All 6 entries tagged Career

Reflections on: Collaboration of the Faculties– Adventures in Interdisciplinarity

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

British Academy event for early career researchers explores some exciting and innovative thinking about interdisciplinary working and research.

Hyperbole is omnipresent in Linked.In posts, to a routinely and often nauseating superfluidity, but for once when I posted last week about being ‘delighted’, ‘honoured’ and ‘inspired’ by an event I attended: this was quite simply the honest truth. Last Friday (6^th Feb) I had the genuine pleasure to head into London to the prestigious British Academy’s Westminster headquarters to attend their Early Career Researcher Network’s event entitled Collaboration of the Faculties - Adventures in Interdisciplinarity. This intriguingly titled event promised to explore the challenges of combining differing perspectives and methodologies, dissemination of interdisciplinary work and how to engage audiences across the disciplines. No small challenge!

I’d been approached way back in March this year by Paula Back, the BA’s ECR Network Officer, to get involved as a panellist. I realised from the outset, rather gratifyingly, I was one of the first people who’d been approached, which was a rare treat. Since then, there’s been a regular stream of conversation from the organisers which I’ve been privy too as they built up to the event. It felt very inclusive, and welcoming, to be included in this, rather the often-distant communications one has when speaking at other events! Certainly, I will say the planning organisation and delivering of this researcher development event was pretty much close to my personal ideal, and everyone involved should be commended for it!

On the day, the first thing that struck me was how welcoming and engaged everyone present was. I know most of the audience, beyond the speakers, are self-selected – those who have decided to attend. Yet, the resultant audience was so receptive you’d almost suspect they’d be carefully chosen to attend based on their willingness to engage! Certainly, at many conferences I’ve attended, many people head off into their cliques or friendship groups, to the exclusion of a wider conversation. Being somewhat of a wallflower [1] I sometimes find it challenging to network and have wider discussions as a result. This wasn’t a problem at the BA event, as I barely stopped talking for the entire event run time [2.] Frankly, by the end of the day, I was ready to go silent for some hours and simply let my brain start to reflect on the event.

Now, I’m not going to try and capture a blow-by-blow account of the day. There were so many excellent speakers, questions and side-discussions that it would take me far too long to recount. Not to mention, I’m sure there are better scribes than I out there who will have written a fuller accounting [3]. What I will share though are some of my key takeaways that have resonated with me over the weekend – in no order of priority!

Language barriers: A common theme was the difficulty of speaking to non-domain experts about your research or work, without using terms which are at worst opaque, or where you end up explaining them in other domain terms. Not ideal! When attempting to apply for funding or forming an effective interdisciplinary research teams, it is exactly these sorts of linguistic barriers which can create a genuine challenge to team cohesion and effectiveness. These sorts of barriers are perhaps even more apparent when scholars consider outlining their research or its outcomes to the public or to members of policy sphere and political classes.

Identity: A personal quandary for many researchers seeking to move to an interdisciplinary space or sphere of working. HEIs and senior executives continue to express their keenness for researchers to be more interdisciplinary in their working and practice. However, many of the esteem markers and career progression mechanisms are simply not configured to recognise or authenticate the ‘value’ of such work. Domain specific research remains more ‘significant’ in terms of these esteem markers, which means in terms of establishing an identity and even a career as an interdisciplinary researcher it can be a major uphill struggle with a slower progression to the senior grades. This was an area within which a number of speakers highlighted the importance of policy makers in changing perceptions and the lived reality.

Power Dysfunctions: A theme common to me from my own publishing research, but the existence of power dynamic imbalances are an issue even within interdisciplinary researcher groups. We’ve all encountered the ‘powerful’ and ‘dominant’ PI. Yet, broadly speaking, when groups of researchers come from across the disciplines to tackle a common problem scientists will typically view a problem from a certain vantage point or precept to those in the humanities, for example. Now, whomever is the driving or vocal force within the group – hierarchically speaking or simply by force of personality, can artificially close off exactly the kind of exciting, original or novel paths of exploration which interdisciplinary working is supposed to enable. As one speaker put it ‘to the [man] with the hammer, every problem looks like a nail’. [4] Overcoming this, can mean serious changes to underlying research culture too, another topic within which I’m heartily familiar.

