̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - ̽��ֱ�� Library

Celebrating remarkable talent as part of Black History Month

ps748 — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 10:07:42 +0000

Events in Cambridge for Black History Month

Cambridge's Race Equality Lecture

Jesus College, Thursday 31 October

It may seem odd, but we start at the end of the month because this year’s Race Equality Lecture will take place on Thursday 31 October. ̽��ֱ��lecture is titled “Racism without racists – how racism works in the USA and the western world.” It will be delivered by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Professor of Sociology at Duke ̽��ֱ�� and former President of the American Sociological Association. It will take place in the Frankopan Hall at Jesus College and will be available to view online.

Book your place at the Race Equality Lecture

Olaudah Equiano Annual Lecture on Race Justice

Anglia Ruskin ̽��ֱ��, Wednesday 9 October

Lord Simon Woolley, Principal of Homerton College and co-founder of Operation Black Vote, will deliver the Olaudah Equiano Annual Lecture on Race Justice at Anglia Ruskin ̽��ֱ�� on Wednesday 9 October. ̽��ֱ��event will take place at the Cambridge campus and starts at 6pm. Lord Woolley is a tireless campaigner for equality, not just for Black communities but all under-represented or marginalised groups. During the event he will discuss the fight for racial equality drawing on his own personal experiences.

Book tickets for the Olaudah Equiano Annual Lecture on Race Justice

Moving beyond stereotypes surrounding Black women

King's College, Thursday 10 October

On the evening of Thursday 10 October, celebrated authors Kelechi Okafor and Afua Hirsch will discuss the challenges and opportunities they have faced when calling out social injustices in their work, with a focus on how their own identities have shaped their activism. They will share insights on the creative processes involved in their writing and how it has impacted on conversations about race, womanhood and justice.

Reserve a place for the discussion at King's

Collaborative art workshops

Robinson College, Wednesday 16 and Saturday 19 October

For those interested in modern art Robinson College is hosting two collaborative art workshops. ̽��ֱ��first, on Wednesday 16 October, will be hosted by London artist, Shem, on the theme ‘Black present now’. And then, on Saturday 19 October, the College will host Joshua Obichere, a Cambridge alumnus.

Panel discussion: Black excellence, health and wellness

St Edmund's College, Wednesday 16 October

Also on the afternoon of Wednesday 16 October, St Edmund’s College will be hosting a panel discussion on the themes of Black excellence, health and wellness. Speakers include economist and entrepreneur Ebenezer Ademisoye, clinical scientist, Dr Rafia Al-Lamki and Mastercard Scholar, Godspower Major.

Reserve your ticket for the panel discussion at St Edmund's College

Fireside chat at the Business School

Cambridge Judge Business School, Thursday 17 October

Lord Woolley will participate in a ‘fireside chat’ at the Business School on the afternoon of Thursday 17 October. ̽��ֱ��event will be chaired by Kamiar Mohaddes and will also include Tabitha Mwangi, Programme Director of the Mastercard Foundation, and Orobosa Isokpan from the Cambridge Africa Business Network. There will be networking opportunities as well but registration is essential.

An exhibition and events at St Catharine's College

St Catharine's College, throughout October

During the entire month of October, St Catharine’s College is hosting an exhibition showcasing the achievements of two prominent Black alumni. ̽��ֱ��pioneering doctor and civil rights activist Dr Cecil Clarke matriculated in 1914 in the first months of the First World War. Wendell Mottley was an Olympic athlete and economist who served as Trinidad and Tobago’s Finance Minister between 1991 and 1995. ̽��ֱ��exhibition commemorating them is being held in the Shakeshaft Library.

See the full programme of Black History Month events at St Catharine's College

̽��ֱ��Blacktionary Show

Wolfson College, Saturday 19 October

On Saturday 19 October Wolfson College hosts the ‘Blacktionary Show’. Authors Dr Maggie Semple and Jane Oremosu will be discussing their new work ‘My Little Book: A Blacktionary - ̽��ֱ��pocket guide to the language of race’. ̽��ֱ��book aims to help break down barriers when it comes to engaging in conversations on race. ̽��ֱ��event will be introduced by Dr Kenny Monrose, from the ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Sociology.

Panel discussion: how organisations promote equality and diversity in the face of a cultural backlash

Homerton College, Tuesday 22 October

On Tuesday 22 October Lord Woolley will again be participating in a discussion being held at Homerton College looking at how companies and other organisations promote equality and diversity in the face of a cultural backlash. Other prominent speakers include the successful businesswomen, Olu Orugboh and Yemi Jackson.

̽��ֱ��Trevelyan Lecture: 'Black Genius: Science, Race and the Extraordinary Portrait of Francis Williams'

Bateman Auditorium, Gonville and Caius College 5 pm Friday 25 October (Faculty of History)

Francis Williams was a Jamaican polymath who was born into slavery but ended his life as a gentleman and a scholar. His portrait, dating from the 1740s, shows him surrounded by books and scientific instruments. Was he Cambridge's first Black student? And who commissioned the portrait, and why? Princeton historian, Fara Dabhoiwala, will tackle these questions when he presents new research on the painting and its intriguing sitter.

Black History Month Academic Seminar

Hughes Hall, Monday 28 October

An opportunity to hear from the College's Black staff and PhD students and celebrate their achievements but also to hear about the challenges facing Black students at Cambridge. One of the main subjects for discussion will be the low numbers of Black academics in the UK.

More details about the seminar here

̽��ֱ��Really Popular Book Club: Mr Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo

Online, Tuesday 29 October

On Tuesday 29 October the ̽��ֱ�� Library’s Really Popular Book Club will be discussing Bernardine Evaristo’s ‘Mr Loverman’. ̽��ֱ��book follows an Antiguan born immigrant living in Hackney, London, who leads a double life. ̽��ֱ��discussion will be hosted by Yvonne Battle Felton, Academic Director of Creative Writing at Cambridge’s Institute of Continuing Education. This is an online event.

Black Advisory Hub events

St John's College, Wednesday 30 October

During the afternoon of Wednesday 30 October, the Black Advisory Hub is hosting a social and afternoon tea for Black students at St John’s College. It's one of many events the Hub is hosting. These include induction sessions for both undergraduates and postgraduates and the prizegiving ceremony for the Bridgetower essay competition.

Visit the Black Advisory Hub to register

Cambridge Students' Union events

St John's College, Thursday 3 October

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Students' Union is also hosting several events to mark Black History Month. This opens with a screening of the documentary 'Educationally Subnormal: a British scandal' on Thursday 3 October.

Visit the Cambridge SU to see what's on

Black History Month in Cambridge brings an opportunity to take part in topical discussions, appreciate art and hear from a range of engaging speakers.

Montage of faces

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge's historical involvement with Tobias Rustat

Anonymous — Tue, 03 Nov 2020 14:05:42 +0000

Rustat, a courtier to Charles II, derived part of his great wealth from the Royal African Company, which was responsible for shipping more enslaved Africans to the Americas than any other institution during the period of the slave trade.

Rustat’s name appears on the charters of both the Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa and its re-incorporated entity, ̽��ֱ��Royal African Company (RAC).

Rustat invested £400 and took a role in running the RAC, being elected for a yearly term as an Assistant (the rough equivalent of a Director) in the years 1676, 1679, and 1680, although his direct involvement in the day-to-day management of the company was not great. ̽��ֱ��RAC was not consistently profitable, but Rustat received dividends on his investment.

In 1667, Rustat gave the ̽��ֱ�� Library its first endowment, £1000, to be spent on books of its choosing. Rustat was much later memorialised by a small late 19th-century stone statue overlooking West Court at ̽��ֱ��Old Schools, the original site of the Library.

The Advisory Group on the Legacies of Enslavement was asked by Vice-Chancellor Professor Stephen J Toope to make recommendations on the future of the Rustat statue. In parallel, the ̽��ֱ�� Library gave consideration to the Rustat endowment, which generates income of around £5000 a year.

No decision has been made regarding the statue, but preliminary enquiries are being made about the process for removing the statue from the exterior of a Grade 1 listed building.

̽��ֱ��Library is currently determining how income from this Rustat Fund might be remodelled (and renamed) in order to support active research into the slave trade and its legacies. For the 2020-21 financial year, income from the Fund will be spent on resources about the transatlantic slave trade and about the Black diaspora. Possible purchases will be identified collaboratively by library staff and researchers and final decisions will be taken by the Library’s Decolonisation Working Group.

Dr Jessica Gardner, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Librarian, said: “ ̽��ֱ��devastation caused by the Atlantic slave trade continues to affect millions of people globally to this day. We cannot effectively demonstrate solidarity with our black colleagues and students at Cambridge – and with others around the world – without first examining and understanding how we as an institution have benefitted from the proceeds of slavery.

“As well as asking the Inquiry to look into the Rustat benefaction, we also want to determine, with the critical help of our colleagues from the BAME community at Cambridge, how the income generated by this historic donation is best dispersed going forward.”

Jesus College has also announced that it has decided to make changes wherever Rustat is explicitly celebrated in College, following recommendations from the College’s own Legacy of Slavery Working Party.

An initial report from the ̽��ֱ��’s Advisory Group on Legacies of Enslavement was issued in May. A final report is due in Easter Term 2022.

During research into the ̽��ֱ��’s past links with the Atlantic slave trade, it has been established that a prominent benefactor of Jesus College and Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library, Tobias Rustat, was a major investor in a 17th-century slave trading company.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Mapping the Moon through the ages

cjb250 — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 08:35:37 +0000

On the 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing, the ̽��ֱ�� Library shares some of its incredible moon-related maps and archive.

Packed programme of events to mark LGBT+ History Month 2019

sb726 — Fri, 01 Feb 2019 16:19:09 +0000

Rainbow flags will fly - and be projected - across the ̽��ֱ�� and Colleges, and a series of events will be held to mark LGBT+ History Month, which begins today (1 February).

̽��ֱ��annual celebration aims to promote equality and diversity by increasing the visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, their history, lives and their experiences - and some of those experiences will be featured in exhibitions, talks, and drop-in sessions organised by staff and students at the ̽��ֱ��.

