“Peer-reviewed publications and scientific conference reports can expect explicit protection as England revises its libel laws, newly published legislation reveals. Libel law in the country has been a concern to scientists for some time …” (more)
[Daniel Cressey, Nature News Blog, 11 May]
“Thousands of English and Welsh students will be able to claim free tuition at Scottish universities by claiming Irish grandparents, it was revealed today. Last week, it emerged that students from Northern Ireland could avoid fees by taking dual Republic of Ireland citizenship and applying as EU students, which would result in them having their fees paid under European equality law …” (more)
[Tim Bugler, Daily Mail, 11 May]
“I am going to write in praise of the Research Excellence Framework (REF), the successor to the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), which currently determines the distribution of university research funding grants in the UK. I am going to argue that the RAE is good value and good at what it does …” (more)
[Russell Dean, 9 May]
“We were ‘doing’ the Tudors. My nice‑but-dull history tutor was giving me a reading list for the following week’s essay in the cosy confines of his Oxford rooms. ‘How about Antonia Fraser?’ I piped up …” (more)
[Peter Stanford, Daily Telegraph, 10 May]
“Open-access publications may receive favourable treatment in future research excellence frameworks, funders have suggested. The idea of using the REF to encourage moves to open access was mooted last week by David Willetts, the universities and science minister …” (more)
[Paul Jump, Times Higher Education, 10 May]
“Now and again it can be useful to lift your gaze from the latest news story, burning policy issue or regulatory change that is occupying your attention. If you set your focus to the widest possible angle, then you will start to see some of the bigger and longer-term changes to higher education take shape …” (more)
[Pearson Centre for Policy and Learning, 9 May]
“Young historians are in danger of watering down their academic studies in the dash to convert their research into commercial books, according to the judge of a leading history writing prize …” (more)
[Richard Alleyne, Daily Telegraph, 9 May]
“Joris talks to an academic about the pressure on students, the social skills of quants and the problem with financial models …” (more)
[Joris Luyendijk, Guardian, 8 May]
“Two more student protesters, brothers Christopher and Andrew Hilliard, have been acquitted of charges of violent disorder relating to the anti-fees demo of 9 December 2010. The unanimous verdicts, which the jury took only two hours to reach, came hot on the heels of similar not-guilty verdicts for three other defendants …” (more)
[Nadine El-Enany, Guardian, 8 May]
“Families were disgusted to see more than 2000 drunken Cambridge University students stripping off, vomiting and drinking themselves unconscious at a riotous summer term party in a public park …” (more)
[Daily Telegraph, 7 May]
“A group of leading scholars has presented a petition to Oxford University Press calling on the renowned publisher to uphold what it describes as ‘basic scholarly standards’. The petition arose out of a letter sent to Niko Pfund, president of OUP USA, about the book Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know, by Robert Paarlberg, professor of political science at Wellesley College, Massachusetts …” (more)
[Matthew Reisz, Times Higher Education, 7 May]
“I have spent most of the week (when I havent been dodging the BRICKbats) with Moses Finley. As I said a few posts ago, I am giving a paper at the end of May on Finley’s journalism; and the more I go on the more of it there turns out to be …” (more)
[Mary Beard, A Don's Life, 4 May]
“I have not blogged a lot in recent weeks; the reason being that I was busy with the REF preparation of our law school. This made me wonder what’s going on in other UK universities. Many of them, however, have their REF planning not publicly available, ie only on the intranet …” (more)
[Siemslegal, 3 May]
“Commentators often distinguish between ‘private’ universities, such as the University of Buckingham, and the rest, which are lazily thought of as ‘public’. That distinction is increasingly untenable: ‘the rest’ are all legally private, often corporations or, like the London School of Economics, companies limited by guarantee …” (more)
[James Tooley, Times Higher Education, 3 May]
“An Oxford University student who prompted a sexism row by boasting about her body in an election flyer has been fined £120 for bringing the Union into ‘disrepute’ …” (more)
[James Orr, Daily Telegraph, 3 May]
“David Willetts, Britain’s minister for science and universities, trailed the announcements made in his speech on open access to the UK Publishers’ Association yesterday as a ‘seismic shift’. One learns to be wary of the more hyperbolic statements of government ministers but I was at least left wondering whether the earth had moved for the publishers in the room …” (more)
[Stephen Curry, Reciprocal Space, 3 May]
“Soon, we’ll all be reading UK public-funded research free of charge. That momentous change has been in the works since last March, and in December the British government explained why and how it would happen (yes, though you might not guess it from recent media reports, the UK open access shift was underway well before what the Guardian has called this year’s ‘Academic Spring’) …” (more)
[Richard Van Noorden, Nature News, 3 May]
“The British government has enlisted the help of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to figure out how to make research information more easily accessible …” (more)
[Jop de Vrieze, ScienceInsider, 2 May]
“Throwing its weight behind open access, the British government has declared it wants to make all research paid for with public money freely available online. If it succeeds, the move is likely to have significant consequences for publishers …” (more)
[Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2 May]
“The High Court of England and Wales has ruled that UK internet service providers must start taken steps to technically block access from their customers to The Pirate Bay. Arnold J has delivered a short copyright order …” (more)
[TechnoLlama, 2 May]
