University of Bristol

Mike Taylor

If you check out [the Shiny Digital Future
page](http://svpow.com/the-digital-future/) on this site, where we write
about scholarly publishing, open access, open data and other such
matters, you will see the following:

- 2009: 9 posts
- 2010: 5 posts
- 2011: 9 posts
- 2012: 116 posts! Woah!
- 2013: 75 posts
- 2014: 34 posts
- 2015: 31 posts
- 2016, up until the end of June: 34 posts
- 2016, July onwards: 8 posts
- 2017: 12 posts
- 2018: 6 posts
- 2019: 4 posts
- 2020: nothing yet.

In four and a half years up to the end of June, Matt and I (but mostly
I) posted 290 times in the Shiny Digital Future, for an average of 64.4
posts a year (one every 5.6 days). Since then we've posted 30 times in a
bit more than three and a half years, for an average of 8.6 posts a year
(one every 42.6 days).

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Shiny Digital Future posts by year (2016 split into halves)
:::

Something happened half way through 2016 that cut my Shiny Digital
Future productivity to 13% of what it was before. (And, no, I wasn't
bought off by Elsevier.)

Here's another funny thing. My eldest son was taking his A-levels in the
summer of 2016. He had got so good at the Core 4 paper in maths that he
was reliably scoring 95--100% on every past paper. He took the actual
exam on the morning of 24th June, and scored 65% --- a mark so low that
it prevented him getting an A\* grade.

Well, we all know what happened on the 23rd of June 2016: [the Brexit
referendum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum).
I know that opinions differ on the desirability of Brexit, but for our
family it was emotionally devastating. It's the reason Dan was so
knocked sideways that he botched his Core 4 paper. It's hung over us all
to a greater or lesser extent ever since, and it's only with the recent
triumph of the "Conservative" Party^1^ in the 2019 General Election that
I've [finally attained the ability to think of it as Somebody Else's
Problem](https://reprog.wordpress.com/2019/12/18/what-now/). There is
something gloriously liberating about being so comprehensively beaten
that you can just give up.

I'm not going to rehearse all the reasons why Brexit is awful --- not
now, not ever again. (If you have a taste for that kind of thing, I
recommend [Chris Grey's Brexit
Blog](https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/), which is
dispassionate, informed and forensic.) I'm not going to follow Brexit
commentators on Twitter, and read all the desperately depressing
analysis they highlight. I'm certainly not going to [blog about it
myself](https://reprog.wordpress.com/category/politics/) any more. More
importantly, I'm not going to let the ongoing disintegration of my
country dominate my mind or my emotions. I'm walking away: because
*obviously* absolutely nothing I say or do about it can make the
slightest bit of difference.

But there is an area of policy where I *can* hope to make some small
difference, and that is of course open science --- including but not
limited to open access, open data, open reviewing and how research is
evaluated. That's where my political energy should have been going for
the last three years, and it's where that energy will be going from now
on.

Because *so much is happening* in this space right now, and we need to
be thinking about it and writing about it! Ludicrously, we've never even
written anything about [Plan S](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_S)
even though it's nearly eighteen months old. But so much more is going
on:

- Just today, I heard the extraordinary news that [the whole massive
  country of China is upending its famously short-sighted evaluation
  system for
  researchers](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202002/24/WS5e5316f4a310128217279a34.html),
  doing away with bonuses for publishing in specific journals.
- And just today [the Smithsonian has released 2.8 million images and
  other resources into the public
  domain](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/smithsonian-releases-28-million-images-public-domain-180974263/)
  with free metadata (including [this 3D model of a *Triceratops*
  skeleton](https://www.si.edu/object/3d/d8c623be-4ebc-11ea-b77f-2e728ce88125)).
- And just today I read the details of [how Florida State University
  cancelled its Big Deal subscriptions with
  Elsevier](https://sparcopen.org/news/2020/elsevier-exit-qa-with-florida-state-university-about-their-big-deal-cancellations/).
- And *just this moment*, while writing this post, I learned that UKRI
  (which is ultimately responsible for pretty much all public funding
  for scientific research in the UK) [has launched a consultation on
  open
  access](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ukri-launches-consultation-on-open-access-policy)
  which any of us can submit to.

Each of these developments merits its own post and discussion, and I'm
sorry I don't have the energy to do that right now.

What I offer instead is an apology for letting my energy by stolen for
so long by such a stupid issue; and a promise to refocus in 2020. I'll
start shortly by writing up [the R2R
debate](https://r2rconf.com/2020/01/21/r2r-debate-teams-announced/) that
I was involved in on Monday, on the proposition "The venue of its
publication tells us nothing useful about the quality of a paper".

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[^1^The more right-wing of the two large political parties in the UK is
called the Conservative party, and traditionally it has adhered to
small-c conservative ideals. But at the moment, it's the exact opposite
of what it says on the tin: it's been hijacked by a radical movement
that, contra [Chesterton's
Fence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence),
wants to smash everything up in the hope that whatever emerges from the
chaos will be better than what we have now. It may be exciting; it may
even (who knows?) prove to be right, in the end^2^. What it ain't, is
conversative.]{.small}

[^2^Spoiler: it won't.  
]{.small}

 


If you check out the Shiny Digital Future page on this site, where we write about scholarly publishing, open access, open data and other such matters, you will see the following: 2009: 9 posts 2010: 5 posts 2011: 9 posts 2012: 116 posts! Woah! 2013: 75 posts 2014: 34 posts 2015: 31 posts 2016, up until the end of June: 34 posts 2016, July onwards: 8 posts 2017: 12 posts 2018: 6 posts 2019: 4 posts 2020: nothing yet.

I’ve been an idiot for three years; or, goodbye Brexit, hello Open Access!

It's been pretty quiet around here, huh?

Why?

It's all just too awful to write about sauropod vertebrae at the moment.

Trump. Brexit. Perverse incentives in academia. I can't even get up
enough enthusiasm to do the revisions for my own accepted-with-revisions
manuscripts, let along write blog-posts.

Oh, western civilisation. And you were doing so well.


It’s been pretty quiet around here, huh?  Why?  It’s all just too awful to write about sauropod vertebrae at the moment.  Trump. Brexit. Perverse incentives in academia. I can’t even get up enough enthusiasm to do the revisions for my own accepted-with-revisions manuscripts, let along write blog-posts.  Oh, western civilisation. And you were doing so well.

Rogue Scholar Beiträge

I’ve been an idiot for three years; or, goodbye Brexit, hello Open Access!

It’s all just too awful