Category: Blogging

Open Access Journal & Academic Magazines

Combined post on ALT’s decision to make its journal open access and a collection of academic publishing links I’ve been meaning to share for a while!

ALT’s Open Access Journal

Earlier this year Research in Learning Technology, the journal of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) switched to open access. I’m a Trustee of ALT and I’ve written a blog post on the LSE’s Impact of Social Sciences blog about why ALT made the switch: By freeing our journal from the ghetto of academic library subscriptions we will foster discussion and impact.

Academic Magazines

It’s been a very long time since I blogged here – over half a year (the shame!). I’ve been meaning to write a post around a bunch of links I’d been gathering since January 2011!

The initial article from a year ago was An academic angle on issues in a periodical for the people in the Times Higher Education which featured The Public Intellectual and started:

Between peer-reviewed journals and popular journalism lies a gap in which “the new knowledge, valuable critical insight, and fresh perspectives that academia produces” can be brought from behind pay walls to the wider readership it deserves.

Since then I’ve come across  a few other similar formats / approaches.

The similarities, seem to be:

  • Blog format but not necessarily recognisable or described as a blog
  • Authors mainly working in academia
  • Multi-author (& beyond a single institution)
  • Reviewing by editorial team
  • WordPress as the publishing platform

Disappointingly most are not licenced under creative commons with notable exceptions of ALT’s Journal, LSE Impact Oxbridge blogs.

As I’ve now switched from the world of Social Sciences to that of Computing, Information Science, Engineering & Maths, I’ll be on the lookout for more examples in that area.

If you’ve any examples of any kind please feel do add them below.

Blogging & Impact

MegaphonesThe Impact of the Social Sciences Project have made an interesting case for introducing multi-author blogs over single author ones to help universities in “expanding their external impacts (as influence)”

My summary below, see Improving professional communication – starting multi-author blogs for the full argument.

Firstly they suggest that single-author academic blogs will have little impact because the work of an individual is  specialised and will not attract wide readership or broaden the audience.  They also suggest that academics lack the time to post regularly and that many don’t have the expertise to blog well (technical & web writing).

Continue reading Blogging & Impact

Some Plans for 2011

South Beach, Miami Writing for The Web

Something I revisited last year, running a workshop for Netskills in May, which I’ll be doing again in March. It’s a topic that really interests me and I’ll be looking to build my knowledge further this year. I’ve made a start with Janice Redish’s excellent book: Letting Go of the Words which emphasises the importance of web content being conversational.  I’m also planning to apply the general good practice guidelines to online learning and come up with a “Writing for the VLE” guide.

Webinars

Last year I co-facilitated a few webinars here at LSE,  some for a Health Economics masters and one with the LSE Careers Service on using Linkedin.  It’s a challenging format and one we will be experimenting with further this year; myself and my colleague Sonja Grussendorf are planning to offer staff a series of lunchtime webinars after Easter.  When planning last year’s LinkedIn one I found the Live Online Learning – a facilitator’s Guide from Onlignment really useful.

Continue reading Some plans for 2011

The Rights’ Future

The Rights’ Future is a new ‘book’ being published online in weekly installments via a blog & YouTube by LSE’s Conor Gearty.

I’m currently advising Conor Gearty, a Professor of Human Rights at the LSE on his use of social media for The Rights’ Future project.  Conor is writing a ‘book’; except it’s not a book, it’s a website, but Conor is writing a website just doesn’t sound quite right.

The Rights' Future Banner

It’s an online publication which will unfold over the coming weeks with the final version being launched at LSE’s Literary Festival in February 2011. Each Monday Conor will post a new essay with a webcam-recorded introduction via YouTube. Then, on Fridays, Conor will expand the original essay incorporating any comments/feedback received on the blog.

Continue reading The Rights’ Future

Read all about it!

Paper.li allows you to automatically publish a daily online newspaper with writers recruited from Twitter

My combined love of traditional media, new media & automated publishing has been mightily impressed by paper.li this morning.  Many thanks to @deerwood for pointing it out. In a couple of clicks I published the first LSE Daily, a collection of articles from LSE tweeters.  The paper will now publish daily.

How does it work?

First you choose your writers using one of three methods:

  1. A Twitter list – this is what I did, using my LSE Twitter List
  2. A Twitter Hashtag
  3. Your own username

Then you click Create.  That’s it; paper.li does the rest!  It uses tweets that include links from your chosen source  and displays them in a newspaper format.  I really like the way it embeds media from the sites it links to and the also how it automatically organises the stories into sections.

Plus, for occasional tweeters or those not using Twitter at all there is a daily email alert.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bjornmeansbear/3740821489/

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