Show Don’t Tell: When seeking to engage audiences around novel interdisciplinary-related concepts, methodologies or approaches – be they fellow researchers, the public, media or policy makers – ‘show don’t tell’ is a great approach [5]. It can help overcome some of those language barriers mentioned above, but can also help the interdisciplinary researcher by ‘forcing’ them to recontextualise their own work and potentially see it in a fresh light. Quite simply, by finding new ways to engage with audiences (and have audiences engage themselves) simply having objects, exhibits or interactive interventions can ensure a greater degree of success than simply seeking to ‘explain’ an interdisciplinary idea, research, method or methodology.

The Future is Interdisciplinary: ‘Complex real-world problems require interdisciplinary solutions’ as one speaker succinctly put it. When you look at global problems – climate change, space-exploration, healthcare etc., – there is no singular research domain that has the complete picture or solution. Working across boundaries, brining knowledge, expertise and ability from across the interdisciplinary spectrum is key to creating effective, practical leavers to affect successful change or outcomes. Getting this degree of buy in (and appreciating some of the challenges mentioned above) though, is still a journey: not everyone is ready, willing or able to step out of their disciplinary silo. Yet. Perhaps in a decade or so this might be a more natural expectation – look at the move towards open publishing for example – but for now, disciplinarity remains the realpolitik and de facto ruling principles of the academy.

Connectivity is Key: I would argue the event itself was this connectivity made manifest, but in achieving this effective interdisciplinary working future for researchers and society, finding people who are likeminded, who are willing to step beyond the disciplinary and helping to support and enable each other is key goal. Fresh and exciting perspectives await!

Alongside this exciting stuff, I was speaking myself about Exchanges and our role in facilitating interdisciplinary publishing – without any myopic application of ‘true’ or ‘authentic’ interdisciplinary research: we remain catholic, welcoming and all-encompassing in our approach. I was gratified to have such a positive feedback from the audience to my comments and answers to questions, as well as the delegates and organisers I spoke to throughout the day, about Exchanges’ rationale and approach. I hope in our own, modest, way we can help engender the kinds of exchanges (#sorrynotsorry) which the British Academy event was seeking to enable through this event. Certainly, from a more pragmatic standpoint, as more than one potential author spoke to me on the day and subsequently about future article ideas, I’m excited to see what fresh perspectives we can help bring to global attention in our forthcoming issues.

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My grateful thanks to everyone attending, who asked a question and of course the British Academy for the invite to get involved in the first place. I had a simply terrific day, and I suspect a version of this blog post will be appearing as a future editorial in Exchanges itself! So, I was certainly inspired too.

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Endnotes

[1] No, honestly, I am. Despite appearances to the contrary.

[2] Except, naturally, during the presentations.

[3] Of course if anyone would like to submit a critical reflection article on the events and speakers of the day, I’d be more than happy to consider it for publication!

[4] I work with a lot of scientists, and this feels very true to me – there’s always a positivist viewpoint that is privileged over others – frustrating!

[5] And one I’ve long loved from screenwriting theory and practice, I should note.

Gareth Johnson : 11 Sep 2024 10:38 |  Tags: Academy British Career Early Event Interdisciplinarity Network Researcher |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New Call for Papers: Becoming a Productive Publishing Scholar

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/announcement/view/53

A new call for papers for the October 2024 issue of Exchanges considers productive authorship.

As you’ve hopefully read in Exchanges’ recent editorial, we have rolled out a new themed call for papers for the regular journal. While we’ve a number of ongoing calls for special issues currently, the Board and me thought it was overdue time to explore a themed section in the journal itself. And what better area to explore than one which we’ve been discussing for the past couple of years in researcher workshops here at Warwick.

• You can read the full text of the call here: Becoming a productive publishing scholar.

However, the short version is: we’re interested in papers exploring the paradigms, praxis or process which academics, at any career stage, encounter when balancing published output against the other demands on their time. Hence, papers on everything from overcoming challenges, through to effective strategic approaches or even ones arguing against the pressure to publish as a measure of academic esteem would be welcome. Critical reflections which examine personal experiences and coping mechanisms would be especially welcome, as these would be very well received by our readership I suspect.

Plus, as an interdisciplinary journal we’re aware that ‘productive publication’ has different meaning and imperatives across the disciplines. That has certainly been a theme we’ve heard about in our workshop discussions from participants. So, as a result, we would be especially interested in papers which either explore publication nuances from within particular disciplines, or those which alternatively offer comparative studies across a range of fields. Likewise, perspectives from early, mid or established career scholars would be equally valid and interesting, as I have no doubt in mind at all that there will be variations and subtleties worthy of exploration.

There’s plenty of time to get involved, or indeed have a chat with myself about potential papers, as the submission deadlines [1] run through to 2024. As always, myself and my editors look forward t reading your submissions! Happy writing.

