When the Data hits the Fan!

Written Artefacts: Research and Ethics Let's consider some of the contemporary challenges addressed by digital tools & methods in terms of research ethics and strategy Social role of cultural organisations Evidencing climate change Demographic shifts Staging social justice activity Combating cultural object trafficking Decolonising

Book of the Dead of the Priest of Horus, Imhotep (Imuthes), ca. 332–200 B.C. The Metropolitan Museum of Art http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/551786 The recent final reports for the Academic Book of the Future are a revealing, well balanced account of the current and future state of scholarly monograph publishing in the UK. One feature is the close attention given to Open Access in books ( pages 175-195 in Michael Jubb's report ) . In this blog I want to unpack the consequences of Book Processing Charges in a Gold OA environment and how they would be utterly unsustainable in a future OA mandated REF environment.

The importance of books is clear for the Arts and Humanities in the UK as indicated by approximately ¼ of all submissions to the REF in book form and in addition book chapters remain an important factor in submission. These heatmap visualisations for the Academic Book of the Future quickly illustrates the stark differences in forms of scholarly communication across UK HE.

Source:  https://flic.kr/p/8hHczB Trying to make a change to the REF whilst not breaking it is akin to squeezing a balloon. Press or reshape too much and it bursts, but solving a problem by squeezing in one area produces bulges elsewhere. And so we come to the Stern Review - an independent review of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) - that was published this week. [ link ]

The recent Nurse Review "Ensuring a Successful UK Research Endeavour" mentions "science" 94 times and the "arts" and/or "humanities" less than half a dozen times. That's not much for arts and humanities so here are all those mentions in full.