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Signatories of DORA

Posted in Maynooth, Open Access, Science Politics with tags , on November 22, 2023 by telescoper

Following on from comments on a number of previous posts I just wanted to encourage anyone involved in research of any kind who hasn’t done so already to sign the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) as an individual and if your institution hasn’t done so yet please encourage them to do so. You can check whether your organization has signed it here.

The Number One recommendation of DORA is:

Do not use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions.

San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment

You can read the other recommendations for funders, publishers, institutions, and researchers, here.

I am well aware that some institutions have signed DORA but don’t really pay attention to it in their internal processes. Maynooth University is a signatory and certainly does take it into consideration when dealing with, e.g., recruitment and promotion but it, along with other signatories, has to deal with inconsistencies in the outside world. One of these is that, while Science Foundation Ireland and the Irish Research Council are both signatories of DORA, the Irish Government itself is not, so the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science is not bound by it. That makes no sense to me at all!

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Thoughts of Retirement

Posted in Barcelona, Biographical, Maynooth, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on November 19, 2023 by telescoper

I’ve been reviewing my situation while here in Barcelona. One of the themes that keeps popping into my head is well expressed by part of a little speech by Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai:

But there are times… when suddenly you realize you’re nearer the end than the beginning. And you wonder, you ask yourself, what the sum total of your life represents. What difference your being there at any time made to anything – or if it made any difference at all, really. Particularly in comparison with other men’s careers. I don’t know whether that kind of thinking’s very healthy, but I must admit I’ve had some thoughts on those lines from time to time.

Healthy or not I’ve also had thoughts along those lines, and sometimes feel I should step aside and create a job opportunity for someone younger. I know my employer wouldn’t mind if I did that either. They’d much prefer replacing me with someone cheaper and more compliant than me. I think if I asked for early retirement they would probably jump at the chance. I’d miss the teaching and the students, of course,

The fact of the matter is though that I can’t afford to retire yet. I have a mortgage to pay and I’ve only had five full years of pensionable service in the Irish system, so won’t get much of a pension. I have the frozen residue of my UK pension, of course, but that is subject to an actuarial reduction if I take the benefit before I’m 65, which is also the standard retirement age for academic staff in Ireland. I can’t be made to retire here until I’m 70, in fact, but I think I’ll be well beyond my best-before date by then and am not keen to overstay my welcome.

So it looks like I’ll have to stay until I’m 65 at the earliest. In fact I won’t be able to collect the State Pension (SPC) until I’m 66, so I’ll probably have to stay another year. That means that when I get back from sabbatical I will have four or five years left until I can retire. I don’t know what I’ll be teaching when I return but I hope I get a chance to teach a few new modules before the end. In particular some cosmology or astrophysics would be particularly nice. All this is predicated on: (a) me living long enough; and (b) Physics at Maynooth not being closed down; neither of these is certain.

When I moved to the Emerald Isle in 2017 I supposed that I would carry on living in Ireland after retiring. Now I’m having some doubts about that. I have been advised by medical experts that my arthritis would be more tolerable in a warmer climate. And there’s the cost of living in Ireland, which is much higher than Spain. I can imagine living here, actually, though I think Barcelona itself might be a bit expensive for a pensioner. Somewhere in the surrounding countryside, or along the coast, might be nice. I’ve got a few years to think about that.

Another thing in my mind is what will happen to the Open Journal of Astrophysics when I retire? I would like some larger organization or community to take it over in the long term. It’s not expensive to run, actually, but someone would have to take over as Managing Editor. Moreover, I don’t think it’s really fair to expect one small University in Ireland to bear the full cost of a global astrophysics journal indefinitely.

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The Little Book of Irish Research

Posted in Euclid, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , on November 18, 2023 by telescoper

Yesterday, the last day of Science Week, saw the launch by Simon Harris TD, Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, of the Little Book of Irish Research. This book, which is aimed at school students, so is written at an elementary level, gives quick summaries of areas of research that the general public said that they were interested in, grouped into sixteen themes, and it will be distributed to schools all round Ireland.

I was very gratified to see myself get a mention (on page 41), though it’s not really about me but about Euclid which has generated considerable interest in the general public already and is set to continue doing that for many years. As you can see, there’s also a double-page spread of JWST, though unfortunately it does not name the scientists involved; Paddy Kavanagh is the main man at Maynooth for matters JWST.

I understand The Little Book of Irish Research will be the focus of a social media campaign over coming weeks, which will hopefully make more people more aware of the research going on in all disciplines in Ireland. I think we’ll find it useful for our own outreach events, open days, etc, in the Department of Theoretical Physics, and so will the many colleagues in other Departments whose work is also featured.

I haven’t seen hard copies of the book yet, as I’m in Barcelona, but if you want to read it here is a PDF file of the whole thing for you to download at your leisure.

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Lemons and Leaves

Posted in Barcelona, Maynooth with tags , on November 14, 2023 by telescoper
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Lemons and Leaves
Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn?

Yesterday, Storm Debi passed over Ireland. There was a red weather alert in Maynooth but, as far as I know, no damage apart from a few broken branches and fallen leaves. It was far worse elsewhere in Ireland. Meanwhile, here in Barcelona, it’s sunny and 25° C..

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The Atwood Machine

Posted in Barcelona, Cute Problems, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on November 14, 2023 by telescoper

In the foyer of the Physics Department at the University of Barcelona you will find, as well as a fine refracting telescope, an example of the Atwood Machine. For some years before my current sabbatical I have been teaching Newtonian Mechanics to first-year students in Maynooth and used this as a simple worked example. I have to admit I’ve never seen an actual Atwood machine before, and what I’ve done in lectures is the simplified form on the right rather than the actual machine on the left.

Atwood Machine

The illustration on the right depicts the essential elements, but you can can see that the actual machine has a ruler which, together with a timing device, can be used to determine the acceleration of the suspended mass and how that varies with the other mass. You can work this out quite easily in the simplest case of a frictionless pulley by letting the tension in the string (which is light and inextensible) be T (say) and then eliminating it from the equations of motion for the two masses. I leave the rest as an exercise for the reader. A more interesting problem, for the advanced student, is when you have to take into account the rotational motion of the pulley wheel…

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Astrophysics & Cosmology Masterclass at Maynooth

Posted in Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on November 13, 2023 by telescoper

Both my regular readers may remember that for the last couple of years at this time of year there has been an Astrophysics & Cosmology Masterclass at Maynooth; see here and here for the previous incarnations. Not being in Maynooth I almost forgot about this year’s Masterclass, which has a different line-up with Dr Paddy Kavanagh adding some observational content alongside Dr John Regan.

This event is online only from 10am to 12pm on Friday 17th November 2023 and you can find out more details and register here.

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University Management Salaries

Posted in Barcelona, Maynooth on November 10, 2023 by telescoper

I have long believed that the hierarchical management structure of modern universities, especially in the UK and Ireland, is wrong and damaging. One aspect of this is the unjustifiably high salaries paid to the people at the very top. I can see no good reason for any university President, Vice-Chancellor, Rector, or whatever else their name is, to receive a salary above the standard scale for professors.
The problem with the high salaries these people get nowadays is not only the expense (which is considerable) but the fact that it sends out the message that they are much more important than they actually are and that the people who actually carry out the core work of a third-level institution – the academics and related staff – are mere subordinates. Moving into management should really be regarded as a sideways move, not an advance.

Incidentally, I would also argue that nobody should be employed in a senior management role in a university who neither teaches nor does research. How can someone who is not active in these areas know the reality of the situation facing staff who are?

Anyway, these thoughts came back into my mind after an informal chat with some people here in the ICC. It turns out that the salary of the Rector of the University of Barcelona, Joan Guàrdia Olmos, is in the public domain. It is made up from various components but the grand total is €124,619.58 (2022 figure). That would be well below the bottom level of the Professor A scale in Maynooth. Contrast that with the President of Maynooth University, Eeva Leinonen, who is paid a salary of €208,509, which is considerably higher than the top of the Professor A scale at Maynooth. Professor Leinonen also receives €13,500 benefit in kind for rent-free accommodation.

You can contrast these salaries with the respective institutions, both of which are public universities. The University of Barcelona has around 63,000 students and about 5000 staff; it is widely regarded as the top University in Spain (pop. 47 million). Maynooth University has about 15,000 students and about 900 staff; it is not regarded by anybody as the top University in Ireland (pop. 5 million).
I think you get the point.

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Northern Lights over Maynooth

Posted in Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on November 9, 2023 by telescoper
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Northern Lights over Maynooth
It seems the Northern Lights have been seen over Maynooth! (picture by @_fidel_astro on Instagram)

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Teaching in Base 60

Posted in Barcelona, Cardiff, History, mathematics, Maynooth with tags , , , , on October 27, 2023 by telescoper

Some time ago – was it really over a decade? – I wrote a piece about the optimum size of modules in physics teaching. I was still in the United Kingdom then so my ramblings were based on a framework in which undergraduate students would take 120 credits per year, usually divided into two semesters of 60 credits each. In Cardiff, for instance, most modules were (and still are) 10 credits but some core material was delivered in 20 credit modules. In the case of Sussex, to give a contrasting example, the standard “quantum” of teaching was the 15 credit module. I actually preferred the latter because that would allow the lecturer to go into greater depth, students would be only be studying four modules in a semester (instead of six if the curriculum consisted of 10 credit modules), and there would be fewer examinations. In short, the curriculum would be less “bitty”.

In Maynooth the size of modules is reckoned using the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) which takes a full year of undergraduate teaching to be 60 credits rather than 120 in the UK, but the conversion between the two is a simple factor of two. In Maynooth the “standard” unit of teaching is 5 credits, with some 10 credit modules thrown in (usually extending over two semesters, e.g. projects). This is similar to the Cardiff system. The exception concerns first-year modules, which are 7.5 credits each because students take four modules in their first year so they have to be 30/4=7.5 credits each. The first year is therefore like the Sussex system. It changes to a five-credit quantum from Year 2 onwards because students do three subjects at that stage.

I find it interesting to compare this with the arrangements here in Barcelona (and elsewhere in Spain). Here the ECTS credit size is used, but the standard module is six credits, not five, and year-long projects here are 12 credits rather than 10. The effect of this is that students generally study five modules at a time (or four plus a project). To add to the fun there are also some 9 credit modules, so a semester could be made up of combinations of 6-credit and 9-credit chunks as long as the total adds up to 30.

Anyway, the main point of all this is to illustrate the joy of the sexagesimal system which derives from the fact that 60, being a superior composite number, has so many integer divisors: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 15, 20, and 30. The Babylonians knew a thing or two!

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Another Country

Posted in Barcelona, Biographical, Maynooth with tags , , on October 25, 2023 by telescoper

It was only when I looked at my calendar this morning, and saw the reminder that my rent is due shortly, that I realized that I have now been in Barcelona for a whole month (plus one day). Lacking the usual cycle of lectures and other teaching sessions, I’ve still had regular telecons and other virtual discussions through which to reckon the passage of time, but these are different. When I’m teaching I always number my lectures consecutively so it’s easy for me to look at my notes and see that we’re, say, approaching half-term. That gives me a sense of progress which I must admit I don’t feel with scheduled telecons, which seem more cyclic – i.e. going around in circles most of the time.

Other than that, I’ve settled in here better than I expected. I’ve even managed to memorize the codes needed to get into my flat – no mean feat given my fading powers of recollection. Progress on the research has been a bit slower than expected, but I hope to finish the paper I’m working on by the weekend.

Next week is Study Week in Maynooth, including a public holiday on Monday 30th October to mark Samhain. Wednesday November 1st is a (national) public holiday in Spain too, Tots Sants (“All Saints” in Catalan). That would be the third public holiday since I arrived in Barcelona, but I won’t be here for it, as I have to make a flying visit to another country to give a talk, and do a few other things.

This reminds me that I should send an update on the affair of Maynooth University’s Governing Authority. As you may recall, the Powers That Be initially decided to scrap elections to the Governing Authority of the University in favour of selection. There was a protest at this authoritarian plan and a petition was raised. After initially proposing a mixture of election and selection, The Management finally backtracked and agreed to elections for all five internal representatives. Although the elections happened after I moved to Barcelona, they were held online so I was able to vote. The process is now complete, and I send congratulations to the five duly elected representatives!

One thing I hope the new members of Governing Authority will do concerns the outcomes of Maynooth University’s “Staff Climate and Culture Survey” which was carried out in 2022 with the promise made to participants that results would be published in early 2023. No such results have ever communicated to staff (or anyone else that I am aware of) and all mention of this survey has been wiped off the University’s web pages. Perhaps the new members of GA can push for the long overdue publication of this information?

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