Could Distributed Peer Review Better Decide Grant Funding?
The landscape of academic grant funding is notoriously competitive and plagued by lengthy, bureaucratic processes, exacerbated by difficulties in finding willing reviewers. Distributed […]
December 11, 2018
Should We Treat the Syllabus as a Scholarly Work?
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September 24, 2018
Open Peer Review Not Always Welcomed With Open Arms
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Book Review: How to be a Happy Academic
In ‘How to be a Happy Academic: A Guide to Being Effective in Research, Writing and Teaching,’ Alex Clark and Bailey Sousa aim to support fellow academic workers at all career stages to become more efficient, successful and happier through focusing on fostering good habits over and above talent or skills. Eddy Li welcomes this insider perspective on seeing, doing and – most importantly – taming academic work, even if it leaves open the question of how exactly we measure and define “success”.
Collaboration Imbues SSRC’s ‘To Secure Knowledge’ Report
In launching its first-ever task force report on Monday, the 95-year-old Social Science Research Council made clear it gets by with a little help from its friends. Collaboration, said sociologist Alondra Nelson Nelson, the president of the SSRC, is the byword of the report, To Secure Knowledge: Social Science Partnerships for the Common Good.
Crowd-Sourcing As a Complement to Peer Review
A new process developed by Princeton’s Matthew Salganik for reviewing academic manuscripts allows the world at large to examine and weigh in on a book at the same time the manuscript is undergoing peer review.
How Will Universities Cope With Brexit Britain’s Resurgent Nationalism?
As Brexit Britain appears headed straight for a chaotic exit from the European Union, its universities are raising questions about their future with growing alarm. The consequences which post-Brexit nationalism will have for universities, students, and scholars are hardly being discussed at all.
Arbitrary Choices and the Politics of Sociological Enquiry
Arbitrary choices –all those political considerations that twist and constrain scholarship without adding to it in intellectually meaningful ways — are rife in contemporary academic sociology, says our Daniel Nehring. Tired of trying to pointlessly argue against them in hopes they disappear, he asks that we make these choices explicit and visible.
Who Might Address Research Candidates’ Off-the-Charts Stress?
Graduate research candidates are the powerhouse of research in universities, yet many have reported feelings of isolation, burnout, and career uncertainty. Karen Barry reports on a study of Australian research candidates which found that increasing numbers are suffering from heightened levels of depression, anxiety, and stress, often citing reasons related to academia’s general work processes, such as writing or publishing research or maintaining motivation while working alone on a single topic.
Literature Reviews Are Already Broken, So Let’s Kill Them
The literature review is a staple of the scholarly article. But when reviews misrepresent previous studies or suggest there’s a paucity of information when there isn’t, doesn’t,this degrade the knowledge base? Richard P. Phelps argues that, given the difficulty of verifying an author’s claims during peer review, it is best that journals drop the requirement for a literature review in scholarly articles.
How to Have the Best Possible Student-Supervisor Meeting
Drawing on their new SAGE book for students and academics “How to be a Happy Academic,” Alex Clark and Bailey Sousa share strategies for successful student-supervisor meetings.
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