All 14 entries tagged Exchanges

No other Warwick Blogs use the tag Exchanges on entries | View entries tagged Exchanges at Technorati | There are no images tagged Exchanges on this blog

February 01, 2022

In Conversation with Elloit Cardozo

Writing about web page https://open.spotify.com/episode/2DuQiVJGLoGmpms13QC8R1?si=STWSEzmdSTmkOxkyWsAWyg

And here's the second new episode of the podcast, with the last of our 2021 recorded sessions with past authors. An interesting discussion as we get into issues around setting up a special issue as well as the usual thoughts around the author's research and publication activities too.

In Conversation with Elloit Cardozo [14m 01s]

In this episode Elloit Cardozo talks about his research activities, especially as they relating to his recent paper ‘The Sagacity of Words’: Gandhi and 21st Century Hip Hop. Elloit discusses how the paper was partly inspired from desires to provide an easier route for younger school and university students to gain a greater understanding of the life and times of Gandhi. While deploying an analytical lens empowered through Hip-Hop music might seem an unusual approach to some readers, Elloit explores how it offered him a fresh and exciting way to explore the topic. Elloit also takes us into his current publishing plans, and how The Big Lebowski factors into them, before finishing by offering advice to other early career researchers looking towards publishing their first paper.

My thanks to Elloit for chatting with me, and please do share this episode with anyone you think might be interested.

I'll be recording two new episodes of the podcast with past authors next week, so there's plenty more audio content coming your way this February!


January 27, 2022

In Conversation with Mehdi Moharami

Writing about web page https://open.spotify.com/episode/328Dw23g71Z7s9Xjz4EWrA?si=LzTInMztQ5G0YNSgyzpGAg

Yes, Season 3 of the Exchanges Discourse starts here, with the first of two interviews recorded just before Christmas. In each one we chat to one of our past authors on the journal about their research and publication experiences.

In Conversation with Mehdi Moharami[16m30s]

In the first of our new season of episodes we talk to early career scholar, and recent Exchanges author, Mehdi Moharami (Monash University, Australia) about his research and publishing work. Focusing of the ethnographic piece written for the journal, exploring the lived and cultural experiences of language teachers based in Iran, we move on to examine advice on publishing for other first time authors or early career scholars.

My thanks for Mehdi for joining me in conversation. We'll be back next week with the second of our episodes!

Share and enjoy.


January 13, 2022

Looking Back at 2021: Most Popular Podcast Episodes

Writing about web page https://open.spotify.com/show/5amW8qMjCrUihAvtBq5ChM

We take a look back at the most popular episodes of the Exchanges Discourse podcast in the past twelve months

Happy new year, Exchanges readers. And what could be a better way to start the new year, than by sharing a couple of our most access, read and used items within our communities. First off, it’s our run down of the most popular episodes – based on listener statistics – for the Exchanges Discourse podcast. As we moved into this second year of the podcast there was an upswing in the number of episodes and content duration too. In fact, we produced 13 episodes in 2021 which lasted a grand total of 3hrs 33mins and 18 seconds. Which equates to fully two more episodes and over 90 minutes more content than the previous year. Hence, cheers all around to everyone who participated and helped make this happen!

So out of these 13 glorious episodes – which were the ones most beloved by our audience?

>Number 5 (audience share 9%): Introducing Volume 8.3 of Exchanges – a look back at the Spring 2021 issue of the journal.

>Number 4 (audience share 10%): A Conversation with…Doro Wiese. A chat with a past author, and Warwick scholar.

>Number 3 (audience share 12%): The Cultural Representations of Nerds – in Conversation with Filippo Cervelli & Ben Schaper – a special issue focus.

>Number 2 (audience share 13%): A Conversation with...Urmee Chakma. Talking with a past author about teaching English to speakers of other languages.

>Number 1 (audience share 19%): Conversations with…Associate Editors – a panel discussion exploring what working on Exchanges & its special issues means for early career scholars.

And you can freely listen to these and all our other episodes on Spotifyand Anchor.Fm

I am quite surprised to see one of my solo efforts, looking at a recent issue of the journal, in there by the skin of its teeth at number 5. I had rather assumed that listeners most preferred to hear guests, and while for the most part the rest of the top 5 hold this up, it is gratifying to know there is an audience for me talking (mostly) to myself.

