Whilst there were no illusions of a research career equating to limitless wealth, it is profoundly depressing to read further confirmation that the market value of research skills is less than £ 30k, with the added luxury of a fixed term duration of barely a year:

BioenNW Interreg IVB Research Associate for Pyrolysis Systems - Pyrofabs ( Read more... )

Further to an earlier post (see: http://academics-anon.livejournal.com/1867197.html), temporary academic professors continue to revolt in order to improve relatively poor working conditions.

Since it has been stated before that the situation of temporary academic staff is not "new" ( Read more... )

A list of "predatory" open access journal publishers initiated by Jeffrey Beall was considered to be per se a useful service to the scientific research community, as an aid to determine the credentials of emerging publishers in the absence of appropriate bibliometrics such as 'impact factor'. That was until this blog post mentioned an incredulous ( Read more... )

Up to now, E has always disparaged the monolith that is social media and ****book in particular. Thankfully, there are almost always alternatives, but one has to look for them...

Prompted by the recent purchase sell-out of 'whatsapp', decided to renew use of 'Diaspora'. The open access world is now seriously compromised by predatory sub-standard " ( Read more... )

(Imminent Dr) J Love wrote a nice reflective post about her observations about the connections between energy and housing. Since an invitation to comment was made, here goes!

Energy use factors in buildings. It is surprising to claim insufficient studies on energy usage within buildings. The Carbon Trust (do they still exist, post-austerity? ;) ) ( Read more... )

Impressive to read that Sweden has the capability to source the majority of primary energy from renewable sources.

It's surprising that people assume either a willingness or existing ability to access academic literature. How many people would be interested in a recent study cited in a blog post, about the impact of green VAT via life-cycle analysis, yet are unable to access it? Fortunately, there are open access alternatives, such as recent special issues ( Read more... )

In reply to this post about comparison between electronic and paper documents:

The comparison made in this web page between internet and paper is flawed ( Read more... )

Eventually got a journal article published today (after a rejection by another publisher: not bitter! ;) ). It has it's flaws, but journal article output is the main measure of an academic researcher's activity. Reminiscing, am disappointed that not as much work was done as envisaged, but at least a minor article is evidence something was achieved ( Read more... )

This blog post about industry-university collaboration reminded me about the opinion of the free software foundation regarding university software development. However, considering the comment of Mark at 'IP Draughts' (also interesting; another RSS feed added to my list!) suggests that as far as use of free software with university research is ( Read more... )