The 1st Canadian Conference on #OpenScience and #OpenScholarship is happening October 9 -10, 2025!

PKP, erudit.org, and #CoalitionPublica are pleased to be partner contributors to this event.

Livestreaming will be on!

Details: https://oscanada.github.io/en/

#OSCanada #CanadaSky #AcademicChatter

The 1st Canadian Conference on #OpenScience and #OpenScholarship is happening October 9 -10, 2025!

PKP, erudit.org, and #CoalitionPublica are pleased to be partner contributors to this event.

Livestreaming will be on!

Details: https://oscanada.github.io/en/

#OSCanada #CanadaSky #AcademicChatter

TIL: apparently one of the main technical hurdles for universities to run their own #Mastodon instances is to make the instance work with the institution's SSO (most often Shibboleth). It seems there would be a huge opportunity to facilitate the entrance of such major multiplicators into the Fediverse. cc. @Gargron

#academicchatter

**For the benefit of those who are less techy or may not know about the ways we can deal with personal identity data.**

Personal digital ID - a hot topic in the UK atm.

Many people and companies are working on systems to provide secure ways to hold our personal identity info. Some include wider profiles like our job, interests, hobbies etc. Some are OPEN SOURCE and part of a diverse ecosystem of data interoperability (you can use the same data POD (personal online data). Bluesky is active this landscape with their 'ATProto' personal data approach, and the Fediverse with the more versatile 'ActivityPub' user profile. There is also the WWW3 standards Solid project, and other Open Social Protocols (listed on the Solid project wikipedia page linked below).

Of course, just like IT sysadmins who provided website CMS at universities a decade ago, the UK govt thinks it needs walled garden private enterprise to partner with. They will spend probably ten times the money going down that route (just like universities did). This is old fashioned and not what other large national/territorial entities will be doing.

From the Solid wiki page"

>"Solid's central focus is to enable the discovery and sharing of information in a way that preserves privacy. A user stores personal data in "pods" (personal online data stores) hosted wherever the user desires. Applications that are authenticated by Solid are allowed to request data if the user has given the application permission. A user may distribute personal information among several pods; for example, different pods might contain personal profile data, contact information, financial information, health, travel plans, or other information. The user could then join an authenticated social-networking application by giving it permission to access the appropriate information in a specific pod. The user retains complete ownership and control of data in the user's pods: what data each pod contains, where each pod is stored, and which applications have permission to use the data."

These open source systems are robust and based on the idea that only you can own and control your data. Though the data may be held centrally on (for example civic servers or other server companies who provide a Slid POD) it cannot be accessed by them. Im researching into this a lot more in coming days :)

Links to read carefully if youre interested in what I'm talking about.

CAVEAT: Im not a tech expert at this so go easy if you'd like to correct any info here :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_(web_decentralization_project)

https://www.cmswire.com/digital-experience/how-to-set-up-solid-pods-a-data-ownership-guide/

https://solidproject.org/get_a_pod

https://www.projectliberty.io/dsnp/

#digitalid #openid #solid #atproto #activitypub #dsnp #academia #academicchatter

**For the benefit of those who are less techy or may not know about the ways we can deal with personal identity data.**

Personal digital ID - a hot topic in the UK atm.

Many people and companies are working on systems to provide secure ways to hold our personal identity info. Some include wider profiles like our job, interests, hobbies etc. Some are OPEN SOURCE and part of a diverse ecosystem of data interoperability (you can use the same data POD (personal online data). Bluesky is active this landscape with their 'ATProto' personal data approach, and the Fediverse with the more versatile 'ActivityPub' user profile. There is also the WWW3 standards Solid project, and other Open Social Protocols (listed on the Solid project wikipedia page linked below).

Of course, just like IT sysadmins who provided website CMS at universities a decade ago, the UK govt thinks it needs walled garden private enterprise to partner with. They will spend probably ten times the money going down that route (just like universities did). This is old fashioned and not what other large national/territorial entities will be doing.

From the Solid wiki page"

>"Solid's central focus is to enable the discovery and sharing of information in a way that preserves privacy. A user stores personal data in "pods" (personal online data stores) hosted wherever the user desires. Applications that are authenticated by Solid are allowed to request data if the user has given the application permission. A user may distribute personal information among several pods; for example, different pods might contain personal profile data, contact information, financial information, health, travel plans, or other information. The user could then join an authenticated social-networking application by giving it permission to access the appropriate information in a specific pod. The user retains complete ownership and control of data in the user's pods: what data each pod contains, where each pod is stored, and which applications have permission to use the data."

These open source systems are robust and based on the idea that only you can own and control your data. Though the data may be held centrally on (for example civic servers or other server companies who provide a Slid POD) it cannot be accessed by them. Im researching into this a lot more in coming days :)

Links to read carefully if youre interested in what I'm talking about.

CAVEAT: Im not a tech expert at this so go easy if you'd like to correct any info here :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_(web_decentralization_project)

https://www.cmswire.com/digital-experience/how-to-set-up-solid-pods-a-data-ownership-guide/

https://solidproject.org/get_a_pod

https://www.projectliberty.io/dsnp/

#digitalid #openid #solid #atproto #activitypub #dsnp #academia #academicchatter

All ready for the start of the academic year

#academicChatter #HigerEd

New rules on my part for requests for peer review:

1. If you write to me on a Saturday or a Sunday it is an instant decline.
2. If you insist on having the review within 7 days, I will decline.
3. If you already set up an account for me (probably the umpteenth one) on your editorial software, it is an instant decline.
4. Springer, Elsevier, and predatory publishers should not even bother asking.

You want me to work for free for you, but you don't care about my weekends or my current workload and your focus is on making money, not publishing science? Respect your peer reviewers if you are not paying for their time!

#AcademicChatter #PeerReview

"Access full-text through your institution" #AcademicChatter

New rules on my part for requests for peer review:

1. If you write to me on a Saturday or a Sunday it is an instant decline.
2. If you insist on having the review within 7 days, I will decline.
3. If you already set up an account for me (probably the umpteenth one) on your editorial software, it is an instant decline.
4. Springer, Elsevier, and predatory publishers should not even bother asking.

You want me to work for free for you, but you don't care about my weekends or my current workload and your focus is on making money, not publishing science? Respect your peer reviewers if you are not paying for their time!

#AcademicChatter #PeerReview

The sheer amount of scholar literature that is worth reading, but almost nobody will ever read, except a few experts, makes one question what's the point of writing even more. No wonder we are all becoming hyper-specialists, it seems like an inevitability in today's academic world to be able to do anytthing original (although likely minor) that's not bound to have been done already. Being a generalist is quite the challenge. #academicchatter

There's a new Researcher Interview at the Alternative Social Media blog!

https://www.socialmediaalternatives.org/2025/10/02/tkacz.html

In this interview, Nate Tkacz talks with Blake Hallinan about a new paper, "Eventful migration: Rethinking social media migration with help from Elon Musk’s sink," which is about the movement away from Twitter towards Mastodon in late 2022/early 2023.

#interviews #academicChatter #alternativeSocialMedia

There's a new Researcher Interview at the Alternative Social Media blog!

https://www.socialmediaalternatives.org/2025/10/02/tkacz.html

In this interview, Nate Tkacz talks with Blake Hallinan about a new paper, "Eventful migration: Rethinking social media migration with help from Elon Musk’s sink," which is about the movement away from Twitter towards Mastodon in late 2022/early 2023.

#interviews #academicChatter #alternativeSocialMedia

"Access full-text through your institution" #AcademicChatter

"The question that arises at this stage is whether openness in knowledge constitutes the Achilles heel of the once profitable legacy publishing industry or whether it is the Trojan horse of the latter for increasing its revenues."

https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/13/4/46

#publishing #openaccess #oa #academicchatter #journals

I just peer reviewed a journal article that cited a “hallucinated" article ostensibly authored by me.

Needless to say, I recommended rejection.

#academia #academicChatter #commodon

Pleased to announce that my book, Move Slowly and Build Bridges: Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the Struggle for Democratic Social Media, is now available online, and will be out in print in a couple weeks!
https://moveslowlybuildbridges.com
That site has more stuff, too -- links to related articles, some notes about how I researched it, and a contact form in case you want to talk about the fediverse with me! (I'd be happy to chat with journalists about it!)
#academicChatter #bookstodon #fediverse #mastodon

I just peer reviewed a journal article that cited a “hallucinated" article ostensibly authored by me.

Needless to say, I recommended rejection.

#academia #academicChatter #commodon