Professor Andrew Webber, the ̽��ֱ��'s LGBT+ Equality Champion, said: “LGBT+ History Month at Cambridge promises to be an intriguing mix of thoughtful debate and fun, in a variety of settings. From discussions on civil rights to queer crafts, the events taking place offer a unique opportunity to celebrate diversity and advance education on matters affecting the LGBT+ community.”

Some of the events are highlighted below:

Friday, 1 February, 5pm - An Introduction to Queer History - Andrew Lumsden

̽��ֱ��Nihon Room, Pembroke College
Delivered by original Gay Liberation Front (GLF) activist and co-founder of Gay News Andrew Lumsden, this talk begins just prior to the Labouchere Amendment of 1885 and works forward to the modern day. ̽��ֱ��talk will stop off at significant moments in Queer History in this time period, with emphasis on the Labouchere Amendment and on the activities of the GLF in the early 1970s. ̽��ֱ��talk will end by looking at the modern context, and will allow ample room for questions to be answered by the speaker.
̽��ֱ��event is part of the CamQueerHistory series, organised by a group of staff, graduates and undergraduates from departments and Colleges across the ̽��ֱ��. For more information visit www.camqueerhistory.co.uk.

Saturday, 2 February, 2pm to 4pm - Queer Wellbeing Drop In

̽��ֱ��Nihon Room, Pembroke College
Cambridge poet Michael Brown hosts a friendly and social drop-in afternoon of art and poetry activities to promote wellbeing.Try mindfulness colouring in, queer crafts or help write our collective poem. Drop in and stay as little or as long as you want.
Accessible venue with everyone welcome to join us. www.poetbrownie.com @CamQueerHistory

Monday, 4 February - Saturday, 2 March - ̽��ֱ�� Library exhibition

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library
The ̽��ֱ�� Library will mark LGBT+ History Month by flying the rainbow flag on weekdays throughout February and with an exhibition of historic and modern collection items that touch upon different facets of the LGBT+ community over the centuries. ̽��ֱ��material on display covers a millennium of human thought, from 11th-century Israel to 21st-century Cambridge, and takes in Japanese, French, American, Hispanic and British stories. It is open during normal Library opening hours - all are welcome.

Saturday, 9 February, 11am to 4.30pm - Rainbow Pilgrims Exhibition

South Lecture Room, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge.
Explore the rites and passages of LGBTQI migrants in Britain through this incredible interactive exhibition. Rainbow Pilgrims is a landmark project that discovers the hidden history of LGBTQI migrants in the UK past and present. ̽��ֱ��project covers the period from the first Jewish Kindertransports to Britain today. One-day exhibition organised in conjunction with Encompass Network, Cambridge City Council and the UCM.

Saturday, 16 February, 10am to 5.30pm - TRASH! Waste and Excess in Queer Cultures

Faculty of English Building, 9 West Road, Cambridge
̽��ֱ��Faculty of English hosts 'TRASH! Waste and Excess in Queer Cultures', an interdisciplinary symposium exploring waste and excess in LGBTQ+ life and culture. Featuring contributions by leading scholars of literature, film, art history, and performance, it celebrates queer cultures' remarkable, inventive employment of waste and garbage as artistic materials and trash as a queer aesthetic. ̽��ֱ��symposium is organised by Dr Diarmuid Hester (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow) and supported by ̽��ֱ��Leverhulme Trust, Encompass Network, and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge's Faculty of English, LGBTQ+@Cam, and the Public Engagement Starter Fund.
Booking is essential. Get your free ticket

For updates follow @CamQueerTrash

Tuesday, 19 February 2019, 4.30pm to 6pm - Celebrating Difference: A Whole School Approach to LGBT+ Inclusion - Shaun Dellenty

Donald McIntyre Building, Faculty of Education, Hills Road
Shaun Dellenty, a nationally celebrated LGBT inclusion-in-education advocate and educator, has written a ground-breaking book, Celebrating Difference - A Whole School Approach to LGBT+ Inclusion aimed at empowering school leaders, school governors and teachers to facilitate lasting organisational change within their schools. Shaun has adopted a multi-layered approach, bringing awareness of LGBT identities across a variety of media, including social media, blogging, news and television.

Thursday, 21 February, 5.30pm to 6:30pm - Annual LGBT HM Lecture: Trans People: Flashback and Backlash

̽��ֱ��McGrath Centre, St Catharine's College
Christine Burns MBE campaigned for a quarter of a century for the civil rights of transgender people and has been involved with the community for more than 40 years.
She is the editor of the recently published book Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows - a comprehensive account of the landmark events which shaped the transgender community over the last five decades.
Book your place at the Annual LGBT HM Lecture

Monday, 25 February, 4.30pm to 6pm - Researching LGBTQ+ Issues: Building Community

Donald McIntyre Building, Faculty of Education, Hills Road
A panel of researchers and associated colleagues discuss the complexities of researching LGBTQ + issues, and the vital role of community building.

