In the tennis player André Agassi’s autobiography, Open (definitely among the best of sporting autobiographies), our hero describes the scene when he finally finds himself walking on a beach with his fellow 1992 Wimbledon champion, Steffi Graf, just the two of them. He feels the need to start what he hopes will be a relationship […] … learn more→

Title This must be in two parts, separated by a colon. The fragment before the colon uses a colloquial expression preferred by your research subjects, something grammatically dubious and profane. This is placed in quotation marks to demonstrate your personal distance from it. The short sentence after the colon establishes your knowledge of the chosen […] … learn more→

This is part three of my series on academic book publishing. The aim of this series is to take you through the process of turning your PhD into a book – or perhaps writing a new book in the early part of your career. Not all academic disciplines are interested in book publishing and look […] … learn more→

If you missed the last installment; step one can be found here – I recommend reading this post first Step Four: Don’t be an academic asshole about it It’s highly likely, unless you did the slightly less cold call approach descibed in my previous post, that you won’t get a fast answer to your initial pitch to an […] … learn more→

At this year’s EuroScience Open Forum conference in Toulouse, Carlos Moedas, the European Union commissioner for research, science and innovation, called for a new social contract between citizens, governments and science. After the announcement on Horizon Europe, Mr Moedas said that if “you receive public money, you must publish with open access. We cannot continue […] … learn more→

Maybe you have been harbouring secret thoughts about getting a book from those blog posts that you’ve been writing. I think about it too, occasionally, as patter is now several books worth of words. Well, before you take the plunge, it’s worth just thinking about blogging and book writing. What do they have in common? […] … learn more→

Whether we like it or not, published research remains one of the significant benchmarks by which academics are measured. So from the perspective of science and the social sciences, how does the postdoctoral researcher (or temporary lecturer) go about achieving this? I want to focus on three linked areas that are based around work, publication […] … learn more→

The southern hemisphere’s cold weather is a certain signal that winter conference season is upon us. In the coming weeks academics – from many disciplines – will be spending freezing nights in student dorms and days exchanging disciplinary gossip on the plight of the universities and on what is new in their chosen field. But […] … learn more→

To be honest, I am a reluctant blogger. Although, my blog Academic Diary  established itself quickly with on-line readers when it first appeared in 2011, I always intended these short essays on university life – from PhD Supervision to the challenges of academic writing – to be published as a book. Blogging was actually a […] … learn more→

When Ashgate Publishing was bought last summer by Informa, a large corporation, some academics feared for its future. What would happen to the family-owned publishing house, which had spent four decades building a reputation for social responsibility and close relationships with its authors? In November those fears started coming true. According to a Change.org petition […] … learn more→