For contrast - here are the most listened to episodes in 2020.

We have already two episodes recorded and pending editing for the new season of the podcast, which will be coming out over the next week or so – giving you something to look forward to already. Plus I’ve two further guests lined up for February, and maybe even something a little special…a live recorded podcast session with an audience. More on that idea if we can pull it together!

Next time though, I’ll share what were the 10 most downloaded papers in the journal last year. Stay tuned for that – next week! 


June 01, 2021

New episode: A Conversation with…M Onat Topal

Writing about web page https://anchor.fm/exchangesias/episodes/A-Conversation-withM-Onat-Topal-e11vufe

M Onat Topal and HostThe latest* episode of The Exchanges Discourse is now live. This time I'm in conversation with another of our recent authors on the journal about their publication, research and thoughts on academic publication. The episode touches on the challenges of 'trash' journals and conferences, alongside some of the other pitfalls for new authors.

A Conversation with…M Onat Topal

In this episode we discuss the article, ‘Use of Artificial Intelligence in Legal Technologies: A critical reflection’ and some of its implications with its lead author. As usual we delve into the guest’s current research and publishing activities, before closing with some advice for first time and new academic authors.

*18th if you're counting


May 06, 2021

Issue 8.3 of Exchanges Published!

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/issue/view/40

cover_issue_40_en_us.jpg

It is suggested that Christmas [1] is the most wonderful time of the year. I would argue for journal editors it is the small, fleeting moments following the publication of their latest issue. For a brief moment the headaches, niggles and concerns of encouraging authors, coaxing reviewers and corralling editors at large are behind them, and they can bask in the tiny amount of reflected glory that publication allows. It never lasts, because even as I’m writing these words, my thoughts are already turning to what I need to be doing to move forward with our next issue, how to promote this one, and perhaps most importantly of all, encouraging more authors to contribute their work to the journal. That latter one never really ends, so my apologies if you meet me in the flesh [2] and I go all misty eyes and enthusing about something you’re working on potentially appearing in Exchanges.

However, for now, huzzah and my grateful thanks to too many people to mention for helping to get the journal out the door once more. In case you’re wondering what’s in the issue – he’s the inside cover copy to give you a taste:

This is the eighteenth issue of Exchanges, published in May 2021. This regular issue brings an assortment of articles, reflections and discussions to our interdisciplinary readership. Articles in this issue tackle topics which include: Gandhi’s musical legacy, the #MeToo movement’s impact on society, artificial intelligence in the legal profession, amateur stock trading activism and questions of ethics in academic publication. The issue’s editorial also provides a range of guidance and key areas of consideration for first time academic authors from an editorial perspective, alongside reminding readers of the various routes through which they can contribute to and engage with the journal.

Link to: https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/issue/view/40

DOI: https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v8i3

As always comments, collaborations or invitations to talk about the journal in all its multicoloured wonderment are always gratefully received.

---

[1] Please do substitute your own, preferred, culturally uplifting annual celebration.

[2] One day, maybe even soon…


April 23, 2021

In Conversation with…Urmee Chakma

Writing about web page https://anchor.fm/exchangesias/episodes/A-Conversation-with---Urmee-Chakma-evgqfv

Perfect for a Friday, here's an all new episode of the Exchanges Discourse podcast. This time I'm talking with doctoral candidate Urmee Chakma, from the Faculty of Education at Monash University about her recent publication with the Exchanges journal. We also talk about the challenges of teaching English to speakers of other languages, and her advice for authors approaching publication for the first time.

https://anchor.fm/exchangesias/episodes/A-Conversation-with---Urmee-Chakma-evgqfv

Enjoy!


September 19, 2019

Reflections of the Vitae Researcher Development Conference

On Monday (16th Sept) this week, I had the delightful opportunity of attending and speaking at the Vitae Researcher Development International Conference, hosted at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel. Leaving home before dawn, and returning home quite late in the evening, it was nevertheless an excellent event. Exchanges has a core mission to support not only the dissemination of early career researcher’s discourse and, in line with the IAS’s mission, also seeks to work with authors in developing their prose and voice. Hence, attending a conference focussing solely on the practice, theory and policy of developing researchers was very much in my interest.

While the conference was broken down into plenaries, breakout sessions and workshops like any conference, it was interesting to witness the recurrent themes that came up, especially during the opening keynotes. Wellbeing was a strongly represented theme, along with that of coping with a changing research environment, both for researchers and those who work alongside them. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, the ‘B-word’ was alluded to on numerous occasions as a particular challenge for the entire HE sector, not to mention the nation as a whole. However, it wasn’t a topic that any of the sessions I attended specifically focussed on, but nevertheless remains the elephant in the room we can’t simply ignore.

These dark clouds aside, after the fairly rousing opening session, we moved on to an excellent lunch before for me the high-spot of the day: my own talk. Those of you who have met me, know there’s on thing I love doing (almost) as much as managing Exchanges, and that’s to talk about various aspects of scholarly communication and publishing to anyone who will listen. At length.

I was speaking as part of a panel session providing case studies of researcher development practice. It was, as a few of the speakers commented, a slightly odd session in that the examples of researcher development ranged from an exemplar collaborative workshop to discussions around a specially configured building housing 6 overlapping departments in Barcelona. Nevertheless, the packed room seemed responsive to the topics discussed. My own contribution was very well received too, as I was bombarded with questions during and after the session. There was quite a positive response on social media too, and I suspect there may be some follow up with a few people as a result. My thanks to the conference organisers for hosting me, and I hope to be back with another paper next year!

After this session there were a couple of ‘half-plenaries’, so called as half the delegates would fit into each of the allocated rooms. I attended the one with the more senior academics speaking, and after some (slightly baffling) discussion on the ‘concordat’ [1], two particularly inspiring talks from Prof Matthew Flinders (Sheffield) and Prof Marcos Munafò (Bristol) followed. Matthew’s enthusiasm in particular was infectious, especially given he launched into his talk before halting after a couple of minutes to realise he’d failed to introduce himself to the audience!

Matthew expounded on the theme of change, but also uncertainty, in that ‘change is endemic’ within researcher careers, but what and how it is changing is not easy to identify or quantify. He also noted how much developmental effort centres on early-career researchers, but given the post-doc period of employment now increasingly stretching to a decade or more, the mental health toll on many emerging scholars is immense. And this is even before they land their first ‘academic’ post. He noted how mid-career researchers and professoriate also need developmental support and mentoring (‘the M word’) in order to cope with both the changes across the academy and within the ‘academic job’ remit. This he stressed was alongside the need for them to be able to offer effective support to their subordinates. He took the opportunity too to criticise the ‘silly culture’ wherein scholars leaving the academy are perceived to have ‘failed’ by their colleagues remaining behind. He argued these people could return to universities and bring an incredible richness of experience with them, and yet systematically they were disenfranchised by the career esteem models the academy has embraced, to the detriment of teaching and research. Matthew concluded by noting how the academy doesn’t sufficiently celebrate, support and manage the exceptional talent they have within research support staff and units; which given the increasingly crucial part they play within the modern research team was disheartening.

Marcos, started on a theme familiar to myself, that scholars are more incentivised (through career esteem structures and metrics) to publish and bring in funding, rather than to produce research which answered genuine problems. He noted, as has been discussed elsewhere, the lack of publication of ‘null results’, due to the low esteem it brings to journals and authors, results in pointless and resource-costly repetition of experimental research which could be avoided. He also drew the insightful simile concerning academia, notably doctoral programmes, and the US 1970s motor industry; where the focus on mass production ignored the many errors requiring remediation. Marcos also highlighted the lack of accountability within the academy, illustrated by failing PhD students. Here, there was little blowback on supervisors when this happened, which was not an equitable state of affairs. Marcos also highlighted how senior academics continue to be recruited for the possessing wrong traits for their roles. People are being picked for being career superstars with strong esteem credentials, rather than being able to demonstrate strong human resource, managerial and project management abilities. This he suggested added to the problems faced by the academy as an employer and in terms of employee wellbeing.

After this excellent session, I attended a workshop on failure and PGRs – Fail Live, delivered by Davina Whitnall and Dr Ursula Hurley at the University of Salford. While fairly discursive, and inaugurated with a guided mediation, I confess of this conference session was the one which inspired me the least. That isn’t to say the topic of embracing and celebrating failure as ‘part of the story of success’ wasn’t an important one to be addressed. However, the workshop felt unwieldly in terms of content and delivery, and I suspect it would have worked better with a smaller and more intimate audience, than to a room of 40+ delegates.

To end on a high, I concluded my day in one of the special interest sessions, in this case concerning academic podcasting. Hosted by Donald Lush (King’s College London) the session made use of the time to do a ‘live’ recording of a joint episode of two podcasts: one aimed at established researchers and the other at doctoral candidates. I’ve long been a producer and contributor to podcasts in a personal capacity, and I confess they’re on my wishlist to develop around Exchanges and our contributor community as an extension to the journal’s brand and discourse contribution. In this respect, myself and the library’s Scholarly Communications team have been having some tentative conversations about this and other media areas, so perhaps watch this space for news of our future collaborations.

As you can tell from these reflections, I was pleasantly surprised to find such an embarrassment of inspiration, insight and engagement at the Vitae conference. It exceeded my expectations in nearly every sense, and I wished I could have somehow transcended time and space to attend many more of the breakout sessions than I was physically able. I also slightly regret only booking for one of the two days, as the second day also clearly included a lot of engaging material. I look forward to catching up with my Warwick library colleague who was in attendance throughout.

Nevertheless, I was delighted by the reception of the work that Exchanges and my editors do, which is something I’ve passed along to them, in partial thanks for all their efforts in helping keep the journal running.

I'll share some notes from my talk, in my next post.

---

[1] That would be The Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, but it wasn’t something I was keenly aware of until after the conference.


May 08, 2019

Issue 6.2 of Exchanges Now Available

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/issue/view/25

Regular readers will have already spotted it, but last week marked our biannual publication of the latest issue of Exchanges (vol 6.2). My thanks as always to all contributors, reviewers and editors alike. While it was never our intention, for the most part there’s a rather eastern focus to the articles in the issue. Aspects of life and work in Greece, Indonesia, Vietnam and China are all the focus of a number of articles, which I think is fantastic in terms of my hopes towards increasing Exchanges’ international scope. We’ve not forgotten work closer to home, as there’s an article from and about an event here at Warwick in the pages too.

Exchanges Issue 6.2

There’s always a sense of satisfaction and regret when we publish a new issue. Satisfaction, as it represents the publicly visible cumulation of the past 6 months of behind the scenes work. Regret, because there are always those articles which are so close to competition but don’t make it in time for the publication deadline. In the previous issue, I quite literally had an article completed and signed off by the author on the day of publication. In that case, the author was lucky as I had enough time to rework the issue and include it in the pages. This time, perhaps more thankfully for myself, there wasn’t a repeated late delivery. None of the remaining articles my editorial team are still working away on at the moment are quite ready for publication, although with any luck, many of them should be completed over the next month or so.

Incidentally, transit time of articles from submission to publication, remains one aspect of our journal publication processes that remains extremely variable. Some articles are well prepared by authors, favourably received by external reviewers and relatively straight-forward to copyedit. Some need a lot more heavy-lifting by authors and editors in terms of language, syntax, content and formatting or are more challenging to move through the reviewing process in a timely manner. I think our recent record for identifying scholars willing to review an article was 22 people approached, making reviewing a process which takes a lot of time and effort by the editorial team before reviewers even commence their work. I’ll confess the speed at which authors respond and action requests for revisions is the other of the two biggest factors, in terms of how soon we can get a new article to publication.

To illustrate this practically, one of the articles this issue is actually a relatively recent submission, and was blessed by responsive reviewers and author alike, along with some top-notch editorial work by one of my team. I wish every article we accept for publication could have such an easy journey. Conversely, at least one of the other articles had a far longer traversal through pre-publication. Regrettably some articles do take longer to reach the endpoint, but be assured, we do everything possible at Exchanges HQ to expediate their publication journeys. We encourage all our contributors to do likewise.

Of course, there is the slight artificiality of twice-yearly publication dates, at least in part a result of the software but also our own preferred approaches to issue construction. Part of me keeps considering if there are ways in which we could revise this approach and build issues up as articles become publication ready. I remain unconvinced, given the volume of submissions we currently have to the title and the editorial labour available to us, that this would convey sufficient advantages over our current system. Then again, never say never to shifting the pattern of how Exchanges appears. Were we to become a much more favoured destination for scholarly outputs than we currently are, then, well, I think the time might then be ripe for a rethink.

In the meantime, please enjoy the latest issue, and let us know any comments, thoughts, suggestions or indeed article proposals you may have for the next one.


April 11, 2019

One Year Later

CakeToday marks the one-year anniversary since I took over running the Exchanges journal as its Managing Editor-in-Chief. Hence, I thought it’d be appropriate to take a look back at what’s occurred during in that time, along with casting my gaze upon the road ahead.

The past year has seen two issues of Exchanges published, as might be expected. Perhaps more excitingly, it saw shift in the journal’s title as part of a ‘conscious-uncoupling’ from the Warwick brand. As our statistics show, the vast majority of articles published in Exchanges have historically originated from Warwick based or associated scholars. That’s nothing of which to be ashamed though. In fact, I continue to be delighted by the number of local scholars who’ve chosen to publish with us, and I hope to welcome many more contributions from them in the months ahead Nevertheless, going forward, our Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal brand makes plain our global ambition for readers and contributors far more than the title’s original name. Revising Exchange’s full title name was one of the earliest changes I introduced, and I’m happy to say one which I remain deeply satisfied I made.

Meanwhile, in the wider world we’ve had the rise of the Plan S [1] initiative from research funders, representing the strongest effort yet to force compliance with an open access publication norm. There are many issues or concerns over the impact of the plan, and almost as many detractors, naysayers and counters often located in the commercial publishing sector. Nevertheless, Plan S is undoubtably one of the biggest potential game changers within the academic publishing sector, certainly in the UK since 2012’s Finch Report [2]. That said there remains much which remains uncertain or unknown, a theme Prof Martin Eve highlighted at this week’s UKSG conference in Telford [3]. As the publishing lead of a scholar-led open access journal, Plan S is naturally a development I’m keeping a close eye on. Even if largely Exchanges already meets with the requirements…or at least as they’re currently understood.

I guess as a journal hosted at a UK university, I can’t avoid mentioning the B word. Brexit is something we British-based scholars can’t help but fret over, with its potential impacts on funding, partnerships, student intake and opportunities. I am pleased to say, in line with the IAS’ global ethos, over the past year the journal has continued to make links with scholars across Europe and further afield. Whatever Brexit’s outcome, this increasing international engagement is without a doubt something that’ll be continuing as long as I’m running the journal!

In a somewhat related development, the past year has also seen changes in and an increased internationalisation of Exchanges Editorial Board. There’s been the departure to pastures new of a half-dozen of valued past editorial team members, but our ranks have swollen with nine new members of the Board. Not to mention only yesterday the introduction of our first three assistant editors too, as I broaden the idea and reenvisage practically what it means to be a member of the Exchanges team.

Behind the scenes there’s also been a shift in how the board works with myself as Editor-in-chief, largely down to my more consultative managerial demeanour. I’ve also created a series of evolving supporting materials for the Editorial Board, demarcating their roles and responsibilities more clearly, alongside providing more accurate guidance in how to perform their editorial duties. Anecdotally, the editorial team members seem to have relished these progressive moves, which has pleased me considerably. I’ve undoubtably learned and benefitted even more so from the professional relationships I’ve forged through working with them. I hope they’ve also benefitted from my increased professionalisation of journal operations, procedures and policies – things I strongly believe are vital to Exchanges’ long-term sustainability.

One of the reasons why I’ve believed it’s important to provide greater support for my editors’ practice, is because behind the scenes we’ve had various improvements to the OJS (open journal system) platform that Exchanges runs on. Generally, I suspect these enhancements won’t have been visible to readers and authors, but for those of us working on the journal, they’ve helped introduce some much-needed new functionality alongside streamlining other elements. It’s (sad to say) not a perfect system, and my technical wish list continues to be a living document that’ll I’ll be using to try and instigate further developments in the system over the next year. Chief among these, I don’t mind mentioning, are better author metrics and better integrated multi-media. Keep your eye on this blog for news about this!

More visibly long-time readers will probably have spotted that one of my early endeavours was to overhaul, review and revise every single piece of information on Exchanges’ websites. It was clear to me from day one that this was long overdue, and served to remove numerous errors, oversights and in some cases directly contradictory material. I’m (slightly) hampered by the OJS system in terms of how much additionally functionality I can add to the journal’s website, but hopefully it’s a much richer resource especially for prospective authors and peer-reviewers.

Continuing the more tangible developments of the past year have been the numerous occasions when I’ve stepped out from behind my desk to engage with the early career researcher community at workshops, conferences and events. Personally, I have a deep love of teaching and public speaking, and so I have been utterly delighted to participate in these occasions. My mantra of ‘any time, anywhere’ when it comes to speaking about academic publishing, exchanges or scholarly communication remains at the heart of my personal professional practice. Hence, I can only encourage further invites globally to speak on behalf of the IAS and the journal.

Perhaps principally among these was my work with Warwick’s PAIS (Politics and International Studies) department in co-facilitating their academic writing and peer review summer school. Not only was this a fantastic opportunity to promote the journal, and discuss potential article submissions with emerging scholars, but it served as an impetus for revisions and improvements to Exchanges peer-review guidance and policy. I’m happy to say, that these are now more robust than ever, and importantly, more closely aligned with best academic praxis. I’m also proud that this event led to the publication of an extensive work on peer review by myself [4], which I hope early career scholars will find invaluable in supporting their own efforts.

Finally, there’s also been a rash of other efforts on the marketing and awareness front. The launch of our various associated social media channels (including this blog, twitter and Linked.in) have given our contributors and readers new ways to hear about developments with the journal, alongside highlighting individual publications. Our ever-popular Exchanges black pencils (have you got one?) too have been distributed far and wide, turning up on at least four different continents thanks to the efforts of the Editorial Board. And of course, that’s not including the various videos, posters and flyers which have served to raise the journal’s presence within the early career researcher community.

As you can see, it’s been a busy and eventual year for Exchanges and myself as it’s Editor-in-Chief. Looking ahead, we’ve a new issue coming up in a few weeks (my third!), and another regular one scheduled for late autumn too. Moreover, we’ve also got the preparations for the oft-mentioned special issues, which looking at the abstract proposals from the prospective authors for the first, looks likely to be exhilaratingly insightful contributions to the interdisciplinary discourse. I’m also booked to speak about academic publishing in the summer at one international conference already. So, here’s to a prosperous, scholarly and eventful Year Two for me and Exchanges!

---

[1] Fun fact, the S stands for shock

[2] Finch, J., 2012. Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings – the Finch Group. London: BIS/Research Information Network.

[3] Eve, M.P., 2019. Plan S: Origins, Developments, Speed. In: UKSG 42nd Annual Conference and Exhibition, 8 April - 10 Apr 2019, Telford, England. (Unpublished).

[4] Johnson, G.J., Tzanakou, C., & Ionescu, I., 2019. An Introduction to Peer Review. Coventry: PAIS, Warwick. http://www.plotina.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Introduction-to-Peer-Review-Guide.pdf


December 12, 2018

Article Focus On: Critical reflections – what’s their value?


In my last post I talked about interviews, or the Conversations with, series of articles that we publish in Exchanges. In today’s post, I’m going to talk about the other kind of article which stands alongside the more research intensive pieces in the journal: critical reflections. According to our author guide a critical reflection article comprises:

Focussed, critical appraisals typically covering an area of emerging research, a key event or a crucial new text. (1,000-3,000 words).

That’s not a long explanation for what are actually highly readable and insightful articles, so let me expand a little here. When people approach us with a critical appraisal article, most commonly they want to write about an event they have recently attended. This is a great start, as we are all interested in reading about conferences, workshops, seminars and symposia others have attended which (for whatever reasons) we didn’t have the chance to. However, so far, so much a blog post. Where the critical reflection article differs is that they are not intended to be a simple narrative of what was said and/or who spoke. Yes, this sort of contextual information is still an important part of the content, but where the critical reflection article takes a step forward towards being a more academic piece of writing is right there in the title.

Context - What are they?

In short, these pieces are supposed to entail a critical reflection about an event that is to say for example, what was it about the context, content and theme, which was of value or importance? Did the author agree with everything which was said or, from their own scholarly perspective, were there aspects that they wanted to take issue with or even wholesale challenge? Ideally too, there needs to be an element of how the event changed the author’s perspectives, thinking or knowledge. Essentially, how did it have an impact upon or affected them. Incorporating these evaluative and self-reflective elements is what changes an ‘event report’ from a tasty but ultimately unsatisfying intellectual snack, into a gourmet and rewarding scholarly treat. In short, this is what makes the paper a critical reflection.

