Project idea: a website that aggregates Article Processing Charges from a bunch of journals and compares them to each country's median salary and/or median PhD income and/or per capita science and technology budget and/or any other relevant metric.
As Voltaire could've said, if this doesn't exist, it needs to be created.
The other day another grad student and I discussed how books are often a better way to introduce oneself to a new field than our usual default of following a chain of papers. But academic blogs are (were) also a fun way to kick start thinking or see connections that are not apparent to newbies. I know the incentives don't line up, but if academics wanna (re)start blogging or are thinking about a book rather than papers, I'm a fan. #academicchatter
Some more from the world of university student grading....
A lab report assignment where the use of generative AI is allowed with appropriate attribution. It’s a class of ~100 students.
Around half the class chose not to use genAI. Around a third cited their use of gen AI.
So about a third of the course have started to upskill and to use genAI in what I believe is a productive / useful way. And that is over a 10-week term – when we started, almost no one in the class had explored the use of genAI beyond ‘playing around over Christmas’.
I could also compare the cited use of genAI and that detected by an ‘AI writing detection model’, and I can confirm that it was sub-optimal.
On Wednesday evenings, I work until 7:50 pm in the office and then go straight to choir practice. I leave my laptop in the office and so, on Thursday mornings, I do not start with emails or similar, but rather with an hour of paper book reading in the comfy chair at home. It’s wonderful! #AcademicChatter
How much does the academic peer review cost in notional staff time?
This paper got me thinking about how much my time commitment to the review process has cost my employers over my career so far.
The authors in this paper suggest each paper review has a US dollar cost of $1272 of time commitment.
And a previous paper suggests a US dollar cost of $1900 per person per year for the lead author submitting a paper. That is the time taken to format and submit a paper and then revise it.
These figures blow out to more than one billion US dollar annual cost for peer review alone. Which of course is typically done for free and often poorly recognized.
Dear journals asking me to review a paper: what makes you think I am going to create an account on your system just to decline your invitation? #AcademicChatter
Hello, I am super sleepy this morning, I couldn’t get up when my alarm went so I’ll have to exercise after work. That’s OK. Working on a journal article today about co-production of a non-punitive space for offenders in the community #Criminology#AcademicChatter#AmWriting