All 2 entries tagged Content

New Year, New Content

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas/winter [1] break. This is my fifth day back in the Exchanges saddle, although only my second one in the office due to conference attendance [2] and a spot of working from home. Always nice to be back at the IAS here in (currently not very) sunny Coventry though, as I find it’s a powerful and inspirational location at which to work.

My first day back on site last week was one filled with meetings, not least of which was our semi-regular departmental team meeting [3]. So packed with meetings in fact, that I actually forgot to take a lunch break – whoops! Two meetings that day standout in particular. The first was a long and perhaps rather rhizomal conversation with one of my editorial board (hello Marcos). It’s always a real pleasure to spend some time with my editors in person, and their generosity in talking about their own research, teaching, careers and lives represents a particular honour. Part of what Marcos and I were talking about though, were some ideas we’d sketched out before Christmas around some invited bilingual submissions for a future issue of Exchanges. I can say, it is (fairly) early days with regards to this, but I think it looks like there’s some genuine interest in this from our contacts, so it’s quite exciting.

Later in the day I also had the chance to chat at length with a visiting lecturer in critical safety systems (and oddly expert in Viking culture, literature and life), from the University of York. She’s an old friend of mine, and she’d taken the time between lectures to pop in for tea and a chat. Once again the topic of contributions to the journal came up, and quickly it emerged there was a sense her own students (home and abroad) could benefit from a guest appearance from yours truly to talk about the wonders of publishing with Exchanges. And maybe even contributing to the journal, as I’m sure they’d have some wonderful contributions to make. Fingers crossed something comes of this, as there’s nothing I like more than talking with post-graduate and early career researchers about publishing opportunities.

That was enough for one day, but I’ve been delighted since then again, as on Monday this week I received a further approach from some literature scholars wanting to explore publishing a special issue through Exchanges. I’m very much looking forward to some longer conversations about this next week, but if this and the bilingual issue come off, there’s a very exciting 2020 in terms of new content, original thought and valuable additions to the research discourse ahead of us.

All in all, I’m sure you’ll agree a great start to the new year. Don’t forget I’m always happy to talk to potential authors (or groups of authors) about future submissions, special issues or where academic publishing is going these days. Just drop me a line. In the meantime, I’m going back now to continue writing some new marketing material for Exchanges, and planning my communications for scholars workshop for next month.

[1] Or summer, if you’re part of my southern hemisphere readership/editorial team!

[2] Understanding the Social in a Digital Age, UEA, Norwich. Delightfully for once I wasn't speaking!

[3] Probably less of interest to readers, but all the same a very handy way to keep up with what’s going on here in the IAS

Gareth Johnson : 15 Jan 2019 14:36 |  Tags: Articles Content Issues New Publishing Special Submissions |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Welcome to the Exchanges Blog

As the title says, welcome to the Exchanges: The Warwick Research Journal blog. My name's Gaz J Johnson, and I'm the fairly freshly appointed Senior Editor of this interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, open access journal, based in the Institute of Advanced Study.

Exchanges has been around for over 5 years now, and has developed into a valued publishing location for early career researchers (ECR) across the university and affiliated institutions, who are looking for to publish interdisciplinary scholarly material. Over the coming months and years, part of my Senior Editor remit is to expand the journal’s focus beyond Warwick, especially with those international organisations with whom we have exciting scholarly links. Hence, I’ll be using talking about developments around the title over the coming months.

As my own background as a researcher is as a political-economist and social theorist in the field of emerging publishing modes, especially open access, I’ll also be using this blog to muse about developments here as well. Hopefully, this might even engender a bit of conversation and insight from other scholars in this field too.

Alongside this, I’ll be highlighting and exploring selected authors and articles from past and future issues. I’m aiming to include a few post-publication interviews with authors as well, exploring how their work’s advanced since publication and what additional resonances, insights or impacts it’s created.

I’ll also be using the blog to highlight various announcements, for example calls for papers and (very shortly) calls for applications to join the Editorial Team. Exchanges has a team of Editors drawn from the ECR community, whose work comprises an essential and much valued contribution to the title. Quite literally, without them, the journal wouldn’t exist. We all work in collaboration with the University Library too, who provide insight and technical infrastructure for the title. As a former academic librarian myself, I’m especially excited to be working with the library’s scholarly publications team in this endeavour.

Finally, for this post at least, I’ll highlight where you can find out more about Exchanges.

• IAS Exchanges Journal –an overview of the title
• Exchanges: The Warwick Research Journal – journal home page, with information for authors and previous issues
• @ExchangesIAS – our (also) newly minted twitter channel, for brief highlights and insights.
• Contacts – how to get in touch with myself and the team.

Gareth Johnson : 24 Apr 2018 09:45 |  Tags: Announcements Content Editorial News Submission Team |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem