Open research

Thanks. Okay, so welcome everyone to the Library’s first Open Research Conversations. My name is Jacqueline Vigilanti. I am joined by my colleague, Georgina Alsop, who will be introducing our speakers today.

Georgina and I work in Library Research Services and we are part of a team that manage the university’s research repository e-space, which holds research outputs produced by our researchers here at Man Met. Our team also provide resources and support for open access publishing, research data management, and researcher profiles, among other things.

This is our first Open Research Conversations event. And we hope that it is a place where researchers here at Man Met, at any stage of their career can come together to talk about what they’re doing, share their experiences and tips in order that we can create an environment of best practice in open research. Today, we will be looking at alternative publishing models.

As many of you know, traditional scholarly publishing as it has evolved from its beginnings in the 17th century, continues to be costly and restrictive. That’s restrictive in the types of research that are published, how that research is disseminated, authors rights over their work, and even restrictive in which processes along the research life cycle are valued.

But open research, on the other hand, challenges these traditional perspectives by opening up research at every stage of the life cycle. So OR, open research, is about making non-traditional research outputs, such as data or practice- based research, available alongside traditional outputs, such as journal articles and conference papers. Open research values the impact of this broader view of research as more than just journal metrics, by championing research that influences policy, society and engages people. Open research is also about transparency, thinking innovatively, and seeing the whole research process from idea through to dissemination as part of what makes good research.

Today, our presentations will introduce to some alternative publishing models, each one of which is flying the open research flag by championing different types of outputs and dissemination channels.

Without further ado, I will stop sharing and let Georgina present our first speaker.

I’m delighted to introduce our first speaker today, who is Dr. Tom Hostler. Tom is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology here at Manchester Met. His primary research interest is in prospective memory, or how people remember to perform actions in the future. In addition, Tom has a particular interest in open research and is the local network lead at Manchester Met for the UK Reproducibility Network or UKRN. Tom has been active in the practice of sharing his research findings by preprints to achieve broad and early dissemination of his work. And it’s this that he’s here to talk to us about today. Welcome Tom. And over to you.

Great. Thanks. Can you hear me okay? I’ll just share my screen. Can you see that? Oh, good. Okay. Yes. Hi everyone.

Yeah, My talk today is going to be about using preprint servers to disseminate research and increase the visibility and accessibility of your work.

I think in a lot of industries, being fast and getting your product out there and advertising it to a wide audience and competing with other people to get your product in the minds of people, get them using it is really important. But in academia, we often have, as researchers, a bit of a different perspective, right? And we like to think, okay, well we’re not like that. In academia, as researchers, we’re not that interested in about going as fast as possible or competing with other people for product coverage. And that we want more people to read my paper than someone else’s paper. Our main thing is about as researchers designing a good study, collecting high quality data and getting to the truth right. Getting the best outcomes we can for a piece of research. Regardless of how long that takes, it’ll take as long as it takes, as long as we get to the truth.

I think that that can impact a little bit about what we do with our research once we’ve completed it. And how we disseminate that to people. I think there can be an assumption that if you’ve written a new paper, you think, well, I don’t really need to advertise it. I might even feel a bit grubby about doing so. It’s a bit beneath me, or at the very least, it’s not necessary because we’re all academics here.

I’ve just written this new important paper on this topic. It’s a novel, important contribution to this area. Any self respecting scholar worth their salt who wants to find out about this, will of course do an extensive literature review. They’ll come across my paper, they’ll do everything their power to access it and read it. And no doubt once they do, they’ll be thoroughly impressed and incorporate it into their literature review or their research.

Now, the problem is, I don’t think that’s true and I don’t think that academics are that different to other industries and other people when it comes to thinking about this. Right. Although, yes, hopefully if you do a piece of research that is a contribution to your specific field, then other people who are working on very similar problems or very similar issues, will be aware of it and read it.

But often academics don’t really or aren’t interested in doing an extensive literature review about every single topic that they might even have a passing interest in. Sometimes we just want to skim, read a paper on a new topic. Or if we’re writing a paper, we might want to cite someone else’s work, not because we’ve written a whole section about that. But just as an example to support a general point, or as a signpost to a related topic or field. Or use it as a non-specific example of the sort of research that is going on this other area that might be interesting.

If I’m writing that, I’m not going to go away and do a six month systematic review to read everything in that area and then pick out the best one to use as that reference. Ultimately, I’m probably going to do what most people do is go to Google, the same as any other person, academic or not.

Go to a search engine, type in something, see what comes up and choose something fairly near the top. If not, I might use a paper that I’ve seen referenced elsewhere, one that I’ve just happened to got a copy of already and want to include that as an example. One I remember seeing on social media advertised or basically whichever one is easiest to get hold of.

I think that academics, although we’d like to think that people will spend the time searching for our paper and trying to access it and trying to read it, if it’s something they find interesting. A lot of the time, unless your paper and your research is so novel that there is nothing else like it in the world.

There’ll be other papers out there that are broadly on the same topic, and, if they can’t access your paper for whatever reason, they’re not going to bother.They’re just going to go and try and find a similar paper and read that one instead.

I’ve got an example here. This is a paper I found by Tomczak and Tomczak 2014. I would say, with all due respect to these researchers, this paper is a fairly short, not particularly well written, summary paper about effect sizes in quantitative research. And in general the content of this is not that new and interesting. It’s probably the sort of stuff that you would find in any half decent introductory research methods textbook about effect sizes. This paper was published in a pretty obscure, quarter four, low ranked Polish journal of sports science with a completely negligible impact factor. But this paper has over 1,000 citations. It’s got 1,400 citations and not just from sports science, from psychology, from economics, from business studies, from education, medical science, geography research, climate change.

You think, well, why is this paper so well cited? It’s nothing special, doesn’t say anything that isn’t found in a load of other textbooks or papers. Personally, I think the reason is that when you go onto Google Scholar and you search for calculate effect size guide, this one comes up, not quite on the first page, but at the top of page two, there’s an immediate link to click on it and download and read the PDF. This paper is not being read and cited because it is the best one available on this topic. It’s because it’s one of the easiest to get hold of. And obviously in this example, people are doing research, needing to find something quick to read about effect sizes. They just Google it. This one comes up near the top. Okay. It tells them what they need to know, then that’s the one that gets cited and included in their research.

Number one thing I think here is that the more places where other researchers and academics can come across your research and access it in a really easy way, just a single click to download a PDF of it, the more likely it is to be read and cited. It’s not just appearing in the journal where you’re looking to publish it, but they can find it on Google Scholar. They can find it on ResearchGate. They can find it on LinkedIn. They can find it on Academia, like another social networking site. Or they can find it on a preprint server.

Preprints are basically a version of your manuscript of your article that you upload.

As the name suggests, you share this before it goes, before it is published and printed.

Usually this is done once you’ve written it and whilst you are in the process of submitting it to a journal.

And it’s a really good way of getting feedback on your work prior to it being published. Increasing the visibility of your work and getting people reading it and talking about it whilst it is in the process of sitting in peer review for six months.

Although during that time there might be changes made to it during the peer review process, the ideas that are in it, the main bits that you want to convey, are probably going to stay broadly the same. You want to get people aware of those ideas and aware that you were doing research in this area, at an early stage, rather than just waiting until once it is out and being published in the journal.

All the preprint servers fulfil this requirement that I said before of being a site where you can read and download this version of the manuscript in a single click.

Very similar related concept is post-print. That will be the open access version of your manuscript once it has been through the publication process, once it has been published in the journal. Again, you don’t want that to be the only place that someone can come and read it. This is the same as if you’ve done a piece of research and MMU ask for the green open access version to be deposited in Symplectic. If you’re like me, you’ve probably got lots of e mails sitting in my inbox telling me to do that.

But it’s more places on the Internet basically, that people can come across, find, and read your work.

Going back to the idea I said before, academics are busy or lazy, but more often just busy. And if I’m trying to find a paper, with all due respect to our lovely library team, who obviously put in a lot of effort to curate the journals that MMU subscribes to, and allow access to certain things. If I can read a paper without going anywhere near the MMU library, I would much prefer to do that.  If I can just Google it, find a PDF of it on the first page of Google, download and read it, then I’m very happy.

For a lot of people, especially if, again, your work is something that people are reading just out of interest or just as an example, they don’t need your paper in particular, but it’s just an example of a certain piece of work, that is quite a big barrier, right? They’re not going to make the effort to try and access it in all these different ways. They’re just going to say, right, I can’t read that paper, I’ll just find another one that I can read.

And so preprints and post prints on a lot of these preprint servers, but also just on ResearchGate  and things like that are indexed by Google Scholar. Although I would tell all my students, use something like Web of Science, use a scholarly database to find articles.  Most of the time, the first place that people start just to see if they can get something is Google Scholar. And your work will appear there, even if it hasn’t been published, if it has been put up as a preprint or a post-print.

A few questions then about these things.

One might be okay, if I put my manuscript up on a preprint server, will I still be allowed to submit it to a journal? Does that not contravene the journal’s restrictions on having it submitted somewhere else?

Although I’d say definitely check the fine print of the particular journal you’re submitting to. Yes, in most cases that is completely fine because uploading your manuscript as a preprint somewhere isn’t publishing it. It doesn’t count as being under submission somewhere else. It’s just that the version of it is online somewhere. It doesn’t prevent you from publishing it.

What happens then if you submit a preprint and then during the peer review process there is changes made to it?

Well, most preprint servers will allow you to upload multiple versions of the manuscript so you can keep it updated with these changes, and the most recent version of it is displayed by default. Once it actually becomes published, you can update on the preprint server a link to the published version of it as well, so that people can see that it has been published. Even if they can’t subscribe to that particular journal and get a hold of the published version, they can see that it has been done and that they can read the free version on the preprint server.

Will a journal allow you to do that then? Will they allow you to share essentially your published version of the manuscript somewhere else on the Internet? Are they not trying to get people to subscribe to their journal, to read it?

Well, again, I would double check with the library team, but in most cases, at least for journal articles, the journal doesn’t own the text of the manuscript. They will own the copyright of the version that has been typeset into the Journal of Psychology Research branding. You can’t share that, but the actual text of what you’ve written is still your intellectual property. And you can share a non- formatted version of that on a preprint server.

If you share your work before it’s been published, will someone come along and scoop you? Are you giving up your right to be the first person who’s done research in this area?

Well, no, because preprints, if you put it on a preprint server, it will be given a DOI number and there will be displayed the date which you put it up there. It is part of the broader scientific record that you were the first researcher to write about this topic or produce a certain type of data. From that perspective, like it, it can be used to establish a precedent that you were the first person to do this. I would say on a more practical perspective. Probably at the time you are publishing your preprint, you have already done all the work, you’ve written it up. You’re in the process, probably, of submitting it to a journal. The likelihood of someone else coming along and managing to repeat your entire work and then publish it before you do is pretty slim.

Will it affect the peer review process if your preprint is online somewhere with your name attached? Is that not going to ruin the whole idea of blind peer review?

I think for this one the answer is probably yes. If you have put your preprint online somewhere on a preprint server, it will have your name on it, or it will show the name of the account that uploaded it. And someone peer reviewing it, even if for your journal submission you removed all your information, all they have to do is just Google the title and they’re going to see that you wrote it. Whether that is a problem or not, I guess is up for you to decide. It probably depends on what you’re writing about, what field you’re in. Um, whether this is a extreme social faux pas in your area, to not have blind peer review. At least in my area of psychology, it is becoming increasingly common, for, even when there is blind peer review, people sign their reviews and unless there’s a particular reason for needing to be anonymous, it’s becoming less of a normal thing to need it to be blind.

Then finally, I guess can preprints be cited? If it’s out there, can it be referenced by other people before it’s published?

Yeah, that’s quite common. Particularly if the article is, let’s say, a theoretical contribution where going through the peer review process probably isn’t going to majorly change the conclusions of it. People might not want to cite it until it’s been published. But if it does, then you might end up with citations split across two versions. Some of the citations will be of your preprint. Some of your citations will be of your published article. But what I would say to that is that any citations of your preprint are already extra ones because, if you hadn’t have published it, you’d be waiting until it was published to get the citations. Actually, a lot of databases like Google Scholar can automatically detect different versions of an article on the Internet. If your preprint has ten citations and your published paper has 50 citations. Actually, once it’s published, it will come up as a single entry on Google Scholar. And it will combine the citations and just have the different versions of it.

This is my final slide. There’s a guide here to posting and managing preprints, which is in itself, a preprint.

The one thing I probably can’t help with is what preprint should I use.

But there is a list of preprint repositories on Wikipedia. Most disciplines I would say have one.

I think if you’re not aware of it, it might be because it has only popped up in recent years.

A lot of these preprint servers have only been created quite recently in the last 2/3 years. As this idea of using preprints spreads to other disciplines.

There’s some disciplines like bioRxiv for Biology, a very well established physics and stuff that this has been around the early ’90s, they’ve been using preprints.

In other disciplines like psychology, sociology, it’s more recent and there’s even some quite specific preprint servers for disciplines now as well.

Even in perhaps quite narrow fields like vision science, there’s their own preprint server for that area.

Yeah, that’s the end of my presentation. Thanks for listening and happy to take any questions.

Oh, thanks very much Tom. That was really interesting.

Yeah, we do have a couple questions that have come in the chat. I will go through all of them, some of them you’ve already touched on, but feel free to comment again.

The first question is about work being plagiarised. And you did touch on that a bit.

Yeah, a lot of the issues I think around things like being scooped, being plagiarised, perhaps having more versions of your article online, you know, having your work there may mean that someone could come and copy it and then publish it.

But then that in itself is a negative thing anyway, right?

Like if someone came and copied your published article and published it, then they would be plagiarising in the same way.

So you can’t prevent people from doing it. But you would still be able to prove, look, this is my text, I wrote this first. The preprint here under my name shows that I published this, shows that I put this text online, you know, six months before this other person wrote this article and stole all my ideas.

And if in your field the plagiarism is considered a bad thing, you would be able to show that, that you were still the first person to do it?

Yes. The next question is about if your submission undergoes minor or major revisions or is rejected, how should you handle it if it’s already published? You already have a preprint version.

Yeah, I think I mentioned this. Definitely. I’ll share my screen again to show an example. This is the preprint I mentioned about posting preprints. This is what the PsyArXiv server looks like. You land on here with the PDF of the manuscript. You can read it in your browser or you can download it as a PDF with a single click. Then in this example, you can see that there are previous versions of the manuscript here that show the time and date that they were uploaded. The most recent version here that they’ve got will probably be identical apart from the formatting to the published version. But you’ll be able to see the earlier versions of it here. If for a particular reason someone cited your article, quoted from your article and then you changed the wording of it, you’d be able to track that and find, okay, well they quoted me from this previous version, but actually now I’ve changed it, and I don’t say that anymore. Then this preprint about posting preprints has now been published. And you can see here that they have a link to the peer reviewed publication, DOI. And you can click that and it’ll take you to the journal article version of it here as well. If someone comes across your preprint, without realising that it’s been published somewhere else, then if you’ve updated it with that link, they can say, okay, actually I’m going to cite the published version instead.

Great, thank you.

I think we’ve probably got time for one more question.

I just wanted to come in to say that there are some questions in there about book chapters and making book chapters open access. We do advise on that in the library if you wanted to contact me, my name is Georgina Alsop, so feel free to e mail me or you can email openresearch@mmu.ac.uk. If you do have any questions about making any of your outputs open access and we’re really happy to talk you through that.

Yeah, I mean, I’d definitely say that my experience in using this has been in psychology and journal articles published in psychology journals, which by and large what I’ve said applies to that. In other fields where your common academic output isn’t a journal article but it’s a book chapter. Yeah, the norms might be a bit different there, around what you’re allowed to share and whether you’re allowed to put preprints up.

Should we take one more question or should we move on?

I think there’s a question there about does a preprint article qualify for promotion in academic institutions?

I’m not sure really. I would definitely say that you can put it on your CV if you’re applying for jobs. Then you can list your preprints that you’ve got, which shows work that you have done and you haven’t got round to publishing yet. The other thing that I didn’t really mention is a lot of the time I’ve done in the past like little projects which is interesting and I’ve written it up, but it’s not really worth trying to pursue it into a full publication because it was just an undergraduate project that I supervised or something. But it might be interesting for someone somewhere to read it. And why not make it available as a preprint at the very least, and then someone can come across and read it. It is work that I’ve done. Whether it will get me my next promotion. Probably not. But if someone somewhere benefits from seeing that this work has been done, better that than just keeping it in a file drawer where no one is ever going to read it.

Thank you so much, Tom. That was a really interesting presentation.

Now we’re going to move on to our next presentation, which is a really exciting new initiative by and for doctoral students right here at Manchester Met. The Hive Journal has just published its very first issue. Congratulations to all involved. It’s our pleasure today to welcome Jenny Cromwell and editorial board members Suzanne Cloves and Mark Harrison, to tell us about The Hive and what they hope to achieve. Jenny’s a reader in ancient history here at the university. Suzanne Cloves is a doctoral student whose research interest lies in creating sonic, augmented realities to study how landscape heritage affects our relationships with places, each other and nature. Mark Harrison is also a doctoral student whose area of research is film studies, specifically looking at the influence of stars and franchises in contemporary Hollywood cinema. So over to The Hive.

Thank you so much for the invitation to join you. I’m Jenny. I will be followed by Mark and then Suzie in this presentation to talk about The Hive Journal.

So on screen at the minute is its current landing page, which is hosted by PAHC online. For those not in Arts and Humanities, that is the Postgraduate Arts and Humanities Centre, I want to say that the C is. Could be community? I should really learn that acronym. But the URL is at the very top as well, which takes you directly to here. To note that it’s not currently hosted on Man Met’s website. There is a very outdated link, which I will mention a little bit about first, talking about the history of the journal and how we got to this point.

While this is issue one of The Hive Journal, the journal itself then has a history. On screen is its predecessor called just Hive, and then subtitled the Postgraduate Journal of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Which was an initiative that launched coincidentally the same year that I joined Man Met in 2018. Which was an initiative led by my history colleague, Kathryn Hurlock, to give a place for postgraduates to publish their research in a peer reviewed venue. The previous iteration of the journal only accepted short articles. I think around 3,000 words was the limit. It also included a range of other items including, see from the table of contents from issue two, including interviews with current members of the postgraduate community as well as staff. It was hosted on an external site that people may or may not know called ISSUU (I S S U U). And the first three volumes, I believe the first three volumes are all available there. And then the journal went into abeyance as a combination of the pandemic, but also the entire editorial team that was working on the first issues all completed their PHDs and moved on. And there was a bit of a hole in terms of continuing it. 

In early 2022, only the beginning of last year, it feels like a lot longer ago, in my capacity as the postgraduate lead for what was the History Research Centre, I was reflecting on different ways that we can support our graduate community. I thought back to Hive and looked into what had happened with it. No one had really picked it up as a result of everything that happened during the pandemic and all the different changes going on in the university. At the time I looked at it and I had my own thoughts about what the journal could or should be. But most importantly, my thoughts as an ancient historian in one department, in the faculty, does not necessarily reflect everyone else’s thoughts, but also what is required from the postgraduate community. more broadly.

I issued an expression of interest for PGRs who wanted to join the editorial board, and I met with everyone who replied and spoke with them about the journal. My thoughts, their involvement, reasons for their involvement. I gradually became aware of the limitations of this particular format of the journal and how that didn’t necessarily meet the needs of the graduate community.

We integrated a number of changes. One in terms of the editorial board, we have a much larger editorial board which has representation from what were the old UCRKEs, the old research centres in the faculty. But that is still then spread across the departments, more or less. A much broader one, so a bigger body of subject expertise. But also to avoid the situation of everyone graduating en masse and having to restart afresh each time. That’s on one hand how it’s run.