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Endnotes

[1] There’s a longer deadline for editorially reviewed material like critical reflections, over peer-reviewed pieces.

Gareth Johnson : 01 Nov 2023 08:21 |  Tags: Call Career Esteem Life Output Papers Productive Publishing Work |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

In conversation with Kwasu David Tembo

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

The fourth, and final, in our series of podcast interviews focussing on the ‘lonely nerds’ special issue came out just ahead of the publication of our autumn issue of the journal. Talk about being timely! It’s another rich dive with a generous academic scholar, in this case hailing from Ashesi University (Ghana). Our wide ranging conversation takes in Kwasu’s work on representation, especially within nerd culture before we segue into fictional time travelling world for a while. We also chat about belonging, identity and community within this framing inside various subcultural groups.

Naturally, we keep our focus on publishing and the early career experience through advice for first-time authors to academic journals. This time, we look particularly at handling, coping with and utilising feedback from your peer-reviewers. My thanks as always to my guest for what was a thoroughly engaging and informative chat to participate in, and I hope to listen to also.

Listen to the episode here:

• https://anchor.fm/exchangesias/episodes/In-Conversation-with-Kwasu-David-Tembo-e1ppn3h/a-a8ojf8j
• https://open.spotify.com/episode/6sNuPdzOUoz7vKatJOZ18s?si=bkkZ181vSMiZU81ZyDLJjA

For all past episodes of the podcast, you can find a complete listing on this page.

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

Next episode, some reflections from myself on the nature of ‘being a good reviewer’, before we dive back into some author interviews from scholars whose work appeared in the latest issue of the journal.

Gareth Johnson : 02 Nov 2022 09:14 |  Tags: Belonging Career Early Podcast Publishing Representation Subculture |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Developing a Monograph Proposal: Early Career Insights

Follow-up to Developing a Monograph Proposal from Exchanges Reflections: Interdisciplinary Editor Insights

Following the panel discussions around creating a monograph proposal for early career academics, we share some insights which emerged from the speakers.

Last week I ran a session with three very generous panellists [1] talking about their experiences publishing a monograph from an early career perspective. My thanks naturally to all three of them for generously giving up their time to share their thoughts with our Accolade audience. I was very interested to hear what they had to say, since, personally, my first monograph has remained an idea on the back of a piece for far too long! As with previous panel sessions in Accolade, the idea was that questions were driven mainly from the floor – although I had a number of topics which I was keen to explore myself for when the audience prompts slowed down too!

I thought following this event it would be useful to blog a little of the wisdom which emerged. Although, as a mild caveat for what follows, be aware given the contrasts in the scholastic trajectories of the panellist there may be a few contrasting opinions within. And doubtless if we spoke to three more academics, we may find some more.

Getting Started

Give yourself space and time to both develop the proposal and refocus on what it is you really want to say. Don’t leap straight into it right after your viva, but let the ideas percolate for some time. Although one speaker advocated writing a book alongside your PhD (if you’re a glutton for punishment and increased work levels!) as a way to get a first monograph out far faster.

Finding the space and time to develop the proposal and write the book is almost certainly going to be a challenge. Especially if you move into a frantic post-doctoral position, or are on one of various short-term contracts. Ideally, try to identify or carve out a good chunk of time when you can devote to focussing on your proposal and book development. How you do this will depend on your lifestyle and authorial habits though – you might want to timetable yourself once a week, or a few minutes every day. You might want to take a short sabbatical to ‘break the back’ of the work, or participate in a writing retreat instead.

The first steps in getting a proposal up and running are often having informal conversations with a few potential publishers. Some may follow up quickly with a more formal application process, while others will be more laid back and see the conversations as a chance to participate in shaping and developing your proposal to best suit their audiences and business needs. Conferences with publisher stands can be a good way to have a number of these informal conversations quickly. However, don’t be surprised if some publishers ‘ghost’ you eventually, even if early conversations were positive – move on to another, more receptive one instead.

Where Do I Go?

Identifying where to submit is important. Not only are some publishers valued more than others by some institutions, selection panels and accreditation processes, but it also matters in terms of reaching the right audiences. Which is why approaching a publisher who publishes a series of monographs which closely match your field and disciplinary peers can be a good approach to take.

That said, aim to work with a publisher where you can see yourself having a good relationship over a period of time. This is crucial because a monograph IS a long term and very personal project, and you will be dealing with these people and their organisation for an extended period of time. Hence, you might want to ask among your peer networks for advice and experience from those who have already published a book about those publishers and their editorial staff with which they have had more positive working experiences. Although hearing some of the horror stories can also be quite beneficial.

