All 4 entries tagged Discussions

Strategic Publishing & Exploring Interdisciplinarity Panels

Two exceptional panel sessions for researchers explore questions around publishing strategically and examining what is interdisciplinary publishing anyway.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve chaired a couple of excellent panel discussions within the Institute of Advanced Study’s (IAS) ongoing researcher development remit.

Last week we had a wonderful online EUTOPIA Partners event for mid-career researchers discussing the knotty issue of publishing strategically for career, impact and engagement purposes. There was excellent attendance for the session with representation from almost a dozen different institutions, which helped make for a fascinating and engaging debate driven by questions from the floor. I think if I were to isolate any single takeaway from the discussions, is that there is no singular formula to achieve a perfect ‘output record’ and that being flexible, adaptable and willing to consider all avenues can pay major dividends. My particular thanks to all four of my gracious panellists: Alena Cicholewski (Oldenburg), Jonathan Vickery (Warwick), Kwasu Tembo (Lancaster) and Marcos Estrada (King Fahd)

Yesterday by contrast was another rich panel which looked at a question dear to my own heart: Just what IS interdisciplinary publishing? This Accolade Programme session was primarily a campus-based event, with a hybrid option for those speakers or delegates unable to attend in person. I am pleased to report that only one speaker and delegate couldn’t be there in the flesh, which made for an incredible dynamic and interactive environment.

Last year I hosted an Exchanges Discourse podcast episode getting into this interdisciplinary issue with one group of scholars, which naturally made for a fantastic topic to unpick and explore with our own early career fellow researchers. Given the depth and breadth of the debates, I am probably doing them a disservice by trying to reduce them to a few lines, so I won’t try. What I will note is that the five panellists tackled topics raised by the audience from questions of defining and quantising interdisciplinarity itself, through debates problematising disciplinary focussed vs interdisciplinary publishing outputs from a career-minded perspective alongside identifying significant emerging publishing technologies and trends. I found the discussions around the challenges of peer-review and quality assurance mechanisms and protocols within interdisciplinary publishing to be particularly exciting and varied, but such are my personal biases!

My thanks to my fabulous five panellists: Ben Schaper (Oxford), Fillipo Cervelli (SOAS), Jonathan Vickery (Warwick), Pierre Botcherby (Warwick) and Rupert Gatti (Cambridge).

Given the audiences reactions to both events, they were major successes, and I look forward to potentially reexploring these and similar issues in future EUTOPIA and Accolade events. Perhaps with a fresh set of keen academic minds!

Gareth Johnson : 07 Mar 2024 12:05 |  Tags: Accolade Discussions Eutopia Panels Workshops |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New Episode: Biochar, Artificial Pollination & Multispecies Justice

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

A new year sees a new season of the Exchanges Discourse podcast launch

It hasn’t even been a month since our last episode went live, and here we are back again with more academic chat. This time our first episode of 2024 sees a return of an old friend of the journal and podcast, as geography academic Catherine Price (University of Nottingham, UK) talks about her contributions to Exchanges. Regular readers of this blog and Exchanges will recall Catherine’s not only been on the podcast before, but was our key collaborator on the Anthropocene and More-Than-Human Special issue which we published last March. She’s such a busy scholar that it’s taken us until January to find time when we could both sit down for this chat!

Listen in here:

• Biochar, Artificial Pollination & Multispecies Justice: In Conversation with Catherine Price [25:24]

In the episode the start by talking about Catherine’s conversation article with Sophie Chao entitled Multispecies, More-Than-Human, Nonhuman, Other-Than-Human: Reimagining idioms of animacy in an age of planetary unmaking. Incidentally, this paper was one of our most downloaded ones of 2023, and has even recently been republished in the Spanish language. If you’ve not read it yet, why not listen to Catherine’s over view of the debates it covers.

Moving on from this we then turn to Catherine’s other paper in that issue which was concerned with the question Do we need Artificial Pollination if we have Multispecies Justice in the Anthropocene? You’ll notice I manage to slide in a Black Mirror reference here – and if you know the series, you’ll know exactly which episode I’m talking about! We also take a moment to reflect back on the reception for Anthropocene and More-Than-Human-World special issue of Exchanges from last March, which was very warmly received by readers. Naturally we also talk about Catherine’s future work and, as always, close with some pointers and advice for would-be academic authors.

For more on publishing with Exchanges, see our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠online guide for authors⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Or to read Catherine’s articles, visit: https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v10i2

To help you navigate the episode – here’s the index card for when we get to each part of the discussion:

• Timecode
• 0:00 Opening
• 0:47 Introductions
• 5:19 Multispecies Paper
• 11:30 Artificial Pollinators Paper
• 15:15 Special Issue Reception
• 17:40 Future Research
• 18:55 Advice for Authors
• 24:28 Closing & Outro

Gareth Johnson : 16 Jan 2024 16:49 |  Tags: Anthropocene Author Biochar Discussions More-Than-Human Podcast |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Exchanges and the International Advisory Committee Visit ‘23

An international event leads to discussions around the journal for the future.

Last week, the IAS – Exchanges’ host department – hosted a two-day event which incorporated a visit from its august International Advisory Committee (IAC). Despite our regular programme of workshops and symposia facilitated by our associated research fellows, and supported by the IAS, this was the first time we’d had help an event such as this as a department. Consequently, myself and my IAS colleagues were excited [1] to welcome such senior, internationally recognised scholars to Warwick to contribute to discussions, reflections and interactions. Day one was given over to a showcase symposium of presentations from various IAS’ fellows concerning their work, concluding with a poster presentation from a selection of our other scholars. Day two though, this was scheduled to have a greater focus on the work, ambitions and direction of the IAS itself, and to be fair, was the part of the scheduled visit in which I had the most interest.

As, a modest but mighty [2], aspect of the IAS’ activities, Exchanges – as represented by me – had the chance to sit in on these second day strategic discussions between our own Director and the IAC themselves. This was fascinating, as it gave a really clear picture of the direction of travel for the IAS in the coming years, and where our current director would like to see us heading in the decade or so to come. As a report on this part of the visit and IAC discussions will appear from the IAS in due course, I won’t cover it here [3]. However, towards the tail end of these discussions I was fortunate enough to be able to briefly talk to the IAC members about Exchanges and some of the work we do.

Given there was only so much time which could be allocated across two very busy days, we kept the discussions fairly light, although I will say it was a pleasure having the chance to discuss Exchanges with a group of interested scholars and gain a little of their insights. Especially, as readers of this blog and podcast listeners alike will know well, there’s nothing I enjoy more than talking about Exchanges!

Now while there weren’t any drastic revelations or suggestions in these debates, my work and naturally by extension that of our editors, reviewers and authors alike, came in for some justifiable praise from the IAC. In particular, there was an especially warm reception for our ‘developmental rather than metric-chasing’ ethos which the journal embraces. Given this attitude alongside our overarching ‘academic altruism’ ideology lie at the heart of our operations, this felt like a validation of our longstanding efforts.

I am definitely looking forward to talking to the IAC again during next year’s visit. Having explored the basic remit of Exchanges this year, I am hopeful that we could move on to explore some of our more active developments. Perhaps even our ambitions for future growth! I’m hopeful the IAC might have some valuable suggestions for us to consider in achieving these goals too.

---

[1] And maybe a little apprehensive.

[2] Probably EIC bias there.

[3] I wasn’t taking accurate enough notes to properly represent these discussions anyway.

Gareth Johnson : 05 Sep 2023 15:38 |  Tags: Discussions Iac Ias Review Symposium Visit |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Reflections on the Publication Strategies & Metrics Panel

Writing about web page https://warwick.ac.uk/global/europe/eutopia

Reflections from last week’s EUTOPIA-SIF panel on a couple of fascinating academic pubolication topics.

Last week I had the pleasure of hosting a panel discussion session as part of Warwick’s contribution to the EUTOPIA-SIF programme of events. To this end, I was joined by delegates from across Europe, as well as from here at Warwick to discuss a couple of topics close to my own professional interests: publication strategies and metrics. For once though, and thankfully given the challenge of the session’s theme, I wasn’t on the spot to talk about my own views but rather to enable the discourse between four wonderful panel members and the attendees. I can report from comments in the session and subsequently, that this was clearly a much-appreciated discussion opportunity.

For those of you who weren’t in the room here’s the session overview:

A major part of developing an academic track career is taking a strategic approach towards one’s publishing outputs. This helps in ensuring visibility among key audience demographics, alongside achieving credible impact and public recognition alongside generating markers of personal and professional esteem. Hence, understanding and engaging with the various publication measures of esteems – be they journal, article or personal – intrinsically resonates with any such strategic approach.

Illuminating these discussions through personal and professional insights will be a diverse group of scholars, sharing their experiences and perceptions around these crucial topics. Adopting a panel discussion format, the session will be largely contextualised and driven by attendees’ interests, questions and comments. In this way, the panel’s debates will organically evolve and resonate with the interests and concerns of the attending audience members.

