Scholarly Communication

Listen to this interview of Javier Cámara, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Málaga, Spain. We talk about the paper Cámara et al. Quantitative Verification-Aided Machine Learning: A Tandem Approach for Architecting Self-Adaptive IoT Systems. Javier Cámara : "Yes, it had been an option, at one point during revising, to have the preliminaries up in the paper before the overview of our approach was presented. However, we felt that presenting the preliminaries after we have presented the bird's eye view of our approach was going to provide our reader with a rationale for why each element is described and explained there. We wouldn't have established that sort of rationale if we'd presented those elements earlier, or to establish that, we would have needed to repeat quite a lot in the text." Link to Cámara et al. Quantitative Verification-Aided Machine Learning: A Tandem Approach for Architecting Self-Adaptive IoT Systems Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Rick Rabiser, Professor for Software Engineering in Cyber-Physical Systems, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria. We talk about the relationship of researchers in academia and industry, focusing particularly on the community researching into systems and software product lines (SPL). Rick Rabiser : "When you write your paper, imagine you're explaining what you want to write down to someone in a meeting room on the whiteboard. Because this is what we do in research a lot — we try to communicate our ideas to our peers and collaborators, and we very often just do this on a whiteboard. So, if you can tell your research to someone in just this same way, but through text, then you'll enable yourself to tell it, too, to a reviewer, and eventually to a reader." Link to Rabiser et al. A Study and Comparison of Industrial vs Academic Software Product Line Research Published at SPLC Link to Rabiser et al. Industrial and Academic Software Product Line Research at SPLC: Perception of the Community Link to Schmid et al. Bridging the Gap: Voices from Industry and Research on Industrial Relevance of SPLC Link to Becker et al. Not Quite There Yet: Remaining Challenges in Systems and Software Product Line Engineering as Perceived by Industry Practitioners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about publishing but were too afraid to ask. Before and After the Book Deal: A Writer’s Guide to Finishing, Publishing, Promoting, and Surviving Your First Book ( Catapult, 2020) by Courtney Maum is a funny, candid guide about breaking into the marketplace. Cutting through the noise, dispelling rumors and remaining positive, Before and After the Book Deal answers questions like: are MFA programs worth the time and money, and how do people actually sit down and finish a novel? Should you expect a good advance, and why aren’t your friends saying anything about your book? Before and After the Book Deal has over 150 contributors from all walks of the industry, including international bestselling authors, agents, editors, film scouts, translators, disability and minority activists, offering advice and sharing anecdotes about even the most taboo topics in the industry. Their wisdom will help aspiring authors find a foothold in the publishing world and navigate the challenges of life before and after publication with sanity and grace. Covering questions ranging from the logistical to the existential, Before and After the Book Deal is the definitive guide for anyone who has ever wanted to know what it’s really like to be an author. Our guest is: Courtney Maum, who is the author of five books, including Before and After the Book Deal, which Vanity Fair named one of the ten best books for writers, and The Year of the Horses, chosen by The Today Show as the best read for mental health awareness. A writing coach, director of the writing workshop “Turning Points,” and educator, her mission is to help people hold on to the joy of art-making in a culture obsessed with turning artists into brands. Passionate about literary citizenship, she sits on the advisory councils of The Authors Guild and The Rumpus. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer 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 enjoy this playlist: The Artists Joy: A Guide to Getting Unstuck Becoming the Writer You Already Are The DIY Writing Retreat The Top Ten Struggles in Writing a Book Manuscript & What to Do About It Make Your Art No Matter What The Emotional Arc of Turning A Dissertation Into A Book Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can help support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? Find them all here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Marcos Kalinowski, Professor, Department of Informatics, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and also, of Daniel Mendez, Full Professor, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden, and head of Requirements Engineering at fortiss, Germany. We talk about starting a new track at a prestigious journal, with all the challenges and triumphs such a venture brings. Daniel Mendez : "The reviewing and publishing of research is also a social process. And I know that Marcos and me edit looking for reasons to accept, instead of to reject a submission. And we are privileged to work with reviewers who share our approach to research publishing." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Dietmar Pfahl, Professor of Software Engineering, University of Tartu, Estonia. We talk about the interconnections between research and the communication of the research. Dietmar Pfahl : "Reviewers need to be told — and told plainly — the actual relevance of the study. That is why authors will publish better when they really understand how, say, a new approach or technology or method, first off, changes how software is being done, but also how those changes open up new questions about, let's say, the quality of software. So, these authors understand all this, and crucially as well, they explain to the reviewer — that is, they explain why they are doing what they report on there in the manuscript, for example, why they know that their results will help software get developed faster, better, easier, or what have you." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Junhua Ding, Professor of Data Science in the Department of Information Science, University of North Texas. We talk about the part that creativity has to play in the publication of impactful research. Junhua Ding : "Engineering research is different from the sort of pure formal sciences of, say, mathematics, where there may be a theorem to be proved, and then researchers attempt to prove it, and in the process, they provide new methods or directions or even solve the problem. But in software engineering — well, of course, we can work formally, a bit like that, but really, from the engineering point of view, researchers work on applying methods to new domains. And so, our publications in software engineering will often attempt to demonstrate the effectiveness or the drawbacks of a method — so, for example, like the method of GenAI for software testing, but applied to the issue of concurrency. A paper like that is going to be about the application more than it will be specifically about concurrency, you see." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Creating a Person-Centered Library: Best Practices for Supporting High-Needs Patrons (Bloomsbury, 2023) provides a comprehensive overview of various services, programs, and collaborations to help libraries serve high-needs patrons as well as strategies for supporting staff working with these individuals. While public libraries are struggling to address growing numbers of high-needs patrons experiencing homelessness, food insecurity, mental health problems, substance abuse, and poverty-related needs, this book will help librarians build or contribute to library services that will best address patrons' psychosocial needs. Beth Wahler and Sarah C. Johnson, experienced in both library and social work, begin by providing an overview of patrons' psychosocial needs, structural and societal reasons for the shift in these needs, and how these changes impact libraries and library staff. Chapters focus on best practices for libraries providing person-centered services and share lessons learned, including information about special considerations for certain patron populations that might be served by individual libraries. The book concludes with information about how library organizations can support public library staff. Librarians and library students who are concerned about both patrons and library staff will find the practical advice in this book invaluable. NBN can get 20% off Creating a Person-Centered Library by using the discount code NBN20 on the Blooomsbury.com US website. Beth Wahler, PhD, MSW is founder and principal consultant at Beth Wahler Consulting, LLC and affiliated research faculty and previous director of the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina- Charlotte. Dr. Wahler is a social work consultant, researcher, and experienced administrator whose primary focus is trauma-informed librarianship, library strategies for addressing patrons’ or community psychosocial needs, supporting library staff with serving high-needs patrons and reducing work-related stress/trauma, and various kinds of collaborations, services, and programs to meet patron, staff, or community needs. She has also published and presented internationally on library patron and staff needs, trauma-informed librarianship, and library/social work collaborations. Sarah C. Johnson, MLIS, LMSW, is an Adjunct Lecturer at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she teaches a graduate course on Library Social Work. As a researcher and educator, Sarah is the creator and host of the Library Social Work podcast which aims to inform the public about interdisciplinary collaborations between social service providers and public libraries. Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Bram Adams, Professor at the School of Computing, Queen's University, Canada. We talk about current developments in peer review, as it is practised in software engineering research. Bram Adams : "As an editor, one thing you want to see in a review is a summary that clearly says, 'Okay, my overall scoring is this, and my reasons for that are (a) these few negative points but also (b) these few positive points.' But that, in my experience, is missing from reviews much more often than before. Now it is common for editors to get very long and detailed reviews — very well done, in fact — but the major turning-point-reasons for the reviewer’s final recommendation are really spread all throughout the review. And the problem here is that the editor is now put in the difficult position of having to sift through and to locate and in the end really interpret so that those reasons can be made clear to the authors but also to the presiding editor too.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you been told your draft isn’t ready yet, because you still need to find your argument? We have all gotten that feedback at some point. But what we haven’t been told is how to find our argument. Today we return to The Dissertation-to-Book Workbook: Exercises for Developing and Revising Your Book Manuscript (U Chicago Press, 2023), with Dr. Katelyn E. Knox and Dr. Allison Van Deventer, to learn how to find and assemble an argument. Whether you are writing an article, dissertation or a book, this episode is the skills workshop you need! Our guest is: Dr. Allison Van Deventer, who is a freelance developmental editor for academic authors in the humanities and qualitative social sciences. She is the co-author of The Dissertation-to-Book Workbook: Exercises for Developing and Revising Your Book Manuscript. Our co-guest is: Dr. Katelyn Knox, who is an associate professor of French at the University of Central Arkansas. She is the author of Race on Display in 20th- and 21st-Century France. She is the co-author of The Dissertation-to-Book Workbook: Exercises for Developing and Revising Your Book Manuscript. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell (and why) and what happens to those we never tell. Listeners may also enjoy: The Dissertation to Book Workbook The Grant Writing Guide Where Research Begins Book Proposals Learning from Rejection and Failure Contracts, Agents and Editors: Demystifying the Path to Publication Dissertations Wanted : A Conversation with the Editor of the University of Wyoming Press University Press Submissions and the Peer Review Process Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us here again to learn from even more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Often assumed to be a self-evident good, Open Access has been subject to growing criticism for perpetuating global inequities and epistemic injustices. it has been seen as imposing exploitative business and publishing models and as exacerbating exclusionary research evaluation culture and practices. Achieving Global Open Access: The Need for Scientific, Epistemic, and Participatory Openness (Taylor & Francis, 2024) engages with these issues, recognizing that the global Open Access debate is now not just about publishing and business models or academic reward structures, but also about what constitutes valid and valuable knowledge, how we know and who gets to say. the book argues that, for Open Access to deliver its potential, it first needs to be associated with "epistemic openness", a wider and more inclusive understanding of what constitutes valid and valuable knowledge. it also needs to be accompanied by "participatory openness", enabling contributions to knowledge from more diverse communities. interacting with relevant theory and current practices, the book discusses the challenges in implementing these different forms of openness, the relationship between them and their limits. Stephen Pinfield is Professor of Information Services Management at the University of Sheffield, UK, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Research on Research Institute (RoRI). Xiaoli Chen is project lead at DataCite, a non-profit organization that provides open scholarly infrastructure and supports the global research community to ensure the open availability and connectedness of research outputs. She has a background in Library and Information Science and worked with different disciplinary communities to create and integrate services and workflows for open and FAIR scholarship. She can be reached at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Anthony Anjorin, a lead software architect at Zühlke Engineering, Germany; and also, Hsiang-Shang Ko, assistant research fellow, Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. We talk about their paper Benchmarking bidirectional transformations: Theory, implementation, application, and assessment (Software and Systems Modeling). Anthony Anjorin : "I really believe in the method called peer instruction in teaching. The basic idea is that experts, who deal with focused topics over long periods, are not necessarily best suited to explaining a thing simply and in just a few sentences. So, in this paper, we took this method into the drafting process. The first three coauthors did nearly all of the writing, while the other six coauthors provided their solutions — which, of course, was crucial, so that we could claim that each solution was provided by an expert person in that area. But nonetheless, it remained for the first three coauthors to do the writing, and that meant, they interviewed the experts and discussed with them so as to become able to write about those solutions themselves — even though they are non-experts. Then, in final round of revision, the solution experts reviewed the texts, providing the writers with the feedback, the comments, and the recommendations they needed to revise the text and make it final." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With My Gothic Dissertation, University of Iowa PhD Anna M. Williams has transformed the dreary diss into a This American Life-style podcast. Williams’ witty writing and compelling audio production allow her the double move of making a critical intervention into the study of the gothic novel, while also making an entertaining and thought-provoking series for non-experts. Williams uses famed novels by authors such as Anne Radcliffe and Mary Shelly as an entry point for a critique of graduate school itself—a Medieval institution of shadowy corners, arcane rituals, and a feudal power structure. The result is a first-of-its-kind work that serves as a model for doing literary scholarship in sound. This episode of Phantom Power offers you an exclusive preview of My Gothic Dissertation. First, Mack Hagood interviews Williams about creating the project, then we listen to a full chapter—a unique reading of Frankenstein that explores how the university tradition can restrict access to knowledge even as it tries to produce knowledge. You can learn more about Anna M. Williams and her work at her website. This episode features music from Neil Parsons’ 8-Bit Bach Reloaded. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Predatory publishing is a complex problem that harms a broad array of stakeholders and concerns across the scholarly communications system. It shines a light on the inadequacies of scholarly assessment and related rewards systems, contributes to the marginalization of scholarship from less developed countries, and negatively impacts the acceptance of open access. To fix what is broken in scholarly communications, academic librarians must act as both teachers and advocates and partner with other stakeholders who have the agency to change how scholarship is produced, assessed, and rewarded. Predatory Publishing and Global Scholarly Communications (ACRL, 2024) by Monica Berger is a unique and comprehensive exploration of predatory publishing in four parts: Background; Characteristics and Research; The Geopolitics of Scholarly Publishing; and Responses and Solutions. It examines the history of predatory publishing and basics of scholarly assessment; identifies types of research misconduct and unethical scholarly behaviors; provides critical context to predatory publishing and scholarly communications beyond the Global North; and offers structural and pedagogical solutions and teaching materials for librarians to use in their work with authors, students, faculty, and other stakeholders. Predatory Publishing and Global Scholarly Communications gives powerful insight into predatory publishing across the world, inside and outside of the library community, and provides tools for understanding and teaching its impact and contributing to its improvement. Monica Berger is the Instruction and Scholarly Communications Librarian and Professor at the New York City College of Technology, City University of New York. Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Istvan David, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Department of Computing and Software, Faculty of Engineering, McMaster University, Canada. We talk about his coauthored paper "Collaborative Model-Driven Software Engineering – A Systematic Survey of Practices and Needs in Industry" (JSS 2023). Istvan David : "When I read a paper, I like to have a visual excerpt of it — somewhere I can go to find the key messages. This is immediately what I look for, because we all use adaptive reading depth, right — that is, at first, we skim to look for the key visual elements, to find and use those informative conclusion boxes — because on our initial-starting reading level, we are most helped by these features of the paper to really grasp the large meaning of the research reported there." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do you turn a dissertation into a book? Today’s book is: The Dissertation-to-Book Workbook: Exercises for Developing and Revising Your Book Manuscript (U Chicago Press, 2023), by Dr. Katelyn E. Knox and Dr. Allison Van Deventer, which offers a series of manageable, concrete steps and exercises to help you revise your academic manuscript into a book. The Dissertation-to-Book Workbook offers clear examples, as well as targeted exercises, checklists and prompts to take all the guesswork out of writing a book. You will learn how to clarify your book’s core priorities, pinpoint your organizing principle, polish your narrative arc, evaluate your evidence, and much more. Using what this workbook calls “book questions and chapter answers,” you will learn how to thread your book’s main ideas through its chapters, assemble an argument, and revise the manuscript. By the time you complete the workbook, you will have confidence that your book is a cohesive, focused manuscript that tells the story you want to tell. Our guest is: Dr. Katelyn Knox, who is an associate professor of French at the University of Central Arkansas. She is the author of Race on Display in 20th- and 21st-Century France. Our co-guest is: Dr. Allison Van Deventer, who is a freelance developmental editor for academic authors in the humanities and qualitative social sciences. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell (and why) and what happens to those we never tell. Listeners may also enjoy: Stylish Academic Writing The Emotional Arc of Turning A Dissertation Into A Book The Artist's Joy: A Guide to Getting Unstuck and Embracing Imperfection Becoming the Writer You Already Are Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us here again to learn from even more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What would it be like if scholars presented their research in sound rather than in print? Better yet, what if we could hear them in the act of their research and analysis, pulling different historical sounds from the archives and rubbing them against one another in an audio editor? In today’s episode, we get to find out what such an innovative scholarly audiobook would sound like–because our guest has created the first one! Jacob Smith‘s ESC (University of Michigan Press) is a fascinating sonic exploration of postwar radio drama and contemporary sound art, as well as a meditation on how humans have reshaped the ecological fate of the planet. Before we listen to an excerpt of ESC, Mack interviews Jake about how his skills as a former musician came in handy for his work as an audio academic. You can listen to ESC: Sonic Adventure in the Anthropocene in its entirety for free courtesy of the University of Michigan Press. You can also watch Jake’s 90s band The Mysteries of Life perform in the “bad music video” Jake mentions or on Conan O’Brien. Jacob Smith is founder and director of the Master of Arts in Sound Arts and Industries, and professor in the Department of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University. He is the author of three print-based books on sound: Vocal Tracks: Performance and Sound Media (University of California Press 2008); Spoken Word: Postwar American Phonograph Cultures(University of California Press 2011); and Eco-Sonic Media (University of California Press, 2015). He writes and teaches about the cultural history of media, with a focus on sound and performance. Today’s show was edited by Craig Eley and featured music by Blue Dot Sessions. Our intern is Gina Moravec. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Istvan David, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Department of Computing and Software, Faculty of Engineering, McMaster University, Canada; and, Houari Sahraoui, Full Professor, Department of Computer Science and Operations Research, University of Montreal, Canada. We talk about their coauthored paper "Digital Twins for Cyber-Biophysical Systems: Challenges and Lessons Learned" (MODELS 2023). Istvan David : "Making Figure 1, and also all of the text that depends on it——this was one of the hardest parts about writing this paper. I remember, in the very first draft, we had another layer there of abstraction, but we saw that the content was really hard to follow that way. So, for me personally, my takeaway from that process was: Though it made sense to us back then to follow our case-based generalization approach, this just wasn't going to work for a reader who hadn't gone down that exact same research path as us. So, really, you have to mindful of your reader like that."​ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Görkem Giray, IT executive and part-time educator in the domain of computer science. We talk about his paper A software engineering perspective on engineering machine learning systems: "A software engineering perspective on engineering machine learning systems: State of the art and challenges" (JSS 2021). Görkem Giray : "By the time I received back the reviews for this paper, I had been working on the topic for over a year. So, that's why, like so many researchers deep inside their topics, I had started to become blind. Therefore, it helps immensely to have outside reviewers on your work——because with focus on a topic comes, too, this blindness in perspective. That's where the outsider view helps." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Redowan Mahmud, Lecturer in the School of Electrical Engineering, Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Curtin University, Australia; and, Mohammad Goudarzi, Lecturer at Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Australia. We talk about their paper iFogSim simulator for mobility, clustering, and microservice management in edge and fog computing environments (JSS 2022). Redowan Mahmud : "The thing is, when a researcher starts writing, they start from their own perspective. So, in our case, we wrote our manuscript from the perspective of, 'These things are right, and those things are the limitations.' But in the review process, we found out — as many researchers do — that the strengths and limitations of our work were not demonstrably in quite that shape. The reviewers still needed convincing that what we were doing was innovative and in the long run was going to make some impact. That was the task we needed to accomplish through the writing." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Darja Smite, Professor of Software Engineering at Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden, and also research scientist at SINTEF; and, Jarle Hildrum, Director, Deloitte Consulting, Norway; and also, Daniel Mendez, Professor of Software Engineering at Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden, and as well, Senior Scientist heading the research division Requirements Engineering at fortiss. We talk about their paper Work-from-home is here to stay: Call for flexibility in post-pandemic work policies (JSS 2023). Daniel Mendez : "Two key takeaways from our collective experience here are, No.1, figures don't need to be absolute — so, we should really focus on the essence of what we want to convey. And No.2, in terms of what we want to convey, I think that every figure ideally has one key message, one key takeaway." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the fourth episode of Publish My Book, Avi breaks down the core components of a winning book proposal and identifies key questions you should be able to answer to effectively convey to your publisher why they should consider your manuscript. Avi shares why it is worth your time to introduce yourself to your target acquisitions editor in advance. He then takes a deep dive into the book proposal itself by addressing how you can craft each proposal section as strongly as possible. From the table of contents and proposal abstract to identifying which sample chapter to share and how to compile a succinct CV, Avi offers insider tips to help you set yourself up for success from the outset. Related resources: How to Get a Contract from a Reputable Academic Publisher Before You Write Your Book Sample Book Proposal Watch Laura Portwood Stacer, author of The Book Proposal Book, in conversation with Avi Staiman about mastering the book proposal Hear from acquisitions editors: The Authors Handbook to Academic Book Publishing Identify your current stage within the publishing journey (and navigate the rest of the journey with success!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the third episode of Publish My Book, Avi dives into one of the most important stages of the publishing journey: writing the book proposal. Avi poses a fundamental first step you should take before putting pen to paper - conducting a thorough market analysis of your research. By identifying key criteria in your market analysis, you will be equipped to more effectively present your target acquisitions editor with a convincing proposal that not only highlights your research’s impact but also why it can sell and how it can contribute to their existing portfolio. Related resources: How to Get a Contract from a Reputable Academic Publisher Before You Write Your Book Hear from acquisitions editors: The Authors Handbook to Academic Book Publishing Identify your current stage within the publishing journey (and navigate the rest of the journey with success!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the second episode of Publish My Book, Avi Staiman explores how to determine if your research is best suited for a commercial or university press and why the distinction between the two categories is key to increasing your chances of publication success. Avi shares some important differences between these two publishing types by posing a series of critical questions aspiring authors should be able to answer about their research and publishing aspirations, including: Do I want to see my published book at an airport? By gaining an understanding of important terminology, including ‘trade publishing’, authors can continue to lay down a sturdy foundation for their publishing journey. Related resources: Which publishing option is best for me? Learn more about leading commercial and university presses Hear from acquisitions editors: The Authors Handbook to Academic Book Publishing Identify your current stage within the publishing journey (and navigate the rest of the journey with success!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the first episode of Publish My Book, Avi Staiman offers strategic tips for identifying your target publisher, including: understanding where other titles in your research field have been published and how your research angle fits into existing series, using platforms such as the Association of University Presses and New Books Network to your advantage and introducing yourself to relevant editors to inquire about potential publishing fits. Related resources: Association of University Presses find a publisher matrix Identify which New Books Network channel(s) most closely relates to your research field Hear from acquisitions editors: The Authors Handbook to Academic Book Publishing Identify your current stage within the publishing journey (and navigate the rest of the journey with success!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Roberto Verdecchia, Assistant Professor at the Software Technologies Laboratory, University of Florence, Italy. We talk about his coauthored paper Building and evaluating a theory of architectural technical debt in software-intensive systems (JSS 2021). Roberto Verdecchia : "In results sections, I feel it's rather helpful if, when writing, you sort of find a systematicity in the presentation. So, if you look at our paper here, each subsection has the exact same structure, where we start by describing a category first in general — you know, giving an overview of the category — then we cross-reference to a figure, where the description becomes more fine-grained and the overview more low-level for that particular subsection, then finally we include each one of all the single categories, each with its own subheading in boldface." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Marcos Kalinowski, Associate Professor at the Department of Informatics, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We talk about his coauthored papers; When to update systematic literature reviews in software engineering (JSS 2020); Guidelines for the search strategy to update systematic literature reviews in software engineering (IST 2020); and Successful combination of database search and snowballing for identification of primary studies in systematic literature studies (IST 2022). Marcos Kalinowski : "Genuine collaborations, ones which actually come out the context of ideas — even by coincidence and just because the work shared a common ground — this is the sort of thing that keeps me motivated. I consider scientific research to be level upon level of collaboration, so really the opposite to a view which might see the research as competition. Because I have experienced in my career, and certainly in all the work on these three papers — that we do more impactful work by sharing ideas and collaborating.." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Tushar Sharma, assistant professor at Dalhousie University, Canada. We talk about his paper Code Smell Detection by Deep Direct-Learning and Transfer Learning (JSS 2021). Tushar Sharma : "For sure, it is crucial that the authors provide information about what they did, but also they need to provide enough information about this implementation so that another researcher can use the details to go and implement the approach themselves. And critical here is not just the level of detail, but also the presentation of that detail. Because if it's not well structured, the risk is that a researcher will get lost and therefore be unable to replicate the work." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of the CEU Press Podcast, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press/CEU Review of Books) sat down with Cyril Heude (Sciences Po) to talk about all things metadata. What is metadata? How can researchers use metadata to help others discover their research? Cyril answers all these questions and more. Cyril’s main activities as a data librarian consist of Data Management Plan advising and writing, administrating the institutional repository (data.sciencespo), training students and researchers, writing online guides, conducting events and workshops with laboratories staff, archivists and the data protection officer and participating in a data journal (editorial and scientific committees). His professional interests focus on active and playful teaching through escape games, murder parties, board games, sketch notes and storytelling. Useful links: Sciences Po guide about data management. Metadata standard in social sciences. This episode is part of our Getting published series. For our episode on how to write a successful book proposal click here. For our episode on navigating peer review, click here. The CEU Press Podcast delves into various aspects of the publishing process: from crafting a book proposal, finding a publisher, responding to peer review feedback on the manuscript, to the subsequent distribution, promotion and marketing of academic books. We will also talk to series editors and authors, who will share their experiences of getting published and talk about their series or books. Interested in CEU Press’s publications? Click here to find out more: https://ceupress.com/ Stay tuned for future episodes and subscribe to our podcast to be the first to be notified. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of José Antonio Hernández López, postdoc in the Department of Computer and Information Science, Software and Systems, Linköping University, Sweden; and Jesús Sánchez Cuadrado, Professor, Department of Computing and Systems, Universidad de Murcia, Spain. We talk about their paper Word Embeddings for Model-Driven Engineering (MoDELS 2023). Jesús Sánchez Cuadrado : "Actually, there are two target readers for our paper. One is anyone interested in the results because they are researchers who will try to improve what we have done or because they want to build better models. So, of course, for this reader, the results are very important. But we envisioned another target reader: Someone who'll just use the artifact. And for this reader, the results are less important, because they might just go quickly to the evaluation section and see how our results improve on the SOTA, and really, that's enough for their purposes." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to Episode No. 10 of All We Mean, a Special Focus of this podcast. All We Mean is an ongoing discussion and debate about how we mean and why. The guests on today's episode are Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, professors at the University of Illinois, and as well, John Jones, assistant professor at SUNY Cortland. In this episode of the Focus, our topic is Image as Form in a Transpositional Grammar: The Example of Photography. Bill Cope : "Every time a new medium turns up, it does new things. So, in the case of photography — our example medium today — its form is Image, and in our grammar, the Image is the human's way of representing the world on a two-dimensional plane. Now, of course, the Image has been around for a very long time, but when photography develops, it adds new things to the Image — it makes the Image much more accessible. You know, how many zillions of photographs are taken every day now, and most of them pushed across space and time via the Internet, right? So we ask, what does that massification of the ability to create the Image do?" Links Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Image Muybridge's Moving Images Robert Fielding Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Courtney Miller, PhD student in Software Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. We talk about her paper "Did You Miss My Comment or What?" Understanding Toxicity in Open Source Discussions (ICSE 2022). Courtney Miller : "One of the things I really enjoyed after publication was the interest of other communities in our work. I mean, just the summer after we published, I went and gave a talk at the Linux Open Source conference, and it was really great to learn that — there's a lot of duality of thought in this world, but there's a lot of people who are pretty much studying the same types of problems as you but from completely different fields and completely different directions. And so, being able to incorporate their work in as well, while also having the bulk of our citations be to ICSE, of course, because that's our bread and butter in software engineering — all that comes together to make a better foundation for the paper." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Lee 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 book The 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 Tool contributes 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’Sullivan is 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 Guide will 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 Guide answers 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 website PublishingFundamentals.com. His YouTube channel contains over 100 short videos on academic publishing. Or connect with him on LinkedIn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Rajkumar Buyya, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, University of Melbourne, and Director there too of the Cloud 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 call paper++ 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 problem Stylish Academic Writing addresses 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 Writing also offers examples of transferable techniques that any writer can master. Our guest is: Dr. Helen Sword who 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 of The 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 of Claire Le Goues, Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. We talk about writing to present versus writing 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 much not about 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 of Diomidis 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, in The Experimental Library: A Guide to Taking Risks, Failing Forward, and Creating Change (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 Library supports 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 Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The 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 is Science 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 skills into the science curriculum but also into a researcher's overall training 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 research and the communication of the research." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Object Lessons is 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 Lessons paints a picture of the world around us, and tells the story of how we got here, one object at a time. Many Object Lessons books 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, and Swimming Pool. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses 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

Listen to this interview of Miroslaw Staron, Editor-in-Chief of Information and Software Technology and Professor in the Software engineering division, Chalmers | University of Gothenburg. We talk about the collaboration and mentorship which publishing is meant to be. Miroslaw Staron : "The communication through academic publication is of course important to every researcher's CV. But really, it's much more important for science overall. If we cannot communicate our ideas, then we cannot make those ideas available to the scrutiny of others. That is, if we are unable to show what we have actually worked on and which kind of methodology we have used to do that work, and if we can't really describe the kind of results we have achieved — then really, I mean, just ask yourself, how should someone else ever be able to get back to us to say, 'Yes, this is a good idea,' or, ‘No, this is a bad idea, but I know how to do it right'? Because that is the way to move the field forward — it all rests on the communication." Links Miroslaw's advice on writing Information and Software Technology Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Brandon Brown, Professor of Physics at the University of San Francisco. We talk about factoring in both message-sender and -receiver to your writing for STEM. Brown is the author of Sharing Our Science: How to Write and Speak STEM (MIT Press, 2023). Brandon Brown : "I've seen so many different scientists and communicators, including Nobel Laureates, all the way to grad students who are struggling with the English — and it's just apparent to me that some people do have a much better sense of audience. And to my mind, that level of compassion, even perhaps of connection — that is what makes their communication work so very well. And really, this is a talent or disposition which is independent of a person's linguistic skills or background, isn't it?" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to Episode No.9 of All We Mean, a Special Focus of this podcast. All We Mean is an ongoing discussion and debate about how we mean and why. The guests on today's episode are Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, professors at the University of Illinois; and joining us, as well, is James Gee, Regents Professor and Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University. In this episode of the Focus, our topic is the generativity of machines. James Gee : "I fundamentally believe that humans are a screwed-up species — one of the few species that will put themselves out of business in a shorter evolutionary time than any species that has lived on Earth. So, something must be wrong with us. And I think what's wrong with us is, we don't understand what sort of animal we are. That's why our schools are no good — we don't understand how humans really learn. We don't understand what a human really is. We have an elevated view of our own rationality, of our own intelligence, and the consequence is, we are depleting the world. So, the biggest attempt we can still make now is to use everything we can (including Chat) to retheorize who we are as a being before we put ourselves out of existence." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Emad Shihab, Full Professor and Concordia Research Chair in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Concordia University, Canada. We talk about authenticating learning and unlocking potential in people — the true ways to innovate research. Emad Shihab : "To build a vision, I always say, try to make it ambitious and then break it down. So, just saying, 'I want to change the world,' I mean, it's a great vision but the truth is, nobody knows what their part in that is supposed to be — how can they contribute to you changing the world. That’s why, for me, having a vision is — you try to build whatever it is that the vision is meant to do, then you make sure you break it down into smaller pieces so that people can know the parts that they could play in that vision.” Learn about Create SE4AI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Rebekka Burkholz, faculty at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security. We talk about the composition of research groups and of research papers. Rebekka Burkholz : "I have the feeling that this meta-reading becomes more important as a person's career progresses. Because early on, a researcher is typically very focused on the details of each paper and they try to understand what this method does and so on — and of course, researchers need to begin that way, really spending the time to attain to expertise in a particular focus. But with time, as a researcher has seen more ideas (and of course, in one particular focus, methods and questions all share some similarity), then the person acquires more and more overview as they continue reading. They are reading, essentially, for the links between findings, for implications of the findings and those links — and in this way, a more experienced reader of the research actually becomes engaged in a sort of literature discussion." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn about the fascinating Ethno-Indology series now published at Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing which offers inexpensive peer-reviewed Open Access and Print-on-Demand publishing for scholars from all over the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you facing writing roadblocks? There are many guides on how to make your writing match academic standards, so why aren’t there any on how to make yourself actually write? How can you get to PhDone if life keeps getting in the way? Can you get there if you are a care-giver? Facing illness, or work responsibilities? Dealing with anxiety? In the midst of a personal or a global crisis? What practical advice exists to help you get to PhDone in the real world? Scholar and author Dr. Briana Barner joins us to share the practical approaches that worked for her, and that can work for you, in this episode that breaks down what it takes to tackle and finish a big writing project in real life. Our guest is: Dr. Briana Barner, who is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland. She received a doctorate in Radio-Television-Film and a doctoral portfolio in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of Texas. Briana also earned a Master’s in Women’s and Gender Studies from UT. She is an interdisciplinary critical and cultural communications scholar with research interests in Black podcasts, digital and Black feminism, digital media, Black cultural production and representation. Her work has been published in journals including Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, and Film Quarterly. She is currently working on a manuscript about the cultural production of Black podcasts. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator 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 the episodes on this playlist: Black Women, Ivory Tower Becoming the Writer You Already Are Managing Your Mental Health during the PhD process Mindfulness PhD Survival Guide Being Well in Academia 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. You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes, because knowledge is for everyone. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to this interview of Paris Avgeriou, Editor in Chief of the Journal of Systems and Software (together with David Shepherd). Paris is Full Professor of Software Engineering at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. We talk about peer review, journal editing, and scientific writing. Paris Avgeriou : "I actually think that authoring and reviewing are very close to one another, because when you review a paper, you actually start thinking how to improve it — what the strong points are and also what the points for improvement are. So, by getting into this sort of mentality — that is, by noticing what is wrong with the paper and how to make it better — this makes you a better author, because when you review other people's work, you start to understand what makes a paper strong and what needs revising to make it stronger. And so, when someone who reviews regularly goes to write their own papers, they automatically start thinking about these things. So, in fact, reviewing other people's work makes you a better author yourself." Links Journal of Systems and Software The New Reddit Journal of Science Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to Episode No.8 of All We Mean, a Special Focus of this podcast. All We Mean is an ongoing discussion and debate about how we mean and why. The guests on today's episode are Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, professors at the University of Illinois. Today we welcome, too, Duane Searsmith, E-Learning Technical Specialist, Information Trust Institute, also at the University of Illinois. In this episode of the Focus, our topic is the meaning of generation by machine. It's stunning what Generative AI can produce, but what exactly is it there that is being produced? What does it mean, and what do we do with it? And actually, more important, what do we do with the AI that's doing the producing? AI in our lives now and will continue infiltrating and embedding only more as each day passes and each new update and redesign is released. Therefore, we are the responsible parties in this — we, us, the users. We are the ones we must ask: What does AI mean to us? Because what AI just means, itself... well, that is still only whatever we can mean, ourselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices