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

Anyone (academic / researcher) had recent experience with submitting to #ScienceAdvances (https://www.science.org/journal/sciadv)? Good or bad?

We submitted there about 3 months ago and heard absolutely nothing since then..

#SciRev does not have many reviews of that journal for 2025: https://scirev.org/reviews/science-advances/
(BTW, please try to comment on your submission experience on there when you can!)

#Academia #Research #AcademicChatter

I was thinking: the US AI industry (aka USAI-Inc) is like a new Empire colonisation. Like the East India Company. Or Belt & Road. Or others. Now its USAI. Many territories and sectors are being extorted and occupied (esp UK & UKHE). Then yesterday I saw that Berkman Klein had the same thought. They even called it a Raj. I felt vindicated, that I am not alone in what I think.

#ai #AIEmpire #colonization #academia #academicchatter

https://cyber.harvard.edu/story/2025-09/ai-raj

I was thinking: the US AI industry (aka USAI-Inc) is like a new Empire colonisation. Like the East India Company. Or Belt & Road. Or others. Now its USAI. Many territories and sectors are being extorted and occupied (esp UK & UKHE). Then yesterday I saw that Berkman Klein had the same thought. They even called it a Raj. I felt vindicated, that I am not alone in what I think.

#ai #AIEmpire #colonization #academia #academicchatter

https://cyber.harvard.edu/story/2025-09/ai-raj

IDEA: "where are they now?" but for big splash papers published in 2000s.

Would be good to i) celebrate breakthroughs that kicked off a rich line of research, ii) follow "what happened next" for papers that weren't quite correct, iii) acknowledge that some big splash papers were ultimately squibs that went nowhere.

Probably you could find examples of all three in a single issue of Nature from 20 years ago. Could be a good exercise with a postgrad class.

#AcademicChatter

AI corruption everywhere.

My institution's educational research group invites us to attend a presentation by a commercial software company who wish to sell us their AI product. The invitation actively promotes the product, with no further qualitfications or provisos.

The product: a tool that lets students query our learning materials, so that they don't have to read them. Also, a sister product that does the same for academic readers of research papers.

Tools that are explicitly meant to help students and scholars to avoid ... having to read academic works!

And these commercial products are actively promoted by a research and pedagogy branch of my university.

These developments are not new, of course, they have been gathering pace all through the past three years. But each such announcement still manages to shock me.

Intellectual and moral corruption and corrosion, everywhere I look.

#noAI #StopTheAICorruption #HigherEducation #pedagoy #AcademicChatter

If the reference was unclear:
The NME used to have a column called "where are they now?" featuring bands that had some success a few years ago and then disappeared. Ultimately, it was stopped IIRC because when they tracked the band down, the answer was always "We're still going, actually. Playing in Belgium next week." #AcademicChatter

IDEA: "where are they now?" but for big splash papers published in 2000s.

Would be good to i) celebrate breakthroughs that kicked off a rich line of research, ii) follow "what happened next" for papers that weren't quite correct, iii) acknowledge that some big splash papers were ultimately squibs that went nowhere.

Probably you could find examples of all three in a single issue of Nature from 20 years ago. Could be a good exercise with a postgrad class.

#AcademicChatter

AI corruption everywhere.

My institution's educational research group invites us to attend a presentation by a commercial software company who wish to sell us their AI product. The invitation actively promotes the product, with no further qualitfications or provisos.

The product: a tool that lets students query our learning materials, so that they don't have to read them. Also, a sister product that does the same for academic readers of research papers.

Tools that are explicitly meant to help students and scholars to avoid ... having to read academic works!

And these commercial products are actively promoted by a research and pedagogy branch of my university.

These developments are not new, of course, they have been gathering pace all through the past three years. But each such announcement still manages to shock me.

Intellectual and moral corruption and corrosion, everywhere I look.

#noAI #StopTheAICorruption #HigherEducation #pedagoy #AcademicChatter

Departmental meeting on updating the curriculum. The Head of School speaks.

"Students all do shoplifting now. It's become an integral part of modern life. We will fail our students if we don't teach them how to shoplift well, and how to do it responsibly."

"Colleagues, we ask each of you to draw up plans on how you will integrate responsible shoplifting in your courses. Please submit your proposals to the Education Committee by the end of the month."

"To help you engage with these exciting new developments, we offer a series of hands-on workshops. The first of these will take place at the local Walmart at University Square. Yes, Professor Quintock, the workshops are mandatory."

#noAI#noLLM#TeachWithoutAI#TeachAuthentically#HigherEducation#AcademicChatter #AcademicFreedom

Departmental meeting on updating the curriculum. The Head of School speaks.

"Students all do shoplifting now. It's become an integral part of modern life. We will fail our students if we don't teach them how to shoplift well, and how to do it responsibly."

"Colleagues, we ask each of you to draw up plans on how you will integrate responsible shoplifting in your courses. Please submit your proposals to the Education Committee by the end of the month."

"To help you engage with these exciting new developments, we offer a series of hands-on workshops. The first of these will take place at the local Walmart at University Square. Yes, Professor Quintock, the workshops are mandatory."

#noAI#noLLM#TeachWithoutAI#TeachAuthentically#HigherEducation#AcademicChatter #AcademicFreedom

"This review draws upon insights from a curated body of recently published research papers to highlight structural injustices in academic publishing, their adverse effects on global research output, and the excessive pressure placed on faculty members to fulfill the requirements of accreditation agencies."

https://jscires.org/10.5530/jscires.20250015

#scholcomm #publishing #academicchatter #openaccess

Bloody hell. I just noticed that a coauthor turned in a manuscript containing a halucinated reference.

I know that the reference is fake because it has my name as the first author, but I never wrote that paper or published in that journal before. It's shaped like a paper that I could have plausibly written, but it's not the paper that I wrote about on the same topic on that year...

Not sure what to do about this.

#AcademicChatter

Official steps in the development of the open social web. Big players involved here. @Projectliberty is an active org in this area and a great source for this kind of news.

#opensocialweb #fediverse #decentralization #academia #academicchatter

https://www.projectliberty.io/news/bridging-tech-and-governance/

Official steps in the development of the open social web. Big players involved here. @Projectliberty is an active org in this area and a great source for this kind of news.

#opensocialweb #fediverse #decentralization #academia #academicchatter

https://www.projectliberty.io/news/bridging-tech-and-governance/

Don't be this reviewer, who uses #ChatGPT to show the references that I should have cited, and which are of course fake.

And don't be the editor who let this through as an allowable review.

And then make a final decision that won't be reconsidered.

Calling out publisher IOP Publishing https://ioppublishing.org/
and their journal Environmental Research Commications.

#academia #academicpublishing
#academicchatter