In tackling these topics I was joined by a collection of academic panellists, drawn from contributors to Exchanges as authors and editors alike. These were:

• Dr Alena Cicholewski (Institute for English and American Studies, University of Oldenburg, Germany)
• Dr Huayi Huang (Usher Institute of Health and Wellbeing, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK)
• Dr Ignaas Jimidar (CHIS (Chemical Engineering), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
• Dr Sharon Coleclough (Department of Media, Performance and Communication, School of Digital, Technologies and Arts, Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent, UK)

Ahead of the session I’d made a call for questions, as well as developing a few provocations of my own to get the ball rolling. While I’d shared these with the panel beforehand as the session was also designed to be largely driven by the delegates’ thoughts, experiences and insights of the delegates a most dynamic session ensured. Hence, after an opening question to prime the pump asking generally about publication strategic approaches, we shifted very much to an dialogic and interactive approach for the rest of the 90 minutes or so.

Strategies

While I am not going to attempt to share the full session discourse – when you’re chairing there’s only so many notes you have time to take – to offer a flavour, in terms of overall strategies some of the suggested approaches included:

• Bespoke: Remember there is no single strategic approach that works for all. Be adaptable with your publication approaches and ask yourself what you want to achieve - e.g., recognition, dissemination, career esteem or opportunities.
• Interdisciplinarity: Balance the need for advancing complex and insightful niche work, with that which straddles interdisciplinary boundaries – in terms of readers or subject matters – for maximum impact.
• Networking: View publishing as networking – consider who you are writing for and where, and use it to engender a discourse or dialogue between yourself and other key researchers. Can be the basis for an ongoing series of publications as a result.
• Potential: Publication isn’t everything – it is possible to advance to a new role without an overtly strong portfolio of past works, but having the potential to achieve more in the future is always worth stressing.
• Situtation: Understand where you are in the field, especially in terms of where you want to go and how you want to be perceived.

Following on there was also a fair amount of discussion contrasting the differences in perceptions of most esteem capital worthy works in different disciplines and fields. Certainly, comments around the (arguably unhealthy) predominance of STEM publication habits as ‘normative’ were richly represented here. These considerations were married with examinations of questions relating to single and joint lead-authors and the different advantages this might confer, alongside the challenges of breaking into an Anglophone [1] dominated publication field in some domains.

There were considerable discussions around metrics – their use and misuse in cases, and the importance of balancing your own career and output and trying not to be entirely dominated with chasing the illusive highest impact simply to amplify a quantitative score [2]. Of course, as any academic knows no matter how much we might try to resist such objectified metrification the reality is research assessment exercises such as the REF loom large in any scholar’s life. However, balancing the need to ‘feed the beast’ while still achieving the ongoing publication and research discourse you actually want to produce remains a nuanced topic.

Future Disrupters

During the panel discussions the topic of AI, as one might have expected, came under the spotlight. There was a smattering of debate considering how the panel and delegates saw it as part tool, but also something which might distort or disrupt academic scholarly communicative practices into unknown configurations in the coming years. As an ancillary to these discussions, the panel were challenged to explore those other publication technologies or developments which might be worth examining in greater detail. Suggestions included podcasts and non-textural publication routes able to reach and engage new and different audiences, alongside developments in normative peer-reviewing practices too. Certainly though, retaining a watchful eye on opportunities beyond the traditional journal and monograph vectors which might prove valuable routes to communicate research activities were agreed as an essential strategic awareness.

The session closed by the panel offering their final thoughts on, given a limited time resource, where they would recommend focussing professional attention to yield maximum result. Suggestions included seeking to be a solo or lead author wherever possible, considering how your publications promote your public, professional identity and create the backbone of your interpersonal networks. Alongside this the importance of always remembering where you were in your career journey and meeting both opportunities and need within your strategic publication aims was stressed. Certainly, the panel agreed opportunities abound in terms of being able to contribute and be recognised far beyond simply operating as an author of texts within the publication sphere.

Thanks

As always, my especial thanks to my panel quartet for their contributions and generous donation of their time and insights. From the reactions in the room, I can see that the delegates certainly were engaged by the discussions, and I hope we left them all with plenty to think over. As chair I certainly enjoyed the discussions and am still chewing over some of the comments and how they might relate to my own praxis and work on Exchanges. Naturally, I would like to extend my thanks to all the delegates too and especially to those posing questions or contributing to what was a very active chat-channel.

---

Endnotes

[1] An Anglophone and high income economy perhaps?

[2] Alternatively, to amplify just a single quantitative score perhaps?

Gareth Johnson : 23 May 2023 08:53 |  Tags: Discussions Eutopia Metrics Panel Publication Sif Strategy Workshop |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem