The problem with non-lawyers, like me, speculating on legal matters is that there’s a risk of scaremongering or just plain inaccuracy. Not that this really ever stops the practice – and it won’t here. In any case, I wanted to re-state the question that I raised yesterday and that I’d like addressed about CC BY and defamatory attribution. Let us say that I have written an article about an important historical topic, for instance: the Holocaust.

Further to my other post earlier this week, I have added the additional points to my response letter to the Plan S implementation guidelines.

I write to provide feedback in an individual capacity on the Plan S implementation guidelines. I am extremely supportive of the cOAlition’s goals and Plan S in general. I disagree with those who say that the timeline is too short; many of these actors have not taken the opportunities over the last decade to experiment with open access or new business models and have only begun dialogue under the threat of immediate action.

The Royal Historical Society has published an interim/draft report feeding back on Plan S. Although not a historian but as someone with a keen interest in open access in the humanities disciplines – and in the spirit of open exchange, since this document has understandably caused some alarm among humanities scholars – I wanted to write up my criticisms (and one ringing endorsement where I agree with them) in public.

After much postponement, writing the final report for my NWO Veni grant (2015-2018) turned out to be an unexpected pleasure. It made me realise a couple of things — key among them the role of serendipity in shaping fundamental research. The project was called “Towards a science of linguistic depiction”. Looking at the publications that came out of it and at imperfect indicators like citations, it’s made some useful contributions.

2018 was, in general, a pretty good year for me. Certainly, parts of it were marred by handling my new hearing loss, but an assistive device (a speech-filtering microphone system) has greatly helped with this, although I am still functionally deaf in many environments. On the plus side, though, I moved house to the Kent coast and it has been one of the best things we’ve done in years.

I have always had a fondness for things considered marginal in linguistics. The tide may be turning for at least some marginalia: work on ideophones is clearly on the rise, and initiatives such as Martina Wiltschko’s Eh lab at UBC and a new nonlexical vocalizations project at Linköping University show there is significant interest in this area.

I have always had a fondness for things considered marginal in linguistics. The tide may be turning for at least some marginalia: work on ideophones is clearly on the rise, and initiatives such as Martina Wiltschko’s Eh lab at UBC and a new nonlexical vocalizations project at Linköping University show there is significant interest in this area. Part I from my notes on a workshop on ‘Ideophones and non-lexical vocalizations’.

The announcement of Plan S – an ambitious undertaking to mandate open access in Europe by 2020 on most funded research, but also now expanding overseas, potentially to the States and beyond – has prompted debates about the place of academic freedom in the selection of publication venue and whether OA mandates might infringe on such rights. This is an old debate – Stuart Shrieber wrote about it in 2009.

If you read any review of the M-Audio Trigger Finger Pro, it sounds like a steal. A sequencer, drum machine, and more, all packed into a hardware unit that is available for about £100 on Ebay. Steal. The problem is, it seems that these reviewers have never actually tried to record midi output from the device. The synchronisation is totally messed up. The latency unpredictably varies between takes and the recorded output is never the same.