Now, in the prior paragraph I’ve been writing about critical reflections of events. However, you will have noticed Exchanges is not only interested in critical reflections on events, but on essentially any reflections on aspect of scholarship. Typically, what should stimulate the writing of a critical reflection is an intellectual intervention or encounter of any kind. I’ll acknowledge events are the most common or perhaps most prominent such circumstances. Yet, other artefacts or circumstances can move us as much, if not more sometimes. For example, you might have spoken with a particular author, or read a lot of their work lately, which has stimulated your thinking in new directions. Alternatively, you might have read a particularly challenging paper, report or monograph which has caused you to reconsider your own research practice. Writing a critical reflection concerning these ‘events’ can be therefore as valuable and timely a piece of written scholarship as writing about a literal event. Personally, with our engaged, broad and interdisciplinary readership in mind, I’d like to see far more critical reflections about non-conference type events appearing in our pages.

The last kind of critical reflection is perhaps less easy to predefine, at least structurally, and that’s the opinion piece. For example, as a scholar there might not be a singular specific event or work you’re looking to critique. What you want to offer instead is your own, unique insight into an aspect of your discipline. In this respect, here is where Exchanges can be a most valuable publication destination especially for those scholars in the STEM subjects, where opinion pieces are less commonly accepted in major journals. Certainly, many major journals may perceive early career researchers have more ‘limited’ disciplinary experience and insight to offer, and may decline to publish such submissions as a matter of course. Here at Exchanges, we’d respectfully disagree with this stance, as per our mission, we strongly believe that new, original and insightful thought which critically reflects on a field can emerge from scholars at any stage in their career. Hence, as Editor-in-Chief I’d strongly encourage anyone who’d like to ‘make a scholarly statement’ about their field, to consider writing it as a critical reflection for us.

Criticial Reflection Advantages

One advantage of the critical reflection piece by the way, is that they are mercifully brief pieces of work, which means they can be written, edited and ready for publication quite rapidly. They can be almost as brief as this blog post in length, in fact! Naturally, the manuscript should include the context and set the scene, as with all our articles, remember you are writing for a readership which doesn’t automatically have a deep familiarity with your field. Nevertheless, this should not diminish the depth or breadth of scholarship which can be included. Have a look at these recent examples, for an idea of the sort of things you might write about.

Eden, A.A., 2018. Enchanted Community: Reflections on Art, the Humanities and Public Engagement. https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v6i1.252

Mulcahy, S., 2018. Dissents and Dispositions. Reflections on the Conference of the Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia. https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v5i2.247

Crealock-Ashurst, B., et al., 2018. A Critical Reflection on the 28th International Biology Olympiad. https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v5i1.221

Messin, L.J., & Meadows, J.C., 2018. Science for All. https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v4i1.153

Incidentally, a critical reflection can also act as a promotional piece. Not only for the author, but for institutions, research groups and projects, looking to raise their profiles. I really do believe these are exactly the sort of article which can really help to get a scholar noted. Hence, critically appraising some work you are intimately involved in, not only helps to develop your own career, but can serve as a valuable adjunct to other ongoing efforts.

In Conclusion

So, there you go. The critical appraisal, a valuable and relatively easy article type you can publish with Exchanges. And if you’re reading this and thinking you’ve got a great idea for one, either speak to myself or any of the Editorial Board about it. Or better yet, get writing and submitting – there’s every possibility critical reflections submitted in the first few months of 2019 can see publication in our spring issue of Exchanges! (possibly!)

Finally, on a personal note, I’m signing off as the Managing Editor-in-Chief for the Christmas break today. So can I wish all our readers, reviewers and authors (old and new) a most festive, relaxing and perhaps critically reflective break!


March 2024

Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su
Feb |  Today  |
            1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Search this blog

Tags

Galleries

Most recent comments

  • Follow up: Well, that could have been a lot worse – only 11.7% of accounts are 'deceased' or in need… by Gareth Johnson on this entry

Blog archive

Loading…
RSS2.0 Atom
Not signed in
Sign in

Powered by BlogBuilder
© MMXXIV