Scholarly Communication

Listen to this interview of Rebekka Burkholz, faculty at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security. We talk about the composition of research groups and of research papers.Rebekka Burkholz : "I have the feeling that this meta-reading becomes more important as a person's career progresses. Because early on, a researcher is typically very focused on the details of each paper and they try to understand what this method does and so on — and of course, researchers need to begin that way, really spending the time to attain to expertise in a particular focus. But with time, as a researcher has seen more ideas (and of course, in one particular focus, methods and questions all share some similarity), then the person acquires more and more overview as they continue reading. They are reading, essentially, for the links between findings, for implications of the findings and those links — and in this way, a more experienced reader of the research actually becomes engaged in a sort of literature discussion." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn about the fascinating Ethno-Indology series now published at Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing which offers inexpensive peer-reviewed Open Access and Print-on-Demand publishing for scholars from all over the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Briana Barner, an Assistant Professor and cultural communications scholar, shares her journey of overcoming writing roadblocks. She emphasizes the importance of nurturing creativity through personal activities to restore joy. Barner discusses practical strategies like setting writing rituals and using self-affirmation to combat self-doubt. Music, too, plays a crucial role in maintaining motivation. Finally, she highlights the importance of consistency in writing, especially for those balancing academic ambitions with caregiving responsibilities.

Listen to this interview of Paris Avgeriou, Editor in Chief of the Journal of Systems and Software (together with David Shepherd). Paris is Full Professor of Software Engineering at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. We talk about peer review, journal editing, and scientific writing.Paris Avgeriou : "I actually think that authoring and reviewing are very close to one another, because when you review a paper, you actually start thinking how to improve it — what the strong points are and also what the points for improvement are. So, by getting into this sort of mentality — that is, by noticing what is wrong with the paper and how to make it better — this makes you a better author, because when you review other people's work, you start to understand what makes a paper strong and what needs revising to make it stronger. And so, when someone who reviews regularly goes to write their own papers, they automatically start thinking about these things. So, in fact, reviewing other people's work makes you a better author yourself."Links Journal of Systems and Software The New Reddit Journal of Science Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to Episode No.8 of All We Mean, a Special Focus of this podcast. All We Mean is an ongoing discussion and debate about how we mean and why. The guests on today's episode are Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, professors at the University of Illinois. Today we welcome, too, Duane Searsmith, E-Learning Technical Specialist, Information Trust Institute, also at the University of Illinois. In this episode of the Focus, our topic is the meaning of generation by machine.It's stunning what Generative AI can produce, but what exactly is it there that is being produced? What does it mean, and what do we do with it? And actually, more important, what do we do with the AI that's doing the producing?AI in our lives now and will continue infiltrating and embedding only more as each day passes and each new update and redesign is released. Therefore, we are the responsible parties in this — we, us, the users. We are the ones we must ask: What does AI mean to us? Because what AI just means, itself... well, that is still only whatever we can mean, ourselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of David Shepherd, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Systems and Software (together with Paris Avgeriou). David Shepherd is Associate Professor at Louisiana State University. We talk about writing well, researching well, reviewing well.David Shepherd : "No, with the manuscripts we screen and review and publish, it's not about language. So, we know that most scientists are writing in not their first language. And for us, it's just not about that. I mean, some of the best papers I've read even have some kind of weird phrases that make me think that maybe the authors didn't grow up speaking English as their first language. But the logic in those papers is just so clear that no one worries about that kind of little phrasing stuff. Because, the thing that an experienced editor looks for is just clear logic."Links Journal of Systems and Software The New Reddit Journal of Science Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Authorship represents a new area of policy-related work within higher education research administration, funding agencies, and scholarly journal publishing. Developing Authorship and Copyright Ownership Policies: Best Practices (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024) by Allyson Mower offers the unique aspect of combining details on copyright ownership as well as authorship into a single volume on best practices for administrators, journal publishers, research managers, and policy drafters within and outside of higher education. Discover more about the definition of 'author'--from data gatherer to writer--to inform policy development while understanding the interconnected relationships between authorship, copyright ownership, and scholarly communication. This book will also demonstrate how to develop inclusive and equitable authorship policies that reflect the range of diversity within the research endeavor and scholarly publishing.Allyson Mower, MA, MLIS has served as the scholarly communication and copyright librarian at the University of Utah Marriott Library since 2008. Her expertise focuses on authorship—both current and historical trends—as well as the connections between information access, reading, and authoring. She developed the Utah Reading Census, an annual survey to determine Utahns’ attitudes towards reading and convened the France Davis Utah Black Archive in 2021. Allyson also serves as the policy liaison for the Academic Senate and runs a professional development book club.Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to Episode No.7 of All We Mean, a Special Focus of this podcast. All We Mean is an ongoing discussion and debate about how we mean and why. The guests on today's episode are Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, professors at the University of Illinois. In this episode of the Focus, our topic is This is what language means.It is text, and it is speech — but is not the two wholly as one. It is speech, and then it is text, or it is the other way around — but the two cannot be one, because between them opens a gulf of difference: Text is the one extreme — the other end of which is Speech.And neither makes — nor the two together can make what the digital is for us today. We read images as much as we do print. Music and sounds are louder than speech in many regions of the online. Video brings movement to life, while the moving body or the object in motion makes space visible. All this is called virtual reality for good reason. We call it all the cyber-social. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Discourse of Scholarly Communication (Lexington Books, 2023) examines the place and purpose of modern scholarship and its dialectical relationship with the ethos of Enlightenment. Patrick Gamsby argues that while Enlightenment/enlightenment is often used in the mottos of numerous academic institutions, its historical, social, and philosophical elements are largely obscured. Using a theoretical lens, Gamsby revisits the ideals of the Enlightenment alongside the often-contradictory issues of disciplinary boundaries, access to research, academic labor in the production of scholarship (author, peer reviewer, editor, and translator), the interrelationship of form and content (lectures, textbooks, books, and essays), and the stewardship of scholarship in academic libraries and archives. It is ultimately argued that for the betterment of the scholarly communication ecosystem and the betterment of society, anti-Enlightenment rules of scholarship such as ‘publish or perish’ should be dispensed with in favor of the formulation of a New Enlightenment.Patrick Gamsby is the Scholarly Communication Librarian and Cross-Appointed to the Department of Sociology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He previously worked in scholarly communications at Brandeis University and Duke University. Patrick holds a MLIS degree from the University of Western Ontario, a MES degree from York University, and a Ph.D. from Laurentian University. He is the author of two books - Henri Lefebvre, Boredom, and Everyday Life and The Discourse of Scholarly Communication - and he lives in St. John's, Newfoundland with his wife and two daughters.Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program and Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Christopher Reddy, environmental chemist and Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. We talk about his book Science Communication in a Crisis: An Insider's Guide (Routledge Earthscan 2023).Christopher Reddy : "Communication definitely teaches us scientists things that we hadn't knows or appreciated, even in our own research. I mean, when you have to rethink about how and why you're doing something and what the outcomes mean, that is a series of mental gymnastics. And when we do gymnastics, we become fitter. We increase our longevity and have a richer and fuller quality of life. And that goes for science too: When you are challenged in the communication, you are putting yourself on a treadmill and you become fitter." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices