Castles and Coprolites

Creating an inclusive research culture means thinking not just about what  we discuss, but how and  when  we come together to do it.  One of the challenges of academic life is deciding when  to hold research seminars. These are important events for sharing our ideas, and hearing from researchers based in other institutions. I've worked at lots of different universities which have all had different approaches to this, and it seems to be an area where there is a lot of discussion around what is the most equitable way to organise these. Many places now offer a Teams/remote option as standard, which is brilliant, but often it's not just about listening to the seminar itself, but the opportunity to meet the speaker, and have more in depth and informal discussions after the main event.  A key debate is whether these events should be scheduled at lunchtime, or at the end of the day, and if the latter, how late is too late? A lunchtime slot can feel efficient, but ...

This started as a brief post on an interesting experience, but as I started writing it turned out I had more to say than I thought! As someone with extensive experience in peer review and panel processes, I was really grateful that I recently had the opportunity to observe a Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities advisory group meeting. The experience stood out not only for the quality of the discussion but for the integrity and inclusivity of the process itself. The panel was well selected, with deep expertise across disciplines relevant to the proposals under discussion. What impressed me most was the respectful and rigorous way in which feedback was delivered. Criticisms were thoughtful, clearly grounded in the published assessment criteria, and presented in a way that acknowledged the strengths of each application. It was a model of constructive peer review. The diversity of the panel itself was incredibly refreshing. It included researchers from the global South, minority scholars, a...

I've been thinking a lot recently about how the experience of being an academic has changed since I started my PhD back in 2004. I wrote about one aspect of this a couple of weeks ago - the shift that many funders have made from the traditional bullet point CV to narrative résumé s. Related to this, is the attempt to move away from what you might call 'traditional' metrics such as journal impact factors and author citation counts. The journal impact factor refers to the average number of citations received by articles published in a journal over a specific period, typically two years. Author citations track how often a researcher’s work is referenced by others, often aggregated into metrics like the h-index (an h-index of 10 would mean a researcher has 10 papers each cited at least 10 times). These numbers have traditionally been used to assess the "impact" of research, with higher citations meaning greater impact. I am told they influence decisions around hiring...