All 16 entries tagged Exchanges

Two Forthcoming Exchanges/Publishing Workshops

Follow-up to Publishing Strategy Accolade Session from Exchanges Reflections: Interdisciplinary Editor Insights

As part of our Accolade and EUTOPIA-SIF training programmes, I’m hosting a pair of workshop sessions next week.

The first on Tue 3^rd May, is the return of the ever popular – Exchanges: Ask Me Anything session. As in previous iterations this is a freeform session, wherein I invite the audience to ask me pretty much anything about the Exchanges journal and related areas. Experience has shown half the questions tend to veer off into general topics of academic publication, but that’s fine as I’ll always be interested in a hearty discussion about that broader domain. Additionally, it’s a safe bet I will likely get up on my soapbox about the importance of early career scholars, open access and scholar-led, non-commercial journals disrupting the hegemonic commodified academic communications field.

Ahem. Or maybe this time will be a first and I won’t!

The second session, Thu 5^th May, is the return of the Developing your Publication Strategy panel event. We ran this last in March 2021 and it was a very lively discussion. This time I’m joined by four panellists to answer questions, discuss comments and explore all aspects of their personal publication strategies, processes and experiences. The last running of this workshop was an excellent packed hour of discussions, and I’ve every hope this time will be much the same – even though it’s an all new panel!

Now, cynics among you might notice that both these events require fairly light preparation on my part. That’s deliberate, as running the journal – especially around an issue launch – takes up a lot of my time. However, that doesn’t mean I won’t be bringing my customary showmanship and polished hosting skills to the fore on the day! I very much expect our audiences will have a highly informative and energised time.

After those sessions, in this role at least[1] I can then switch to preparing for the end of the month, when I’m running an undergraduate workshop on academic publishing and writing skills. Now that one, I DO need to prepare some materials for, but thankfully there’s a few weeks between then and now for me to fit that in. So more on this later session towards the end of the month.

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[1] In my other job I’m running two workshops in May on preparing and delivering an effective conference paper. No pressure there then.

Gareth Johnson : 28 Apr 2022 11:56 |  Tags: Eutopia Events Exchanges Publishing Training Workshops |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

In Conversation with Huayi Huang

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

This past month has seen the launch of two new episodes of the Exchanges Discourse companion podcast series chatting with past authors about their lives, work and publishing activities. The first, that with Elloit Cardozo, I highlighted in an earlier post. This time I’m pleased to bring you our next episode, an extended episode with Huayi Huang of the University of Edinburgh, UK.

In this podcast episode Huayi and myself discuss the concepts of routine dynamics, alongside offering some insight into the roles of early career researchers in society. As always, I also ask my guest to offer their personal insights and suggestions into publishing which are specifically tailored to be of interest to post-graduate and early career researchers.

• Listen to the episode here: In Conversation with Huayi Huang

Behind the scenes this was probably the longest recording I’ve done with one of our authors. What you tragically don’t get as part of the recording was the twenty minutes or so Huayi and I continued talking about issues of career development and the academy from an early career researcher’s perspective. Perhaps a shame to lose this content, but with such a generous guest as Huayi, I’d hope to invite him back to appear on a future episode I’m slowly fermenting in my head.

More on that as and when I get it off the ground. In the meantime, enjoy this new podcast episode – and I’ll hopefully be back in the next week or so with the next episode of the Exchanges Discourse – already recorded, but now just in need of post-production polishing!

Gareth Johnson : 18 Feb 2022 16:00 |  Tags: Discourse Dynamics Episode Exchanges Guest New Podcast Routine |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

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!

Gareth Johnson : 01 Feb 2022 16:27 |  Tags: Author Discourse Episode Exchanges Interview New Podcast |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

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.

Gareth Johnson : 27 Jan 2022 16:39 |  Tags: Author Discourse Episode Ethnography Exchanges Interview Moharami New Podcast |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

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! 

Gareth Johnson : 13 Jan 2022 16:56 |  Tags: 2021 Back Discourse Exchanges Listeners Looking Podcast Reflections Statistics |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New episode: A Conversation with…M Onat Topal

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

The 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

Gareth Johnson : 01 Jun 2021 15:50 |  Tags: AI Author Discourse Episode Exchanges Podcast |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Issue 8.3 of Exchanges Published!

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

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.

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

[2] One day, maybe even soon…

Gareth Johnson : 06 May 2021 15:45 |  Tags: 2021 Exchanges Issue May New Publication |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

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!

Gareth Johnson : 23 Apr 2021 16:41 |  Tags: Discourse Episode Exchanges Podcast |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Reflections of the Vitae Researcher Development Conference

On Monday (16^th 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.

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[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.

Gareth Johnson : 19 Sep 2019 15:26 |  Tags: Conference Development Exchanges Presentations Reflections Speaking |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

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.

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.

Gareth Johnson : 08 May 2019 11:43 |  Tags: Exchanges Issue Journal Article New Publication |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem