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Planning for publication and impact
I had the privilege of speaking at the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher Workshop 2024 on understanding impact and disseminating law and society research. The workshop offered a wide-ranging discussion of publishing, impact and navigating an academic career as an ECR. If you aren’t yet a member of the LSAANZ, do consider it. As part of that workshop, with A/Prof Bridgette Toy-Cronin of the University of Otago, I put together some handouts and activities to help ECR attendees think about their publication choices and how to embed and plan for research impact. I thought those questions and prompts were worth sharing…
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Structuring a tutorial
As Director of Teaching at Melbourne Law School, I have the privilege of running inductions for new teachers at the School. It is great to meet new people, and to have an intensive discussion of how we teach. Something that was asked this term related to how to structure a tutorial. After an intensive semester of teaching, I thought it was worth noting what I do in my tutorials (as opposed to seminars or lectures, which have different aims and content). A typical tutorial structure, for me, might include: Some other great advice is available from the Oxford Centre for Teaching and Learning. My key points would be:
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Removing notes from PowerPoint: a game changer for Mac
I have been juggling a significant teaching load this year. I generally use PowerPoint as a visual aid for teaching; and, for my own purposes, often use the ‘notes’ function in PowerPoint. For accessibility, I distribute PowerPoints as an editable file – not a PDF – on the learning management system, but this often means my notes need to be removed before the PowerPoints are distributed. Deleting notes across PowerPoints is time-consuming and repetitive – there has to be a better way. There is – and it is a game changer. For those using a PC, there is a fairly simple solution to delete all notes: https://www.howtogeek.com/730732/how-to-delete-all-presentation-notes-at-once-in-microsoft-powerpoint/ On a Mac,…
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Tracking impact
Universities are increasingly attuned to the ‘impact’ agenda – seeking to measure and quantify the impact of our work on society. The Australian Research Council defines ‘research impact’ as ‘the contribution that research makes to the economy, society, environment or culture, beyond the contribution to academic research.’ In many fields, ‘impact’ is measured through citation counts. This is problematic for multiple reasons: self-citations can ‘game’ citation counts (and are included in most citation measures); and a highly cited article could be cited a lot because it is so bad! So use citation data with caution. Also, we need to contextualise any impact data in the context of our field; so…
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Making the most of a grant
After six (disrupted) years, I have finally come to the end of my Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. It has been an incredible privilege to spend this time intensively researching. I think – I hope – I have done that privilege justice. You can see my grant outputs at ageworks.info. But what isn’t often talked about is how hard it can be work to work on a large grant alone for so many years. The camaraderie of teaching is gone, and there are no grounds to complain when things get tough – being on a grant is a privilege, after all! Suck it up, sunshine. Intensively researching…
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Be brave: how to negotiate open access rights with your publisher
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Book publishing
Academic book publishing is a fraught process. Crafting and pitching a book proposal takes time, and it takes even longer for that proposal to be (hopefully) accepted. But how do we decide which book publisher to approach? What factors should we consider in choosing a publisher? And what do we need to negotiate in a book contract? First, some things to consider in choosing a book publisher: Prestige: like it or not, prestige has to factor in to the choice of book publisher. Which publishing house is well-respected in your field? What publication will support your career progression and promotion? Impact: Which publisher is likely to have the most impact…
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How to Excel (with Excel)
Legal academics have a well-known aversion to numbers. But Excel – for all its faults – can be a huge help when managing large amounts of data, be it numbers or words. I have used Excel to analyse cases, build tables and charts, and manage all sorts of data. We spoke with Christina Ward, Liaison Librarian (Research) at Melbourne Law School, about essential tips for using Excel for academic research. Our tips: To swap rows and columns in a table, copy the table, select “paste special” and click transpose. To reverse rows or columns in a table, try this trick. To manage data, the sort and filter functions are incredibly…
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Be brave: how to negotiate open access rights with your publisher
For Open Access Week 2020, I spoke with Dimity Flanagan (Manager, Scholarly Communications) at the University of Melbourne about why open access is important and the practicalities of making research open. My thoughts (originally published here) are reposted below. Q. Why is it important to you to take the extra time to make sure more of your research is available open access? For me, open access is important for a number of reasons. First, it is a way in which we can ensure that publicly-funded research is made accessible to the public. Second, open access extends the reach and impact of our scholarship. I have discovered this somewhat by accident:…
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Making the most of a grant
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Microsoft Word
Love it or hate it, Microsoft Word is ubiquitous in an academic setting (at least, for those of us who don’t use LaTeX!). But are you using Word in the best way? Are there tips or tricks you are missing, that could save time or agony? We spoke with Christina Ward, Liaison Librarian (Research) at Melbourne Law School, about the essential tips for using Word for academic research, and navigating large documents (like a PhD!). Comparing documents: do you have co-authors who always forget to track changes when amending a document? Has a copy editor returned your files to you, but failed to identify the changes? Comparing documents will be…
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Haters gonna hate: Dealing with criticism
Criticism is part and parcel of academic work. It is embedded in journal reviewer reports, conference questions and grant reports. We need criticism: it can help us to see our work in a new light, overcome road blocks, and reach our full academic potential. The problem occurs, however, when criticism is no longer constructive but destructive. So how can we deal with potentially destructive feedback? We spoke with Professor Katy Barnett as part of Melbourne Law School’s Early Career Network seminar series about how we should navigate criticism. Here are our ideas and suggestions: 1. Recognise that destructive feedback is not about you: it reflects the person’s own insecurities or…
