• Research,  Software

    Tracking impact

    Universities are increasingly attuned to the ‘impact’ agenda – seeking to measure and quantify the impact of our work on society. The Australian Research Council defines ‘research impact’ as ‘the contribution that research makes to the economy, society, environment or culture, beyond the contribution to academic research.’ In many fields, ‘impact’ is measured through citation counts. This is problematic for multiple reasons: self-citations can ‘game’ citation counts (and are included in most citation measures); and a highly cited article could be cited a lot because it is so bad! So use citation data with caution. Also, we need to contextualise any impact data in the context of our field; so…

  • Money in a bucket
    Research

    Making the most of a grant

    After six (disrupted) years, I have finally come to the end of my Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. It has been an incredible privilege to spend this time intensively researching. I think – I hope – I have done that privilege justice. You can see my grant outputs at ageworks.info. But what isn’t often talked about is how hard it can be work to work on a large grant alone for so many years. The camaraderie of teaching is gone, and there are no grounds to complain when things get tough – being on a grant is a privilege, after all! Suck it up, sunshine. Intensively researching…

  • Keys
    Research

    Be brave: how to negotiate open access rights with your publisher

    For Open Access Week 2020, I spoke with Dimity Flanagan (Manager, Scholarly Communications) at the University of Melbourne about why open access is important and the practicalities of making research open. My thoughts (originally published here) are reposted below. Q. Why is it important to you to take the extra time to make sure more of your research is available open access? For me, open access is important for a number of reasons. First, it is a way in which we can ensure that publicly-funded research is made accessible to the public. Second, open access extends the reach and impact of our scholarship. I have discovered this somewhat by accident:…