Charlotte Allen (2nd year PhD) – Exploring LGBTQ + students’ resilience in response to commonplace challenges at school: preliminary findings and researcher experiences
Frank Frangeskou (2nd year MEd) – LGB School Leadership: Breaking the Silence
Becky Moses (ACE MPhil) – Queer Temporalities, Histories, and Utopias: ̽��ֱ��Potentialities and Possibilities of a Queer Poetic Practice
Lucian Stephenson (administrative) – Yet Another Trans 101: Experiences and Frustrations as a Transgender Transgender Educator
This talk is part of the Arts and Creativities Research Group series. Find out more about the panel talk

Tuesday, 26 February, 2pm to 6pm - Queer(y)ing the Past: An Afternoon of Alternative Archaeology - with wine! Free seminar

Henry Wellcome Building, Fitzwilliam Street, Cambridge
A series of short talks will explore the topic of sexuality and gender in the past. Talks will also address the issues of undertaking field research as LGBTQ+ archaeologists. No registration required.
Keynote: Prof Richard Parkinson, ̽��ֱ�� of Oxford, 'Moments of Identification: LGBTQ+ History and Heritage'.

For information about other LGBT+ History Month events, visit lgbt.cusu.cam.ac.uk/contact-us/

Art, poetry and alternative archeology are among the highlights of LGBT+ History Month at the ̽��ֱ�� and Colleges

From discussions on civil rights to queer crafts, the events taking place offer a unique opportunity to celebrate diversity...

Professor Andrew Webber

Emmanuel College projects the rainbow flag

Yes

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge supports BBC Short Story Awards

ps748 — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 23:15:00 +0000

These awards highlight the BBC’s commitment to the short story form and to bringing it to a wider audience. ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge will support all three of the awards and the charity, First Story, will become a partner for the BBC Young Writers’ Award and the Student Critics' Award. ̽��ֱ��partners replace BookTrust who have been working as a partner with the BBC since 2006.

Dr Sarah Dillon, lecturer in English Literature and Film at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said

‘ ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has a rich heritage of investigating storytelling for eight hundred years and in that time we have produced many acclaimed creative writers including those who excel at the short story form such as A.S. Byatt, Helen Oyeyemi and Zadie Smith. ̽��ֱ��BBC shares more stories with more people than any other organisation in the world, and both organisations have an outstanding reputation for excellence and literary merit. ̽��ֱ��combined strengths of Cambridge and the BBC with First Story will make this a powerful and productive partnership.”

̽��ֱ��new partnership heralds an expanded programme of activity around the awards. A short story symposium will be hosted by the new ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Centre for Creative Writing at Madingley Hall, the Institute of Continuing Education’s campus. ̽��ֱ��symposium is aimed at new writers and anyone interested in short stories and creative writing and will include writing workshops and talks by established authors. Cambridge will host the 2018 prizegiving, with a special short story edition of the BBC Radio 4 programme Front Row which will be broadcast live from the ̽��ֱ�� Library. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge School of Arts and Humanities will also host First Story’s Young Writers’ Festival for 600 young people in 2018.

Bob Shennan, Director of BBC Radio, said:

“I’d like to warmly welcome both of our new partners as we continue to champion brilliant storytelling across the BBC, including these awards on Radio 1 and Radio 4. We are the biggest commissioner of short stories and these awards are very much part of our commitment to bring our listeners the best new writing both from established and emerging talent. We greatly appreciate the support of our new partners, and I’d also like to thank BookTrust for their work with us over the past decade.”

̽��ֱ��BBC Young Writers’ Award and the BBC Student Critics’ Award enhance the offering for young people, with the aim of inspiring the next generation of readers and writers of short stories. Entrants to the Young Writers’ Award will have the opportunity to write their own short stories inspired by a treasure trove of literary artefacts, as the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library opens up its digital archives for writing prompts. Through the Student Critics’ Award selected 16–18 year olds around the UK will read, listen to, discuss and critique the five stories shortlisted for the NSSA and have their say. They will have access to discussion guides and teaching resources created with BBC Learning, and in-school events with writers, judges, First Story networks, and staff and students from the Faculty of English at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Di Speirs, Books Editor for BBC Radio said: “ ̽��ֱ��launch of our new three-way partnership with the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and First Story is a hugely exciting moment. ̽��ֱ��BBC National Short Story Award and the BBC Young Writers’ Award have made a genuine difference to individual writers and to the literary landscape over the past twelve years. ̽��ֱ��Student Critics’ Award will foster a new generation of readers alongside our exciting plans for writers of all ages. We share with our partners a commitment to inspiring new writers and readers and to championing the very best short story writing in the UK.”

̽��ֱ��prizes for both the BBC National Short Story Award and the BBC Young Writers’ Award remain the same. ̽��ֱ��five writers shortlisted for the BBC NSSA will all be celebrated individually on Radio 4: as in previous years, the stories will be read on Radio4 and the authors will be interviewed on Front Row, followed by a live edition of the programme where the winner is announced. For the Young Writers’ Award, the shortlist will have their stories published on the BBC Radio 1 website and the winning story will be broadcast on Radio 1. ̽��ֱ��awards will open for entry in December 2017.

