Author Archives: Stephen

Interview with the author

Posted on 18 February 2017 by Stephen

Those of you who have read all 346 posts on my Reciprocal Space blog will have no need to read this one. You probably already have a sense of what I do and what I’m like – my science, my … Continue reading →

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Status Report – February 2017

Posted on 14 February 2017 by Stephen

I said when I started this blog in 2008 that I would not promise to post regularly, so as to avoid the endless repetition of apologies for failing to write. And I’m not about to start apologising now, even though … Continue reading →

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ICYMI No.10 – New Year’s Resolution

Posted on 6 January 2017 by Stephen

Along with many of my academic colleagues from across the nation, I was asked by the Times Higher Education to set down at least one new year’s resolution for 2017. I drew inspiration from Richard Hamming (whom I wrote about … Continue reading →

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2016 in pictures

Posted on 31 December 2016 by Stephen

Rather than attempting to sum up the tumultuous year just past in words, let me simply share with you some of the photographs that I took in 2016. The image below is an embedded album from my Flickr account. I’m … Continue reading →

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ICYMI No. 9: Preprints and Embargoes

Posted on 31 December 2016 by Stephen

I’m rather late getting round to this but, for the record, here is a piece I wrote for Research Fortnight in late November on the challenges that preprints pose to embargoed press releases of research reports. The tl;dr version (though the piece … Continue reading →

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ICYMI No.8: Being Professorial

Posted on 14 November 2016 by Stephen

I was among several people who contributed to a feature in this weeks’ Times Higher Education on being a professor. The brief I was given was (briefly): “Questions you might want to address are whether you should somehow have to … Continue reading →

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President Trump – first response

Posted on 9 November 2016 by Stephen

This morning I was asked for a comment on the implications of the US presidential election for the scientific world. This was my immediate response: Unlike the day after the EU referendum vote, when I was bitterly upset, I just … Continue reading →

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Higher Education and Research Bill – Letter to my MP

Posted on 20 October 2016 by Stephen

Science is Vital this week launched a campaign to seek amendments to the Higher Education and Research Bill 2016. The bill is a rather dry and procedural piece of legislation but hidden amongst its many sections and schedules are real … Continue reading →

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Ways of Seeing

Posted on 9 October 2016 by Stephen

It is the weekend and I have been treating myself to some time with the paper. I usually buy the Saturday Guardian. Occasionally, I will also get The Observer on a Sunday but I don’t often have the time to … Continue reading →

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Pride and Prejudice and journal citation distributions: final, peer reviewed version

Posted on 12 September 2016 by Stephen

Today sees the publication on bioRxiv of a revised version of our preprint outlining “A simple proposal for the publication of journal citation distributions.” Our proposal, explained in more detail in this earlier post, encourages publishers to help mitigate the distorting … Continue reading →

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