But also in terms of the content, it was quite restrictive the kinds of submissions previously, So now we have opened it up to longer format journal articles, brief communications, reviews. But we’re also very conscious that a not inconsiderable number of our graduate body don’t fit into those traditional methods of arts and humanities, especially humanities publication. I wanted something that had the scope to also include practice- based researchers, Whether it’s in creative writing in the Art School, for example. How we can host that in an online capacity as well. Which is one of the benefits of publishing online, we do not have the restrictions inherent in print publications. Everything is published.

Another issue that was flagged was the findability of the journal. We have removed it from the external site. It is now hosted by PAHC online. It has an ISSN number and all articles have DOIs. So for students, for our PGRs, it means their work is maybe not preprint visibility plus print visibility. But it’s much more accessible than the previous iteration.

Alongside the support for graduates maybe having their first encounter with publishing and the process of peer review, every article is double blind peer reviewed. As well as providing the opportunity for what it’s like working behind the scenes. What is it actually like to manage a journal? What is it like to try and get colleagues to peer review articles? To be that person trying to contact through networks, find the right person to do it and get ignored or rejected, or finding people who actually do it.

And so that process started with the EOIs early summer 2022. We have now just launched the first issue of the new reimagined, reformatted journal. I won’t speak about this issue, I will hand it over to one of our editorial team, Mark Harrison, who will reflect on a number of different aspects. Because one thing, that’s really important for me, while the member of staff is really needed for continuity and also to help overcome various institutional barriers. While I get the fancy air of editor in chief attached to it. Actually, not just a venue for PGRs to publish their research, but it’s also run by students as well, so that they have the experience and perspective from both sides of the process. And our first issues are on this slide here, I’ll hand over to Mark.

Thanks Jen. Hi.

Getting involved with The Hive was really interesting for me because, whilst feel like all of us PGRs have read journals, we spend our whole lives reading journals basically. Understanding the ins and outs of journals is something that I, myself at least had no real knowledge of.

The benefits of being part of the editorial team. I think it’s really important for understanding academia and the stuff that’s going on behind the scenes. I think what’s truly is great about The Hive is that we’re really bridging the gap for doctoral students on both sides of things. Because there is an understanding that the editors are still growing into their roles and so are the writers. But there is still that level of professionalism that is expected on the part of the editors and a high level of academic rigour that is required on the side of those submitting. Which means we are as a community, helping each other improve, as academics and simply as members of the academic community to kind of understand what is expected of us both now and further down the line in our careers.

As a member of the editorial team, if you were to become a new member, you would be doing a very similar role to that I’ve been doing. You’d be screening new articles as they’re submitted. You’d be assigned articles to initially edit and be required to expand your horizons in terms of the wide variety of topics that can come your way from the broad arts and humanities journal that we are. As we search for peer reviewers as well for those articles.

I know in my experience as a film studies researcher, specifically looking at contemporary American cinema, you know, I very much have my niche. But articles could be submitted that are very much within the realm of my expertise that allow me to kind of expand my horizons within a general comfort zone. With the knowledge being that I am essentially the most qualified person for it in comparison to the rest of the board. And that’s the way the editorial board works, is that we find the right editors for the right articles that are submitted.

This is at the end of the day, PGR journal ran by doctoral students at MMU for doctoral students to publish in. It’s the type of publication that is there for academic first timers to cut their teeth within the world of publishing, whether that be as a member of the board or as a writer.

The first issue, for example, we have Pierre Chadelle who wrote about digital politics in the article, ‘The European Commission Recovery Plan for Europe in French Twitter, public sphere opportunity and restraint for the legitimacy of the European Union’. We had Jenna Eady and Jodie Neville writing about ‘Gender performance in sports coaching: exploring an intangible cultural heritage’. We had Lisa Owen- Jones, ‘Writerly games, writers play: patterns, playlists and recurring themes’. We had our own Suzie Cloves with ‘Place heritage as a language for negotiating the future’. Just there we have such a wide variety of articles from such incredibly different topics. And it speaks to the breadth and depth of knowledge of The Hive editorial board that we can accommodate such a breadth of different articles.

And I’ll pass on to Suzie to talk about being both an editor on the board and submitting an article as well.

Thank you, Mark. Yes, I had to be very well behaved and not look in our shared folder to see what people were saying about my article after I had submitted it.

I’m Suzie, I’m a second year PHD student at Man Met. When I started writing this article, I’d just moved off of a two year part-time MA at Man Met as well. I think as you come up through the Masters path into postgraduate study, you really become aware of how important academic publishing is if you want to make a career for yourself in academia. But at the same time, it’s a little bit intimidating on the Masters. All of us had someone that we hero worshipped a bit and looked at their list of publications in their e mail signatures and just really fuelled the imposter syndrome. But at the same time it makes you start wanting to get your teeth into that.

Hive felt like a good place to start because yes, it’s friendly, it’s student run, it’s run by people that I’m familiar with, but also it’s for real. You publish in The Hive, you do get a DOI. I’ve now got a publication to my name on the places that count.

The other thing that appealed to me because my PHD is practice-based, we’re publishing digitally, we can display non- traditional media. For example, Jenna and Jodie’s article it was around a poster presentation that also had some video content. Their piece is referring to this video content. So we were able to display, visual media and sonic media. We do need articles to be reflective on this media rather than just it being an exhibition piece, if you know what I mean. But yet, it felt inclusive in that way, that it was more than just a traditional text based journal.

In terms of going through the author process. It was just so useful in terms of its, I’m going to use the word formulaic which sounds negative. But you go through a strict process where you submit by a particular date, you expect feedback, then it gets sent off for peer review, you get that back. So if you’re not used to getting feedback. If you’re not used to getting peer review, I think everyone knows somebody who’s been a bit wounded when they’ve had some feedback. And maybe taken it a bit personally, so it’s really useful for just learning what to expect in that respect, but also the timelines. It’s not like just sticking something on Wordpress and it’s out in the world. There’s a bit of toing and froing, so you have to factor that into your own schedule and your own workload. It’s not just a case of getting it written and it’s done. You’re going to have to revisit it, most likely. That’s also really useful in terms of your expectations in the future. What are you going to be able to fit in? What are you going to be able to manage?

Some really good advice that I had at the beginning of the PHD was try and make stuff that you do double or triple duty. So rather than reporting some findings from previous research, I used this as an opportunity to work out some thoughts I wanted to explore early on in my thesis. It actually turned out to be something that I’m probably not going to put this in my thesis, but it meant that I could do the reading, I could think things through, and it has some useful purpose in that I’ve got this now out in the world. I was able to have this experience whilst also researching something for my PHD.

If you’ve got some findings to share, I’m sure they’re fascinating and we’ll want to read about them. Consider that. But also consider this as a sandbox opportunity for working out your ideas, starting conversations. Hopefully, some people will read this and get in touch and want to talk to me about it and tell me that I’m wrong. And then we can have really fascinating academic arguments over coffee in the Grove Cafe.

So yes, anyone’s got any questions about what the author process was like and concerns. If you feel like it might be a bit much for you, try to overcome those because it’s a very caring but thorough and professional team. The article that came out at the end of the process was so much better as a result of people giving me feedback and telling me what could be improved. Don’t be afraid of it, just plunge in. But do it strategically. Do it in a way that’s going to benefit you. Get in touch if you want to ask any questions. Thank you.

Thanks Suzie. Just to round up and reiterate a couple of those key points that we’re very keen that a lot of this represented what journal publication is like. But also that it responded to the needs of the PGR community for whom this can be a very daunting process. But also to reflect on the broader topic of this conversation and open research that things are findable, that they aren’t in some obscure place that only PGRs from an institution may have access to. But that this is treated as what it is, it is a professional peer review journal. But also in terms of something coming back to original. So everything is open access. And we had, together with our main editor for issue one and also for issue two, Michelle Ravenscroft, quite long discussions with Man Met’s legal team about how best to frame this because I was very adamant that the legal rights for the content remain with the PGRs. And what that means, one in perpetuity, but in terms of what Creative Commons licence is applied to it, which is also part of the DOI process. So that everything yeah, makes it as useful in multiple capacities for PGRs, as well as the faculty more broadly.

Just to end on a positive note as well. Next week while the issues are online, we are having the official launch for the journal on Thursday 16th, 3:00-5:00pm Grosvenor East G:11. The form for catering is on the PAHC online Hive Journal page. But otherwise, even if you don’t want to come and eat, you just want to hear, we’ll be having a series of talks from different people as well. That have been involved in the journal, but also colleagues from across the faculty who edit journals. Who will be talking about their experience as editors and giving key tips and advice that, while it’s focused for our PGR community, everyone is welcome. Thank you.

Thanks very much. That was really interesting and exciting to hear that there is a launch event that is broader because it would be really interesting if there are any other faculties or departments at the university who would be interested in doing something similar with their PGRs. It’s excellent that you are, yeah, have this and can share your experience.

I’m not sure if we have any questions. Does anyone want to ask anything?

I have a question to start us off.

I think we’re much more traditional than Thomas’ papers, so probably a lot less unexplored terrain for many people.

There’s a big drive within the university to increase the research culture at all levels. Do you see a scope to expand the concept of The Hive beyond PGRs? Perhaps to Masters or undergraduate students even? Because that is something that’s done elsewhere as well.

We’ve had that discussion. At the minute it’s a PGR, whether it’s MPhil or PHD level. One talk going forward is whether current MA students are open for it. I think one issue is the work that they’re typically writing is to be assessed. I think also there is the assessment process then building on that and whether at the end of the MA they reflect and see what is developed and contributes to the journal. One thing I want this to be as well is that it responds to what the broader community also wants and also what serves. So if the PGR editorial team are like, no, this is for research students and MA is something else. Or if the directions go in that line, everything is open, subject to the same processes in that respect. I think at this point we’re focusing on PGR. But that’s not to say that something cannot be changed in the future. I don’t think undergraduates, I think that changes one, what the journal is for. But also, the impact, I think, on undergraduates being in a position to do that level of work in the next stages. Although if they reflect on their dissertation afterwards, that first big bit of research. I don’t know if Mark and Suzie have thoughts on this from their perspective being closer to the MA than I am.

I’ve always felt like I think in the initial meetings we had, I was like, Let’s make sure that MA students find out about this. I think there is definitely the potential for an MA student to be writing something for The Hive. I think I agree with you in terms of undergraduates though, that might be a bridge too far in a sense. I guess just in terms of the processes and the levels we’re expecting. Obviously, they’ve got a sizable amount of work to do themselves. And so in terms of allowing them to submit that, we would probably have to increase the board twofold if we were to deal with submissions from a large bachelor students community. Yeah, it’s a really important point in terms of capacity as well because we started this time last year, I think with 13 members of the editorial team. As the demands of the PHD also increase and teaching, life outside the university as well, it’s semi open door policy, but appreciating that people have other demands on their time. But having a cohesive whole. The personnel are going to change quite often. I think, especially the early days having something which is within capacity for the editorial team as well is not insignificant consideration.

Having come through the Masters straight into the PHD, I don’t doubt that my fellow Masters students would be perfectly capable of writing something brilliant for the journal. But in terms of going from a taught course, ours was atypical because it was during the pandemic as well. But everybody was super, super stressed out. That wasn’t just another pandemic. That was just because they were meeting deadlines and looking after babies and doing their jobs all at the same time. Whereas with the PHD, you are a little bit more at liberty to manage your own workload. And as I was saying earlier, to make your articles that might be going to Hive, also be reflections on research that you happen to be doing at the same time. Whereas if people were writing up, for instance their MA dissertation as a Hive article, that would potentially be really interesting, but it would also be retroactive. Yeah, there’s a question of just managing workload as well.

Thank you. Well, we’re at an hour. We can wrap it up there. Thank you very much. I’d like to thank Tom, Jenny, Mark, and Suzie for sharing what you’re doing. This has been really helpful and useful for us. We’re really excited to have you as part of this first event. We are hoping to run more of these events in the future. We are looking for ideas, so if anyone has a topic they’d like to explore or would like to participate and share something that you’re doing, either the research you’re doing, a specific process or something else, we are very interested to hear from you, Please let us know. And with that I will say thank you very much and enjoy the rest of the day. Thanks everyone. Thank you. Bye.