A creative writing course at the Institute of Continuing Education

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Centre for Creative Writing offers a wide range of part-time and short courses, from one-day classes right up to a part-time Master’s degree. Students from all backgrounds and levels of experience can take part. For more information about the Centre go to: www.ice.cam.ac.uk/centre-creative-writing

More information about the Awards can be found at: www.bbc.co.uk/nssa

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is partnering with BBC Radio to promote the BBC National Short Story Award, the BBC Young Writers’ Award and the BBC Student Critics’ Award in a three year collaboration starting in 2018.

̽��ֱ��launch of our new three-way partnership with the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and First Choice is a hugely exciting moment

Di Speirs, BBC

Writing example

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Opinion: ̽��ֱ��science ‘reproducibility crisis’ – and what can be done about it

cjb250 — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 09:57:15 +0000

A survey by Nature revealed that 52% of researchers believed there was a “significant reproducibility crisis” and 38% said there was a “slight crisis”.

We asked three experts how they think the situation could be improved.

Open Research is the answer

Danny Kingsley, head of the Office of Scholarly Communication, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

̽��ֱ��solution to the scientific reproducibility crisis is to move towards Open Research – the idea that scientific knowledge of all kinds should be openly shared as early as it is practical in the discovery process. We need to reward the publication of research outputs along the entire process, rather than just each journal article as it is published.

As well as other research outputs – such as data sets – we should reward research productivity itself as well as the thought process and planning behind the study. This is why Registered Reports was launched in 2013, where researchers register the proposal and how the research will be conducted, before any experimental work commences. It allows editorial decisions to be based on the rigour of the experimental design and increases the likelihood that the findings could be replicated.

In the UK there is now a requirement from most funders that the data underpinning a research publication is made available. However, although there are moves towards open research, many argue against the sharing of data among the research community.

Questionable findings are often hidden. Shutterstock

Researchers often write multiple papers from a single data set and many fear that if this data is released with the first publication then the researcher will be “scooped” by another research group, who will publish findings from similar data sets before the original authors get the chance to publish follow up articles – to gain maximum credit for the work. If the publication of data itself could be recorded as a “research output”, then being scooped would no longer be such an issue, as such credit will have been given.

One benefit of sharing data could be an improvement in its quality – as previous research has shown. And there have been small steps towards this goal, such as a standard method of citing data.

We also need to publish “null” results – those that do not support the hypothesis – to prevent other researchers wasting time repeating work. There are a few publication outlets for this, and a recent press release from ResearchGate indicated that it supports the sharing of failed experiments through its “project” offering. It lets users upload and track experiments as they are happening – meaning no one knows how they will turn out.

Psychology is leading the way out of crisis

Jim Grange, senior lecturer in psychology, Keele ̽��ֱ��

To me, it is clear that there is a reproducibility crisis in psychological science, and across all sciences. Murmurings of low reproducibility began in 2011 – the “year of horrors” for psychology – with a high profile fraud case. But since then, ̽��ֱ��Open Science Collaboration has published the findings of a large-scale effort to closely replicate 100 studies in psychology. Only 36% of them could be replicated.

̽��ֱ��incentive structures in universities and the attitude that you “publish or perish” means that researchers prioritise “getting it published” over “getting it right”. It also means that some, implicitly or explicitly, use questionable research practices to achieve publication. These may include failing to report parts of data sets or trying different analytical approaches to make the data fit what you want to say. It could also mean presenting exploratory research as though it was originally confirmatory (designed to test a specific hypothesis).

However, many psychology journals now recommend or require the preregistration of studies which allow researchers to detail their predictions, experimental protocols, and planned analytical strategy before data collection. This provides confidence to readers that no questionable research practices have occurred.

Erasing data: a questionable research practice. Shutterstock

Registered Reports has taken this further. But of course, once results are produced, isolated findings don’t mean much until they have been replicated.

I make efforts to replicate results before trying to publish and you’d be forgiven for thinking that replication attempts are common in science, but this is simply not the case. Journals seek novel theories and findings, and view replications as treading over old ground which offers little incentive for career-minded academics to conduct replications.

This has also led to the introduction of Registered Replication Reports in Perspectives on Psychological Science. This is where teams of researchers each follow identical procedures independently and aim to replicate important findings from the literature. A single paper then collates and analyses them to establish the size and reproducibility of the original study.

Although psychology is leading the way for improvements with these pioneering initiatives, it is certainly not out of the woods. But it has started to move beyond a crisis and make impressive strides – more disciplines need to follow suit.

This is a publication bias crisis

Ottoline Leyser, director of the Sainsbury Laboratory, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

Reproducibility is a fundamental building block of science. If two people do the same experiment, they should get the same result. But there are many good reasons why two “identical” experiments might not give the same result such as unknown differences that have not been considered – and some exciting discoveries have been made this way.

So if a lack of reproducibility is itself not necessarily a problem, why is everybody talking about a crisis? In some cases poor practice and corner cutting have contributed to lack of reproducibility, and there have been some high profile cases of out and out fraud. It’s a major concern, but what is causing it?