Only submit a formal proposal to one publisher at a time. You can have informal talks, as above, with as many as you like, but once it comes to a proposal you need to be engaging and submitting to one organisation alone. In terms of good and ethical academic practices, this is equivalent to the way in which authors should only submit a particular manuscript to a single journal title at any time. Breaking with these conventions is not advised, as along with tarnishing your professional reputation, you may find yourself souring any future relationships with a publishing house.

One good starting point is to always read the guidance on a prospective publisher’s site about how to go about submitting a proposal with some considerable care. Some publishers may be looking for sample chapters, others might prefer a proposal or outline instead, or indeed anything in between. If you are ready to make that formal approach – give the publisher what they stipulate, otherwise they are unlikely to respond favourably.

Legally speaking, the contracts you will be offered will vary considerably in content and clauses, and even at which point in the process they are signed. Some publishers will want to commit you to working with them sooner, while others may prefer to wait until the book is essentially finished. Do read any contract carefully and be ready to discuss any element of it which is unclear, ambiguous or about which you are less than happy with your potential publisher – BEFORE you sign it. However, remember once you have signed on the line, you will have entered into a legal arrangement. So always take time and care before you take this step to make sure you are entirely happy to what you are committing yourself.

Pitching Proposals & Drafting Chapters

In terms of how you make an attractive proposal, aside from selecting a publisher or series which resonates with your own field of interest, for commercial publishers a lot of it comes down to profit, marketability and sales [2]. They will be looking at your book proposal to see if the finished product has a sufficient marketable value and potential audience who will be interested in buying it. Which means your original pitch or idea might not be the final one which is commissioned, so be prepared to redevelop it.

Like any academic writing, getting samples of other people’s work can help shape yours and fit them to a ‘successful’ formula - although be aware there’s no ‘exact’ perfect proposal. Hence, if you can, do try and get hold of other people’s successful book proposals. There will probably be a lot to learn about how they phrased and shaped their pitch to engage a publisher’s attention and interest. If you can apply some of these lessons in your own proposal, it will likely be easier then to attract interest in your own work.

Conversely, strive to make your voice authentic and representative within your proposal and monograph. Having that ‘authorial voice’ is crucial, not least in demonstrating that you’ve got something interesting and original to say. Always write the proposal and the monograph itself like the book you would want to read yourself. This will help make it more marketable, but also ensures it will more readily find an audience. It also makes it easier to make the pitch about why your work is an essential addition to the published discourse. At the same time, do write with a view towards meeting research assessment goals (e.g. the REF), if you want to be career minded and gain the maximum personal advantage from your work.

Practical Considerations

For those looking to publish beyond the UK, it is important to note that one country’s publishing cultural norms, practices or approaches are not the same as another. Hence, if you are pitching books to publishers outside the UK, or even in non-Anglophone languages, expect the process to vary considerably. For example, despite their geographic closeness even the UK and France’s monograph publication approaches vary to a noticeable degree! Be guided by others who have published internationally, and the advice offered on each publisher’s site.

Monograph endorsements, that is comments or quotes from academics, reviewers or other notable public intellectuals, can be an important thing to have when the book comes towards publication. If you know a significant academic in your field, it may be worth asking them if they’d be prepared to provide some positive text. It will depend on the publisher if they expect authors to find these quotes, or it may be a service they offer. As with all thing, find out when you make your proposal, as you may need to start approaching people long ahead of time – and to make sure they’ve had a chance to read your draft text!

Images are often reproduced in black and white, as it’ll be cheaper for a publisher in terms of producing the physical book. Notably, the quality of the reproduction can be lamentable, even for major publisher, so always check out similar books from them to get an idea for how any images will appear. If high-quality reprographic reproduction of images are especially important for your text, you may need to be more careful in the selection of your publisher, or even consider an online only publisher where colour and reproduction of graphics are less of a cost concern.

Getting permissions for third-party material (images, illustrations, extensive text extracts etc.,) included in your book is important, although some publishers will seek to obtain these permissions for you. However, you may need to be aware there will likely be fees for including some materials, as rights and commercial exploitation of them (which is what a book sold for profit is) means individuals and organisations expect to be compensated in turn. If you, your institution, funder or publisher are unwilling or unable to cover these copyright fees, then you need to be prepared to publish your book without them.

Open Access Books

Finally, and interestingly not something our panellists had much experience in, open access books are becoming increasingly important to scholars. Especially in terms of future research assessment regulations and funder mandates, publishing in open access will increasingly become the norm. The drawback is, for many of the commercial publishers, while they offer open publishing options, they come with ‘book processing charges’ costs to the author/institution in the thousands.[3]

Wow – so much to cover in only an hour. As always if you’ve any thoughts, comments or suggestions relating to this topic, I’d love to hear more from you in the comments below – or drop me a line.

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Endnotes

[1] My thanks to Esther Wright, Aidan Norrie and Clare Siviter!

[2] Coughs loudly and looks at his own work on Autonomous-Marxism and commodification of scholarly discourse. As long-term readers (or anyone who’s spoken to me) will know, I have strong opinions regarding the commercialised distortion of the academic public discourse. I’ll spare you all from re-iterating them but will direct your attention to the following note [3] for publishers who may be more willing to consider a text more on its scholarly merits than what it may do for their balance sheet's bottom line.

[3] Although there are many smaller presses who operate different models – e.g. freemium, patron etc. Hence, publishing open access is possible, without huge fees, but you may need to shop around. Find out more about this on sites like DOAB - https://doabooks.org/ , or have a chat with myself for some recommendations.

Gareth Johnson : 16 Jun 2022 12:12 |  Tags: Approach Books Career Early Monographs Process Proposals Publishers Publishing |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Updating our open call for papers for 2022

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/announcement/view/35

A legacy piece of vital information gets a brand new 2022 hat, as our Editor-in-Chief updates our open call for information.

Today I got around to handling a task which has been pending for a little while: revising the text of our open call for papers. I know from experience how some of our authors come direct to our submissions page when they want to find out more, and that’s great. On the other-hand though, I’m aware more than a few prospective authors look towards the journal’s front page, especially our announcements section, when they are looking for news or information about the types of work our title likes to receive. As a result, the announcements section has long been the perfect additional location place to host this kind of vital information on Exchanges.

Now, the prior version of the text was, admittedly, getting a little long in the tooth given how I originally wrote it back in May 2020. Since that time, I have also probably adapted, reworked and reused this same block of text in the pages of each issue's editorial too, so there has been a sort of second life for the material. Nevertheless, I decided rather than drawing on these 'child' versions, writing from fresh about the kinds of manuscripts we like to receive for the journal seemed a better option. Certainly, coming at it from a fresh angle felt a superior route in terms of clarifying a few further issues for our authors.

I also took the chance to add in a new nugget of information that our most recent version of OJS makes possible: acceptance and rejection rates. Before the January update if I wanted to generate this kind of information on the fly, I would have to do considerable amounts of manual processing. Now though, it is possible to generate this kind of statistical information - along with other useful stuff too - in an instant. I can even specify a particular date range. Which means should I, for example, want to see how my own tenure as chief editor ranks alongside those who came before, in terms of our quality bar, it is now the matter of a moment’s work.

For the record since 2018 our acceptance rate for publication has been 55% of all submissions. Which, given the reaction I've had from a few people I shared it with over the last week or so, seems to be a reasonable figure for our kind of title. Doubtless, I'll probably find time to delve into this statistics module a little more deeply over the coming months, and maybe return to reflect on what I find here as well.

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For more information on submitting to Exchanges, or about the journal in general, contact Editor-in-Chief, Dr Gareth J Johnson (exchangesjournal@warwick.ac.uk).

Gareth Johnson : 24 Mar 2022 15:26 |  Tags: Call Career Early Journal Ojs Open Papers Rejection Statistics Submissions |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Introduction to Peer Review Guide Published

Writing about web page http://www.plotina.eu/plotina-documents/

Delighted to announce that the Introduction to Peer Review I co-wrote last year has finally been published by PLOTINA and the EU. It’s, you’ll be pleased to know, a relatively brief introduction to the art, practice and ethics of peer review, with a target audience of post-graduate and early career authors. Naturally I’m delighted to see it finally available, and deeply grateful to Warwick’s Department of Politics and International Studies, and the PLOTINA Project, for asking me to contribute to it.

http://www.plotina.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Introduction-to-Peer-Review-Guide.pdf

Naturally, I retained the film rights and first refusal as to who plays me in the film of the book!

The booklet pulls on, among other sources, the wonderful contributions from last year’s summer school on peer review that I was honoured to be involved in facilitating.

Gareth Johnson : 21 Mar 2019 14:37 |  Tags: Career Early Graduates Guidance Peer Post Researchers Review |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem