnson : 09 Oct 2024 15:20 |  Tags: Culture Episode New Podcast Practitioners Research Researchers Teachers |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New Episode: Being an Effective Academic Citizen

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

Our second new episode takes a lengthy look at the changing field of academic publishing and how it relates to post-graduate researcher training.

I sat down to talk with Dr Jonathan Vickery (School of Arts, Warwick) a couple of weeks ago in the School’s custom podcast recording studio for a chat. Jonathan is more than one of our recent Exchanges authors, in that he is also editor of the Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development – one our fellow Warwick based titles. As a result we were able to have quite a lengthy chat around the themes of his paper - Critical Reflections on Universities, Publishing, and the Early Career Experience. The paper itself was born from a pair of IAS panel workshops I chaired earlier in 2024, at which Jonathan was one of my gracious panel members.

• Listen in here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/exchangesias/episodes/Being-an-Effective-Academic-Citizen-in-the-Republic-of-Knowledge-In-Conversation-with-Jonathan-Vickery-e2p3mlg/a-abibrlj[59:58]

Without wanting to spoil anything ahead of listeners experiencing this episode, I think it is fair to say that we touched on a variety of very interesting and highly relevant areas for post-graduate researchers and indeed anyone involved in their development. We considered the technologically-driven evolution of academic publishing, and Jonathan in particular feels we’re either on the cusp or in the middle of a genuine phase change not seen since the introduction of movable type. Touching on ideas of knowledge economy, academic enterprise and collaboration vs competition in the academy though, there’s plenty of food for thought throughout the episode. For my own part it was fantastic to use the recording equipment – and I’ll note my particular thanks here to the technical staff who got it set up for us. It was even more of a pleasure though to have unfettered access to a scholar like Jonathan to talk about a topic very close to my own heart.

Hopefully we’ll be brining you a few more episodes shortly – although I suspect they might not run quite so long as this discussion. But then again, you never know!

• Previous episodes of The Exchanges Discourse can of course be found here: https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/podcast

Gareth Johnson : 02 Oct 2024 07:47 |  Tags: Academic Economy Episode Knowledge Labour Podcast Production Publishing |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New Episode: Outreach, Reaching Across the Divide & Engaging the Public

Writing about web page https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/BDEDZbjNcNb

A new episode relating to the research culture special issue is now live.

I am pleased to announce we have a new episode of the Exchanges Discourse podcast, the first in a series of episodes that are coming your way over the next couple of months. This is the first in a mini-series featuring authors who contributed to our special research culture special issue, and I couldn’t be happier to have such a gracious guest as Phil Jemmett from Warwick’s own WMG. Listen to our conversation here:

• https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/BDEDZbjNcNb [35:42]

As always we talk a lot about my guest’s life and work, but especially the article Phil and colleagues contributed to our recent journal issue – entitled: Engaging Academics with Outreach: How the ‘STEM Connections’ model empowers staff. Along the way we also talk about Phil’s publishing experiences, thoughts on being a public academic including matters of opinion on the best way to represent yourself and your research to a class of potentially disengaged school children. As such, our conversation touches on various techniques for engaging the public with topics of academic research and expertise. As a result, we get chatting about how to improve your academic presentational skills and especially the best routes to capturing an audience’s attention.

As always the episode concludes by offering some advice to less seasoned academic authors in publishing approaches and ways in which they can make their papers really sing.

You can read Phil and colleagues article here: https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v11i3.1544

As always, my thanks to my guest for their thoughts, and I hope you enjoy the episode.

Next up, as I recorded it last week, is a long and exciting chat with fellow editor and author Jonathan Vickery on the subject of publishing and the knowledge economy. Hopefully with you this time next week!

Gareth Johnson : 26 Sep 2024 15:19 |  Tags: Discourse Engagement Exchanges Outreach Public Publishing |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Special Issue Published: MRC @ 50

Writing about web page https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v11i4

After only a month, another special issue of Exchanges is launched to celebrate a unique, special and impactful archive

This half of the year has felt rather like a continual production of issues of Exchanges, which I guess is no bad thing! After last month’s highly anticipated and well-received Research Culture special issue, today I am so pleased to reveal we’ve just published our next one. This time the special issue [1] celebrates, commemorates and highlights work on and around the Modern Records Centre (MRC) archive here at the University of Warwick. In part the issue is a potted guide to the history of the MRC itself, but mostly it celebrates the fantastic role archives play in enabling groundbreaking and insightful social, cultural and historical research.

Read the issue:

https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/issue/view/100 or https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v11i4

Most of the articles in the issue are drawn from the 50^th anniversary symposium hosted last year by the MRC, where speakers talked about their personal reflections of the archive, as much as they focused in on the research its collections have helped them to achieve. Hence this issue is very much a reflection of that day, wherein we invited all the speakers to contribute in some way. Not everyone decided or was able to contribute, but I would argue a strongly representative sample of the speakers have, making this volume a fitting capstone to the fantastic MRC’s ‘special’ birthday year.

Naturally, as with all specials there’s been a lot of work behind the scenes to bring the issue to you, not least of that from a great team of associate editors. Along the way we’ve faced some unexpected organisational challenges which did slow down the production of the issue a little bit – but I have been so impressed as always by the dedication, focus and team spirit I’ve seen from all the editors. Much as I am happy to have the issue live, I’m certainly sad I won’t be working with these people closely for the foreseeable future – they really have been a fantastic group!

Anyway, with this issue out, I can return my focus to the forthcoming regular issue of Exchanges due out next month (!), and following up with all the authors of both recent special issues too.[2] Not to mention, talking with my editors on the other special issues we’ve got developing…

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[1] Officially our 8^th special, since the first one in 2020. 4 more are active development right now too.

[2] I’m hoping I’ve not been too quiet in the past couple of weeks as my focus has been squarely on getting this issue out!

Gareth Johnson : 25 Sep 2024 14:03 |  Tags: Archives Centre Issue Modern Mrc Published Records Special Warwick |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem