I asked Chat GPT: Please recast the argument between Donald Trump and Elon Musk as a scene from a play by William Shakespeare. A Scene from The Tempest of Tech and Throne Act III, Scene II A courtyard ...

Max Adams: Aelfred’s Britain Max Adams is an archaeologist and writer specialising in Early Medieval Britain (that is, between the departure of Rome in 410, to the Norman Conquest) . His other books ...

The answer to many of today’s problems seems to lie in the magic word ‘skills’, but this word can be used to mean so many different things, depending on audience and context, that in itself it is far ...

Update (17:00 03 Mar): all members of the UK or international scientific community were invited to indicate their support by signing the letter. The opportunity to do so closed at 17:00 UK time on 03 ...

Regulars at this blog will be familiar with the dim view that I have of impact factors, in particular their mis-appropriation for the evaluation of individual researchers and their work. I have argued ...

I am sick of impact factors and so is science. The impact factor might have started out as a good idea, but its time has come and gone. Conceived by Eugene Garfield in the 1970s as a useful tool for ...

As part of its celebrations to mark the 350th anniversary of the publication of Philosophical Transactions, the world’s longest-running scientific journal, the Royal Society has organised a conference ...

Really, who doesn’t love a good old tiled floor. So classy. We have tiled floors in our flat, of course we do. Our Regency flat (yes, I am persisiting in calling it that) only became a flat in the ...

Last month I attended the IAML UK & Ireland Annual Study Weekend (ASW). IAML is the International Association of Music Libraries, and this is an event run each year by the UK & Ireland branch. This ...

Twelve months after the publication of the Finch Report, during which the new RCUK policy on open access has been published, dissected, debated (including by committees in both Houses of Parliament), ...

It’s not even two months since the tectonic plates shifted underneath academic publishing in the UK. But in the few weeks since the government’s response to the Finch report and the announcement of ...

Since its announcement on 4th September the European Commission’s plan to make a radical shift towards open access (OA) has caused quite a stir. Backed by eleven* national funding agencies, the plan ...