In 2014 I chaired a project on the research culture in Britain for the Nuffield Council on bioethics, which was motivated by concerns about research integrity including over-claiming, rushing prematurely to publication and incorrect use of statistics. ̽��ֱ��main conclusions were that poor practice is incentivised by hyper-competition with overly narrow rules for winning.

There is an excessive focus on the publication of groundbreaking results in prestigious journals. But science cannot only be groundbreaking, as there is a lot of important digging to do after new discoveries – but there is not enough credit in the system for this work and it may remain unpublished because researchers prioritise their time on the eye-catching papers, hurriedly put together.

̽��ֱ��reproducibility crisis is actually a publication bias crisis which is driven by the reward structures in the research system. Various approaches have been suggested to address problems, such as pre-registration of experiments. However, the research landscape is highly diverse and this type of solution is only sensible for some research types. ̽��ֱ��most widely relevant solution is to change the reward structures. In the UK there is a major opportunity to do this by reforming the Research Excellence Framework (REF). Through the REF, public money is allocated to universities based on the “quality” of the four best research outputs, usually papers, produced by each of their principal investigators over approximately six years and it disproportionately rewards groundbreaking research.

We need reward for a portfolio of research outputs, including not only the headline grabbing results, but also confirmatory work and community data sharing, which are the hallmarks of a truly high quality research endeavour. This would go a long way to shifting the current destructive culture.

Ottoline Leyser, Director of the Sainsbury Laboratory, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge; Danny Kingsley, Head, Office of Scholarly Communication, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, and Jim Grange, Senior Lecturer in psychology, Keele ̽��ֱ��

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

Reproducibility is the idea that an experiment can be repeated by another scientist and they will get the same result. It is important to show that the claims of any experiment are true and for them to be useful for any further research. However, science appears to have an issue with reproducibility.

NIAID

Study of Human Immune Response to HIV

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

Lines of Thought: Discoveries that Changed the World

sjr81 — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 08:36:45 +0000

Lines of Thought: Discoveries that Changed the World, opens free to the public this Friday (March 11) and celebrates 4,000 years of recorded thought through the Library’s unique and irreplaceable collections. More than 70 per cent of the exhibits are displayed to the public for the first time in this exhibition.

Tracing the connections between Darwin and DNA, Newton and Hawking, and 3,000-year-old Chinese oracle bones and Twitter, the exhibition investigates, through six distinct themes, how Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library’s millions of books and manuscripts have transformed our understanding of life here on earth and our place among the stars.

̽��ֱ��iconic Giles Gilbert Scott building, opened in the 1930s, now holds more than eight million books, journals, maps and magazines – as well as some of the world's most iconic scientific, literary and cultural treasures.

̽��ֱ��new exhibition puts on display Newton’s own annotated copy of Principia Mathematica, Darwin’s papers on evolution, 3,000-year-old Chinese oracle bones, a cuneiform tablet from 2,000BC, and the earliest reliable text for 20 of Shakespeare’s plays.

Other items going on display include:

Edmund Halley’s handwritten notebook/sketches of Halley’s Comet (1682)
Stephen Hawking’s draft typescript of A Brief History of Time
Darwin’s first pencil sketch of Species Theory and his Primate Tree
A 2nd century AD fragment of Homer’s Odyssey.
̽��ֱ��Nash Papyrus – a 2,000-year-old copy of the Ten Commandments
Codex Bezae – 5th century New Testament, crucial to our understanding of ̽��ֱ��Bible.
A hand-coloured copy of Vesalius’ 1543 Epitome – one of the most influential works in western medicine
̽��ֱ��earliest known record of a human dissection in England (1564)
A Babylonian tablet dated 2039 BCE (the oldest object in the library)
̽��ֱ��Gutenberg Bible – the earliest substantive printed book in Western Europe (1455)
̽��ֱ��Book of Deer, 10th century gospel book: thought to be the oldest Scottish book and the first example of written Gaelic
̽��ֱ��first catalogue listing the contents of the Library in 1424, barely a decade after it was first identified in the wills of William Loring and William Hunden

̽��ֱ��six Lines of Thought featured in the exhibition are: From clay tablets to Twitter feed (Revolutions in human communication); ̽��ֱ��evolution of genetics (From Darwin to DNA); Beginning with the word (Communicating faith); On the shoulders of giants (Understanding gravity); Eternal lines (Telling the story of history) and Illustrating anatomy (Understanding the body).

̽��ֱ�� Librarian Anne Jarvis said: “It’s extraordinary to think that the ̽��ֱ�� Library, which started in 1416 as a small collection of manuscripts locked in wooden chests, has now grown into a global institution housing eight million books and manuscripts, billions of words, and millions of images, all communicating thousands of years of human thought.

“Our spectacular exhibition showcases six key concepts in human history that have been critical in shaping the world and culture we know today, illustrating the myriad lines of thought that take us back into the past, and forward to tomorrow’s research, innovation and literature.”

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� Library, which is older than both the British Library and the Vatican Library, has more than 125 miles of shelving and more than two million books immediately available to readers – making it the largest open-access library in Europe.

̽��ֱ��first Line of Thought featured in the exhibition: From clay tablet to Twitter begins with a tiny 4,000-year-old tablet used as a receipt for wool, evidence of an advanced civilisation using a cuneiform script and Sumerian language, probably written in Girsu (Southern Iraq) and precisely dated to 2039BCE. ̽��ֱ��tablet is on public display for the first time in this exhibition.

From there, it charts the many and varied revolutions in communications throughout history, taking in Chinese oracle bones, the Gutenberg Bible, a palm leaf manuscript written in 1015AD, newspapers, chapbooks and 20th century Penguin paperbacks, before ending with a book containing Shakespeare’s Hamlet written in tweets.

Objects going on display for the first time during Lines of Thought include: the Book of Deer, Vesalius’s 3D manikin of the human body, William Morris’s extensively annotated proofs of his edition of Beowulf, a wonderful caricature of Darwin, and works by Copernicus, Galileo and Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the discoverer of pulsars.

“For six centuries, the collections of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library have challenged and changed the world around us,” added Jarvis. “Across science, literature and the arts, the millions of books, manuscripts and digital archives we hold have altered the very fabric of our understanding.

“Only in Cambridge, can you find Newton’s greatest works sitting alongside Darwin’s most important papers on evolution, or Sassoon’s wartime poetry books taking their place next to the Gutenberg Bible and the archive of Margaret Drabble.”

To celebrate the Library’s 600th anniversary, the Library has selected one iconic item from each theme within the exhibition to be digitised and made available within a free iPad app, Words that Changed the World. Readers can turn the pages of these masterworks of culture and science, from cover to cover, accompanied by ̽��ֱ�� experts explaining their importance and giving contextual information.

Lines of Thought: Discoveries that Changed the World opens to the public on Friday, March 11, 2016 and runs until Friday, September 30, 2016. Entry is free.

̽��ֱ��exhibition is also available to view online, and items from the exhibition have also been digitised and made available on the Cambridge Digital Library.

Some of the world’s most valuable books and manuscripts – texts which have altered the very fabric of our understanding – will go on display in Cambridge this week as Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library celebrates its 600th birthday with a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition of its greatest treasures.

What started in 1416 as a small collection of manuscripts locked in wooden chests, has now grown into a global institution housing eight million books and manuscripts, billions of words, and millions of images, all communicating thousands of years of human thought.

Anne Jarvis

Lines of Thought: Discoveries that Changed the World

Graham CopeKoga

Priceless treasures: in a shot commissioned to celebrate Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library’s 600th anniversary, Professor Stephen Hawking is pictured with Newton’s annotated first edition of Principia Mathematica.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike

Your Questions Answered on open access

Anonymous — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 14:18:08 +0000

Open access means making peer reviewed works freely available in digital form, so that anyone with internet access can use them, without financial, legal or technical barriers. It allows users to download, copy, print and distribute works, without the need to ask for permission or to pay.

To the mark the eighth annual Open Access Week, we asked what readers wanted to know about the initiative.

Why do we need open access? How can I use it? Is it better for the sciences or the humanities?

Lucy Montgomery: Open access is a powerful mechanism for widening access to knowledge and for increasing the impact of research beyond universities. Because it makes peer-reviewed scholarship free at the point of use, open access helps ensure people who need knowledge can access it, even if they can’t afford to pay for it.

Patients scouring the internet for the latest information about rare medical conditions, scholars in the developing world, and practitioners who want to apply evidence-based research to challenges they face every day, are just a few examples of groups who benefit from open access.

̽��ֱ��global shift to open access is being driven by a consensus that the public has a right to access publicly funded research outputs. Closed publishing models rely on recovering the costs of publishing research by selling access to it. This made sense in a print-dominated world, when the marginal costs associated with making and distributing physical copies of books and journals was high; it makes much less sense in digital landscapes where the costs of making additional copies of a work once it’s been published are very low.

̽��ֱ��global shift to open access is being driven by a consensus that the public has a right to access publicly funded research outputs. Gideon Burton/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Once a work has been made open access, it’s free for anyone in the world to read or download. This is a boon for anyone who has ever been frustrated by a pay wall, for teachers looking for resources that can be shared easily with students, and for scholars who hope their work will contribute to a wider body of knowledge.

Although open access has been faster to take off in the sciences, it also has important benefits for scholars working in the humanities: helping authors to share their work with the communities that they write both for and about, and making knowledge and ideas available to new audiences.

How can journals meet the costs of editing, typesetting, proofreading, website construction and management if they move from subscriptions to open access?

Keyan Tomaselli: One of the key blind spots in open access discussions is the cost it poses to publishers. Journals that are not funded by foundations or universities are financially vulnerable in an open access environment unless they start charging for publishing articles. This is because their “permissions income stream”, which are paid to journals through national copyright agencies when their articles are reproduced in student course packs, will dry up.

In this model, the burden of payment will shift from reader or library payment for downloads or subscriptions, to author or institution for articles to be published. ̽��ֱ��assumption that open access is free – after data charges are paid – is wrong because though readers can access articles for free, authors and their institutions will end up paying so journals can recoup their costs. Data charges relate to the cost of internet access and downloading.

Too often one forgets that such accessing of the internet has cost implications too. And then there are journal post-production costs, including online platform hosting, marketing, discoverability, and archiving, among other things.

Open scholarship includes open notebook, open data and open review as well as open access. What are more systematic and rigorous treatments of open scholarship?

It’s now possible to put a digital ‘stamp’ on different scholarly outputs. Gideon Burton/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Danny Kingsley: There’s an increasing amount of research and discussion about open scholarship about integrity and researcher support; research management; assumptions and challenges; and about how we capture what’s being produced in repositories.

But although the nature of research is changing profoundly, the current system still only rewards and recognises traditional publication. Opening up scholarship has multiple benefits: research claims can be verified, work doesn’t have to be repeated to recreate the data, and data can be analysed from other perspectives.

It’s now possible to put a digital “stamp” on different scholarly outputs, called digital object identifiers (or DOIs). This means a researcher can be cited when another uses their work, and receive recognition.

By having an “open process” in research, we can put digital stamps on all aspects of research, such as progress in thinking through an online discussion paper, for instance; new techniques; and approaches and experiments. These can themselves be cited and therefore rewarded, rather than only recognising traditional published outputs.

How do we ensure research published under open access continues to have a system of rigorous quality checks, such as peer review, that can cope with the enormous load of research looking for publication?

James Bradley: We can’t ensure rigorous peer review of research will be undertaken under open access. Not only that, we know for sure that the explosion of open access journals has allowed for the publication of not just bogus work, but also work that’s irrelevant or useless for scientific or the whole academic enterprise.

How do we know this? For starters, there was an infamous sting in late 2013 that revealed a nonsensical piece of research was accepted for publication by a large number of open access journals. Then, there’s the research showing the huge numbers of “predatory” journals, which are basically in it for the money. ̽��ֱ��academic or the academic’s institution pays for publication and the piece gets in, regardless of quality. That’s why so many researchers often get emails from start-up journals soliciting our work — for a fee. It’s all about profit.

There’s another form of quality control that transcends peer review and lies in the after-life of a publication. Gideon Burton/Flickr, CC BY-SA

To mitigate this situation, there’s the Directory of Open Access Journals, which is supposed to act as quality control. If you make it on to the list, then you are supposed to be reputable. But some of the journals that have made it to the list are, in fact, “predatory”.

But it’s false to assume that all research that makes it into a front-rank publication is great or that all work in pay-for-publication journals is junk. ̽��ֱ��peer review system has always had flaws. Ultimately, there’s another form of quality control that transcends peer review and lies in the after-life of a publication — the opinion of your peers.

And this can, to some extent, be measured by metrics through citation databases. But it’s also reflected in the status and reputation accorded by your peers. It was ever thus, and most definitely remains the best form of quality control.

To what extent does this issue go beyond the machinations of open access versus the nuances of what’s free and not free, to the problem of the role of the university in a world where capitalism and the internet frame much of what we do?

Tom Cochrane: Open access has three points of origin. These, in no particular order, are the interests of the researcher in greater exposure and readership; the distorted economics of the price of scholarly communication (as distinct from the true cost of academic publishing); and the fact that the internet has made open access possible in the first place.

Openness in access to research outputs, research data and research processes, enhances replication capability, and allows review. Gideon Burton/Flickr, CC BY-SA

As the debate about open access has matured, it has also become clear that greater openness can also provide protection against research fraud or dishonesty. Openness in access to research outputs, research data and research processes, enhances replication capability, and allows review.

Open access has no particular correlation or causal relationship with the broader role of universities, other than to improve the efficiency and integrity of research and to increase the likelihood of greater integration with their various communities. It’s certainly true that we wouldn’t have seen it develop without the internet and, as such, the movement is another case of innovation and disruption of legacy models.

Where are we getting with the movement, year to year? How much concrete progress has there been as opposed to awareness raising?

Virginia Babour: There’s no doubt that the open access has come a long way. There are now mandates for open access in many countries and institutions globally.

These mandates vary in what they require. Some, like the one in the United Kingdom, are primarily supported through publication in open access journals. Others, like Australia’s funding councils' mandates, are via deposition of an author’s research in university repositories.

There’s also been an explosion of different technologies around open access, including new ideas on what can be published - just parts of articles, such as figures, fir instance – and new models for publishing open access books.

Finally, the infrastructure to support open access is developing with licenses for publishing, which lay out clearly how articles can be used. And identifiers for people and documents (even parts of documents), so there can be better linking of scholarly literature.

Open access is an evolving ecosystem. There will be different models to fit different specialities and probably different countries. But that’s fine if it works.

Virginia Barbour, Executive Officer, Australasian Open Access Support Group, Australian National ̽��ֱ��; Danny Kingsley, Executive Officer for the Australian Open Access Support Group, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge; James Bradley, Lecturer in History of Medicine/Life Science, ̽��ֱ�� of Melbourne; Keyan Tomaselli, Distinguished Professor, ̽��ֱ�� of Johannesburg; Lucy Montgomery, Director, Centre for Culture and Technology, Curtin ̽��ֱ��, and Tom Cochrane, Adjunct Professor Faculty of Law, Queensland ̽��ֱ�� of Technology

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Meredith Kahn

Open access

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommerical