Listen to this interview of Nicolas Christin, Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, jointly appointed in the School of Computer Science and in the department of Engineering and Public Policy. We talk about the luck it takes to succeed in research, and of course too about the initiative shown by successful researchers to seize that luck.Nicolas Christin : "You will get a pretty good understanding of where some research idea has come from if you read the Introduction of the paper very carefully. Because the Introduction will typically start with either a sort of case study, 'Alright, so, x does y and this is what happened to them, and so, yeah, we need to fix that problem' or the Introduction will tell you how the paper inscribes itself in a larger body of work but without going through all the related work, as in, 'Yeah, we are different from A, B, and C in this and that way' but instead like 'Yeah, this is what the state-of-the-art is and this is what we are bringing to the table.' And as you read this, you can back-track it all and then see what the initial spark was, what the key motivation for that whole line of research was. Because in some cases, when you do this careful reading, say, ten years after the fact, you know, when you return to the seminal papers in your field, there you may realize or you may find out that the initial idea came from a case study or from a problem that actually was not a problem at all, because really the thing just became famous because it was applied to a different context. And that is, of course, completely fine. In fact, it tells you something about the serendipity or the randomness of what sticks and what doesn't." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this lively and far-reaching text, Nick Witham (University College London) tells the stories of five postwar historians who changed the way ordinary Americans thought about their nation’s history.For decades, critics of the discipline have argued that the historical profession is dominated by scholars unable, or perhaps even unwilling, to write for the public. In Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Witham challenges this interpretation by telling the stories of Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Boorstin, John Hope Franklin, Howard Zinn, and Gerda Lerner - writers who, in the decades after World War II, published widely read books of national history.Witham compellingly argues that we should understand historians’ efforts to engage with the reading public as a vital part of their postwar identity and mission. Not just a matter of writing style, popular accessibility was also a product of an author's frame of mind, the editor's skill, and the publisher's marketing acumen, among other factors. Rooted in extensive archival work, Popularizing the Past persuasively demonstrates the cross-influences of popular history writing and American popular culture.James West is a historian of race, media and business in the modern United States and Black diaspora. Author of "Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America" (Illinois, 2020), "A House for the Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago" (Illinois, 2022), "Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr. (Massachusetts, 2022). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Yuval Yarom, Professor of Computer Science at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. We talk about how authors interpret the data and the facts, and we talk, too, about how readers interpret the authors' words about those data and facts.Yuval Yarom: "I like to think that the question whether the Title is boring or not does not affect me, just like I like to think that advertising does not affect me. But, I'm probably wrong on both counts. I do try to read papers based on whether they're related to what I do. But still, papers that are easier to read, or to be precise, that are easier to interpret — these papers are likelier to affect me positively: I'm paying attention. These are the papers that make it easier to relate, easier to understand, easier to see exactly what the authors mean by what they write. And so, the net effect is, everyone has an easier time working with the findings of those authors." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Daniel Gruss, Associate Professor in the Secure Systems group at Graz University of Technology, Institute of Applied Information Processing and Communications, Austria. We talk about asking the right questions when writing, for example, asking not "How should I write that?" but asking instead "How would someone else write that?"Daniel Gruss: "Actual methods and results have almost no value if they don't serve a purpose, and the purpose in research is to show that some idea is valuable enough to be shared with the community — basically, that this idea needs to get into the shared knowledge of the community, the state-of-the-art. Because, if you don't have any idea there that you're adding to the state-of-the-art, then what is the value of a result or a method?" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Thorsten Holz, Professor for computer science and faculty at CISPA, the Helmholtz Center for Information Security, in Saarbrücken, Germany. We talk about mentoring, collaboration, writing, and a little more about writing again.Thorsten Holz : "I'm rather open in just sharing ideas with other researchers, even with researchers whom I haven't yet collaborated with. I haven't really had any bad experiences this way so far. Of course, from time to time, we've gotten scooped by other works. But in these cases, on the one hand, I don't think those other groups stole our ideas or intentionally tried to beat us to it. And on the other hand, being scooped also can be interpreted as an encouraging sign. Sure, it's depressing for a PhD student to see other authors get priority for that work. But really, since other groups have had similar ideas and have wanted to achieve similar goals, this means that we are doing interesting research which should have uptake in the community." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Peng Liu, Professor at the College of Information Science and Technology at Pennsylvania State University, and also Director of the Cyber Security Lab. We talk about cold proposals to potential collaborators, we talk about reading across areas and through time, and we talk about how to write as an author and how to write as a reader.Peng Liu : "There's not really any one place a reader can go in a paper in order to find the critical insight. In my understanding, a reader needs to use a sort of synthesis-reasoning if he or she is going to identify the real contribution developed in the work. Because, although the authors try to communicate their contribution in a clear and predictable way — really, it's just not an easy thing to quickly locate this in any given paper. So, my experience has been that, as a reader, you will find critical insights in papers by asking — you find these insights when you ask the right questions about that research." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Sascha Fahl, Professor for Computer Science and Faculty for Usable Security and Privacy at CISPA, the Helmholtz Center for Information Security, in Saarbrücken, Germany. We talk about replicable methods, we talk about critical reading, and we talk about the necessity of a network to your research.Sascha Fahl : "I myself practise — and I encourage my PhDs to practice it too — the zero-draft writing approach. This is the approach of writing early, writing often. Because it's just absolutely important to accept that what you initially write is not what's going to be submitted and definitely not what will be in the camera-ready version of the paper. So I encourage the researchers in my group to put text into a manuscript very early on and to write sections which can be written before the results are in. And then it's just about revising the text multiple times, as it grows and as the project advances. Because we want to make sure that the argumentation is good, that the research questions are good, that the results actually address the research questions, that the discussion really fits well together with the results, and all that stuff. So the approach I promote is write early, write often, and also revise a lot." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many library project plans, from small projects to institution-wide strategic planning committees, follow a linear trajectory: create the plan, do the plan, then review the outcome. While this can be effective, it also sometimes leads to disregarding new information that emerges while executing the plan, making the outcome less effective. Planning processes can also feel forced and predetermined if stakeholder feedback is not seriously considered. When this happens too many times, people stop offering their honest opinions and new ideas because they have learned that the planners do not really want to hear them.Integrated Library Planning: A New Model for Strategic and Dynamic Planning, Management, and Assessment (ACRL, 2023) offers a different kind of approach to planning that is both strategic and dynamic: fueled by open communication, honest assessment, and astute observation. Voices at the table, near the table, and far from the table are heard and considered. Its perpetual rhythm gives space to consider new information when it emerges and freedom to make changes at a time that makes sense instead of when it is most convenient or expected. The era of fixed-length strategic plans is coming to an end. Five-year strategic plans had already given way to three-year strategic plans, and now we find ourselves needing to plan and function when nothing is certain beyond the present moment.The components of this model might look deceptively similar to the strategic planning practices used in libraries and organizations for decades; however, when implemented as a whole, with a monthly review cycle on a rolling planning horizon and space for regular analysis of information needs and behavior, it has the potential to shatter any previous notions of planning that serve only to satisfy administrators. Integrated Library Planning can help libraries effectively navigate and become agents of change.Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A clear-eyed examination of the open access movement: past history, current conflicts, and future possibilities. Open access (OA) could one day put the sum of human knowledge at our fingertips. But the goal of allowing everyone to read everything faces fierce resistance.In Athena Unbound: Why and How Scholarly Knowledge Should Be Free for All (MIT Press, 2023), Peter Baldwin offers an up-to-date look at the ideals and history behind OA, and unpacks the controversies that arise when the dream of limitless information slams into entrenched interests in favor of the status quo. In addition to providing a clear analysis of the debates, Baldwin focuses on thorny issues such as copyright and ways to pay for “free” knowledge. He also provides a roadmap that would make OA economically viable and, as a result, advance one of humanity’s age-old ambitions. Baldwin addresses the arguments in terms of disseminating scientific research, the history of intellectual property and copyright, and the development of the university and research establishment. As he notes, the hard sciences have already created a funding model that increasingly provides open access, but at the cost of crowding out the humanities. Baldwin proposes a new system that would shift costs from consumers to producers and free scholarly knowledge from the paywalls and institutional barriers that keep it from much of the world. Rich in detail and free of jargon, Athena Unbound is an essential primer on the state of the global open access movement.Peter Baldwin is Professor of History at UCLA, and Global Distinguished Professor at NYU.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Mathias Payer, a security researcher and associate professor at the EPFL School of Computer and Communication Science, leading the HexHive group. We talk about research as a social activity — No researcher can go it alone!Mathias Payer: "Reading and writing are integral parts to the research process. I would even say that there's a split one-third, one-third, one-third: for one-third, you're doing research; for the next third, you're reading about research; and for the final third, you're writing about your research. So you should split this up equally, and I say the same to my students. They should be reading several papers each week, for example." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices