Scholarly Communication

Listen to this interview ofLee McIntyre, Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science (Boston University) and Senior Advisor for Public Trust in Science (Aspen Institute). We talk about his bookThe Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience(MIT Press, 2019). Lee McIntyre : "Scientists have an enormous role — and I'll even say, a responsibility, to make sure that their work does not end just with the discoveries, but extends, as well, to include the communication of those discoveries to their scientific colleagues and beyond them, to society more broadly. And I think that there's enormous room for more public education, not just about the results of science, but also about how science actually works." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Comic Book as Research Toolcontributes to a growing body of work celebrating the visual methods and tools that aid knowledge transfer and welcome new audiences to social science research. Visual research methodological milestones highlight a trajectory towards the adoption of more creative and artistic media. As such, the book is dedicated to exploring the creative potential of the comic book medium, and how it can assist the production and communication of scientific knowledge. The cultural blueprint of the comic book is examined, and the unique structure and grammar of the form deconstructed and adapted for research support. Along with two illustrated research comics, Toxic Play and 10 Business Days, the book offers readers numerous comic-based illustration activities and creative visual exercises to support data generation, foster conversational knowledge exchanges, facilitate inference, analysis, and interpretation, while nurturing the necessary skills to illustrate and create research comics. The book engages a diverse audience and is an illuminating read for visual novices, experts, and all in-betweeners. Dr. Stephen O’Sullivanis lecturer in marketing and consumer culture at University College Cork, Cork University Business School. His research is primarily situated in the consumer culture theory dimensions of marketplace cultures and consumer identity projects. Current research involves an investigation of contemporary play, particularly that which is harmful in nature. Stephen is an advocate for the greater application of creative media in social science. His published works can be found in the Marketing Theory, Psychology & Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management, Consumption Markets & Culture, Advances in Consumer Research, and Journal of Customer Behavior. Contributes research films to the Indie Cork Film Festival. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Little Guide to Getting Your Book Published(Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)takes prospective authors from idea to draft manuscript to published book in a step-by-step process. The book advises writers on creating a book proposal and then how to find a publisher or agent. Whether a trade non-fiction work, monograph, or textbook, the book is guaranteed to motivate and inspire you to get started on the road to publishing today. Written by a book professional with 30 years of experience on hundreds of publishing projects,The Little Guidewill help you decide which route is right for you: a big publisher or self-publishing. It discusses the secrets on what you need to know when signing a contract, creating a winning title, and how to find the time to do it all. It includes valuable listings of publishing resources and suggested readings you will want to have at your fingertips.The Little Guideanswers all of the beginner’s questions in a direct and useful fashion. The book can be read all the way through or serve as a spot reference guide as authors wind their way through the process. The book is divided into 32 short, focused chapters. Sections include: “Getting Started,” “Writing Your Manuscript,” Selecting a Book Publishing Model,” “Getting Published,” and “What is an Author Promotional Platform and Why it Matters?” John Bond is a Publishing Consultant at Riverwinds Consulting. To connect with on a proiect, see his websitePublishingFundamentals.com.HisYouTubechannel contains over 100 short videos on academic publishing.Or connect with him onLinkedIn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview ofRajkumar Buyya, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, University of Melbourne, and Director there too of theCloud Computing and Distributed Systems Labs. We talk about collaborating within a discipline, collaborating across multiple disciplines, and also collaborating with industry partners. Rajkumar Buyya : "I consider the research coming from my group not just as the publication of a plain paper, but also as what we callpaper++and by that we mean, a paper along with something extra. So, we publish a foundation paper but we also release our software via Open Source in the community. That way, when we've shared our software, people start using our technology, and that sparks another kind of collaboration, because now the community might find some weakness in the software and if they come back to us with that, we can do that work together." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s book is:Stylish Academic Writing(Harvard UP, 2012), by Helen Sword, which dispels the myth that you only get published by writing wordy, impersonal prose. Dr. Sword reveals that journal editors and readers alike welcome work that avoids excessive jargon and abstraction. Her analysis of more than a thousand peer-reviewed articles across a range of fields documents the startling gap between how academics describe good writing, and the prose they actually produce. Too few scholars were taught how to create accessible prose, a problemStylish Academic Writingaddresses by showcasing works from the sciences, humanities, and social sciences written with both vividness and panache. Individual chapters take up specific elements of style, such as titles and headings, chapter openings, and structure.Stylish Academic Writingalso offers examples of transferable techniques that any writer can master. Our guest is:Dr. Helen Swordwho is an international expert on academic, professional, and creative writing across the disciplines. She received her PhD in comparative literature from Princeton University, and is a former Professor of Humanities at the University of Auckland. She now specializes in facilitating retreats, workshops, and masterclasses. She is the author ofThe Writer’s Diet; Air and Light, Space and Time: How Successful Academics Write; Writing With Pleasure; and Stylish Academic Writing. Our host is:Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator and show host of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. Listeners may also like this playlist: Becoming the Writer You Already Are Top 10 struggles in writing a book manuscript and what to do about it Exploring the emotional arc of turning a dissertation into a book Tackling your writing roadblocks An editor shares about writing for the general public Demystifying the path to publication DIY writing retreats Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Please support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview ofClaire Le Goues, Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. We talk about writing to presentversuswriting to express. Claire Le Goues : "Really, the very best natural writers that I've ever had in my group were not native English speakers. Because writing a good paper is very muchnotabout idiomatic or expressive language. I mean, sure, there is a point at which grammar becomes prohibitive to understanding. I mean, it needs to be correct enough that we can understand it without ambiguity. But good writing — it's about the argument, it’s about the order the information’s being presented in, it’s about hitting the appropriate level of abstraction or granularity. And that really has, fundamentally, very little to do with the language it's written in." Links:squaresLab Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview ofDiomidis Spinellis, Professor of Software Engineering, Athens University of Economics and Business, and as well Professor of Software Analytics, Delft University of Technology. We talk a lot about audience — especially how to reach them. Diomidis Spinellis: "They say that traveling enriches the mind. I think that the same applies to working outside your own narrow discipline. You get to know different ways of conceptualizing problems, of attacking them — you witness the value in other methods or entire other structures for building up knowledge — and also, you may learn to appreciate things you've come to look down upon because those things don't follow the conventions of your home discipline. All of this is enriching, and all of it improves the research." Links:Advice for Writing LaTeX Documents Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Using techniques garnered from startups and quickly evolving technology companies, inThe Experimental Library: A Guide to Taking Risks, Failing Forward, and CreatingChange(ALA Editions, 2023), Cathryn Copper explores how information professionals can use experimentation to make evidence-based decisions and advance innovative initiatives. The last five years have demonstrated that sticking with the status quo is not an option; instead, as the experiences of many libraries have shown, those that experiment are better positioned to adapt to rapidly changing environments and evolving user needs and behaviors.The Experimental Librarysupports librarians as they draw from new approaches and technologies to harness experimentation as a tool for testing ideas and responding to change. Copper borrows ideas and inspiration from the startup sector to teach you how to take a human-centered and design thinking-based perspective on problem solving. This conversation for New Books Network explores the mindset, methodology, and culture that support experimentation in libraries. Jen Hoyeris Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian atCUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits forPartnership Journaland organizes with theTPS Collective. She is co-author ofWhat Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every ClassroomandThe Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Emma Frances Bloomfield, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. We talk about her novel analytical tool for helping you narrativize research! Bloomfield's new book isScience V. Story: Narrative Strategies for Science Communicators(U California Press, 2024) Emma Bloomfield : "I'd love to see more direct incorporation of communication studies and communication skillsintothe science curriculum but also into a researcher's overalltraining as well. Because I think that researchers can be very good at communication, but unfortunately they're not specifically trained in it and they're not really incentivized to do it. Basically, we put researchers, unnecessarily, before the choice of becoming either public intellectuals or recognized members of their research community and tenured professors at university. But we can give people more time and more compensation so that they can do both — and that will benefit the researchandthe communication of the research." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Object Lessonsis a series of concise, collectable, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Each book starts from a specific inspiration: an historical event, a literary passage, a personal narrative, a technological innovation—and from that starting point explores the object of the title, gleaning a singular lesson or multiple lessons along the way. This interview discusses the series with one of the two editors of the series, Dr. Christopher Schaberg. Featuring contributions from writers, artists, scholars, journalists, and others, the emphasis throughout is lucid writing, imagination, and brevity.Object Lessonspaints a picture of the world around us, and tells the story of how we got here, one object at a time. ManyObject Lessonsbooks have been interviewed on the New Books Network to date, including:Trench Coat,Mushroom,Ok,Grave,Wine,Magazine,Stroller,Barcode,Recipe,Hyphen,Pregnancy Test,Gitter,Relic,Pencil,Air Conditioning, andSwimming Pool. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whoseforthcoming bookfocuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices