IOAP Diamond Open Access Awards 2024

Posted in Open Access with tags , , , , , , , , on December 18, 2023 by telescoper

Last week I found out about a new organization called Irish Open Access Publishers whose mission statement is as follows:

Irish Open Access Publishers (IOAP) is a community of practice driven by Irish open access publishers for Irish open access publishers.  The IOAP promotes engagement with the Diamond Open Access publishing model (free to publish and free to read) as well as indexing on the Directory of Open Access Journals and the Directory of Open Access Books. The aim of this dynamic community of practice is to promote publishing activity that is free of pay walls and publication embargoes to further the dissemination of high quality scholarly output to all in society.

These aims are laudable and I support them wholeheartedly. I should also mention that the Open Journal of Astrophysics is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals here, where you will find details of all the papers we have published so far. This index is all part of the service.

The reason I found out about the existence of IOAP is that they are offering a new set of awards, for which nominations are now open:

(Unfortunately the links in the above image are not clickable, but you can the award details here…)

Nominations for the first three categories are by self-nomination only. I will of course, on behalf of Maynooth Academic Publishing, the Editorial Board, the authors, and everyone who has helped behind the scenes, be nominating the Open Journal of Astrophysics.

Nominations for the final category, Outstanding Contribution to the OA Field are described thus:

Category 4 welcomes third party as well as self nominations from academics, students, librarians, research managers, academic leaders, publishers and other stakeholders across further and higher education for an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to open access publishing in Ireland. Nominations from scholarly societies and other scholarly organisations are also welcome. Nominations for individuals based in Northern Ireland are also invited.

Self nominations are restricted to individuals based in Ireland including Northern Ireland. Third party nominations are invited from individuals based in Ireland including Northern Ireland as well as individuals based overseas. All third party nominations must be for individuals practising in the field of open access publishing in Ireland including Northern Ireland solely.

Notice that nominations are not restricted to individuals based in Ireland. So, wherever you are, if you can think of any individual based in Ireland who has done enough to merit being described as having made an “outstanding contribution”, perhaps not only for being a long-term advocate of Diamond Open Access but also for setting up and being Managing Editor of a successful Diamond Open Access journal in the field of astrophysics, then please feel free to nominate me them. I hope you get the message. If you want subtle, you’ve come to the wrong place!

The nomination form is here. The closing date for nominations is 1st February 2024.

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Spanish Key – Miles Davis

Posted in Jazz with tags , , , on December 17, 2023 by telescoper

As I am still in Spain for a for more days before the Christmas break I thought I would share a vaguely relevant piece of music, Spanish Key from the 1970 album Bitches Brew by Miles Davis. This I don’t have time to write a long piece about this album, but I will say that of all the abrupt changes of musical direction during the career of Miles Davis, this album is probably the most startling and many jazz fans – even ardent admirers of Miles Davis – don’t like it at all. Anyway, des goûts et des couleurs on ne discute pas…

This track is particularly interesting to me because I’ve long wondered about the title and the musical structure. I’m not at all sure, but it seems likely to me that the title indicates the relationship of this piece to the track Flamenco Sketches from the classic album Kind of Blue recorded over a decade earlier. In that album, Miles was experimenting with jazz based not on traditional keys and scales, but on modes. In Flamenco Sketches there is a section based on a major phrygian mode which is commonly used in flamenco music. Spanish Key is in a very different style – much faster for one thing – but it has a similar pattern involving changes from E to D to D (phrygian) to E (phrygian) and G (mixolydian). Apparently Miles gave minimal instruction to his musicians about what to play, but did have prearranged signals to shift from one mode to another, such as happens about 3:15 in the recording when he ushers in a guitar solo by John McLaughlin, and around 12:46 when the mood abruptly changes as Miles introduces a new theme. I also think it was a stroke of genius to include a bass clarinet on this album; on this track it adds a Moorish element to the Spanish tinge.

Anyway, there’s so much going on in this track that it’s more instructive to listen to it than write about it, so here you are. Enjoy!

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Retractions and Resignations

Posted in Open Access with tags , , , , , , , , on December 16, 2023 by telescoper

I saw an article this week in Nature that revealed that more than 10,000 research papers have been retracted so far 2023. The actual number is probably much higher than that, as this is just the fraudulent papers that have been found out. Over 80% of the papers mentioned in the article were published by Hindawi, a known predatory publisher that specializes in Gold Open Access journals that charge Article Processing Charges. Hindawi is owned by Wiley but the brand has become so toxic that Wiley no longer wants to use the name. Presumably it still wants the profits.

(Another bit of news this week makes me think that Hindawi might be the academic publishing equivalent of Tesla…)

Here’s a figure showing how the number of retracted research articles has increased over time:

From https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03974-8

It has always seemed to me that the shift to “Gold” Open Access in which authors pay to have their work published would lead to a decrease in editorial standards. Since the publisher’s income comes from APCs, the more papers they publish the more money they get. This is another reason Diamond Open Access run on a not-for-profit basis with no fees for either authors or readers is a much better model.

At least some academics are taking a stand. Retraction Watch maintains a list of journals whose editors who have resigned – sometimes en masse from the same journal – in response to the imposition of dodgy practices by their publishers. Take the Journal of Geometric Mechanics, for example. The entire Editorial Board of this journal resigned because of pressure from above to increase “output” (i.e. profits) by lowering academic standards.

This is just a start, of course, but I don’t think it will take long for academic community to accept that the this publishing model is rotten to the core and embraces the only really viable and sustainable alternative.

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Bullying and Astronomy

Posted in Euclid, Harassment Bullying etc with tags , , , , , on December 15, 2023 by telescoper

Yesterday I gave a talk at the UK Euclid Consortium (EC) Meeting in London in my role as Chair of the ECDC (Euclid Consortium Diversity Committee). I didn’t actually go to London, but delivered my talk virtually (not without a few hiccups, but I won’t go into that). My presentation was just a short one, outlining some of the things the ECDC does and encouraging others to get involved. One of the matters arising was the EC Code of Conduct, which has recently been updated. This document covers work within the EC generally, as well as specific rules governing EC-sponsored events, such as the meeting I spoke at. Incidentally, one of the latter rules is that organizers should facilitate virtual attendance at meetings, which they clearly did for me yesterday!

Coincidentally, there was a news item in Nature today that reminded me of a post on this blog from a couple of years ago. That was when news first broke of a bullying scandal at the University of Lund, specifically in the historic Lund Observatory, home of the Astronomy Department. Two professors were involved, Sofia Feltzing and Melvyn Davies. As far as I understand the situation, both are still employed by the University, in the Department of Geology and the Department of Mathematics respectively.

The latest news from Lund is that in the aftermath of this scandal, the Astronomy Department has been closed and the staff previously in it subsumed into Physics. That’s a pretty drastic step. In my experience forced mergers of departments, though popular with autocratic managers, are usually counterproductive from the point of view of staff morale. Precisely what the closure of the Lund Observatory after 350 years is meant to achieve is beyond me, but I assume that the atmosphere there had become so toxic that the authorities couldn’t think of anything else to do.

This is a demonstration of something I’ve often said in talks about EDI work. When matters come to formal disciplinary process – if they ever do – the outcome is almost never satisfactory in any respect, not least because the outcomes are often concealed by Non-Disclosure Agreements. The only really hope of creating an inclusive workplace is to ensure that bullying and harassment don’t happen in the first place, or are snuffed out very early on. Early intervention, mediation and conflict resolution are far more likely to provide a successful outcome than formal processes. The problem is that junior members of a department, who are most likely to be the target of bullying, do not feel empowered to make a complaint until it’s too late.

A binding Code of Conduct is one thing, but in order to work it has to be able to be enforced. That is why I agree with the approach suggested by the 21 Group, namely that there should be independent investigators for such matters whose conclusions are binding.

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Two New Publications at the Open Journal of Astrophysics

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , on December 14, 2023 by telescoper

As anticipated a couple of days ago, it’s now possible to announce another couple of new papers at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. These papers take us up to a total of 49  in Volume 6 (2023) and 114 in total since we started publishing.

It would be nice if we could make it to 50 in Volume 6 (2023), but I have already decided to close the publishing platform from 22nd December until 5th January (inclusive), so there there isn’t much time to get the single needed for our half-century.  While we will not be publishing new papers during this closure, the peer review platform will remain open for submission of new and revised manuscripts and the editorial processes will continue.

Whether or not we make 50 this year, it is worth remarking that 49 is already a significant figure, as it corresponds to the total number of papers we published in the previous three years: 15 (2020); 17 (2021); and 17 (2022). Things are definitely looking up!

Anyway, the first paper of the most recent pair – published on December 8th – is “The Million Quasars (Milliquas) Catalogue, v8”; its primary classification is Astrophysics of Galaxies and the author is Eric Wim Flesch from New Zealand. The Milliquas catalogue includes quasars from the literature to 30 June 2023, including quasars from the DESI-EDR and SDSS-DR18Q surveys.

Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:

You can click on the image of the overlay to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.

The second paper was published on 11th December 2023 and is also in the folder marked Astrophysics of Galaxies.

The authors are all from various institutions in the USA:  Michael Grudić (Carnegie Observatories), Stella Offner (University of Texas at Austin); Dávid Guszejnov (Harvard);  Claude-André Faucher-Giguère (Northwestern University); and Philip F. Hopkins (Caltech).  The paper presents a comparison of full radiative magnetohydrodynamics simulations of the formation of star clusters with simple stochastic modelling showing the limitations of the latter.

Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:

 

 

You can click on the image of the overlay to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.

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Museu Picasso

Posted in Art, Barcelona with tags , , , , on December 13, 2023 by telescoper

I was delighted to receive from a certain person an early Christmas gift in the form of tickets to the Museo Picasso in Barcelona. I took this morning off so that the two of us could visit the exhibition. As well as the permanent collection, including many early works of by Picasso, we saw a special exhibition juxtaposing works by Picasso and Joan Miró (who was a great admirer of Picasso). The influence of the former on the latter is very clear when you see the works together, though they remain stylistically very separate. This part of the exhibition is shared between the Museo Picasso and the La Fundación Joan Miró, which is a clever way of getting people to visit both museums. Some works by Miró included The Farm shown in the gallery below – have been moved to the Picasso Museum in the centre of Barcelona and some works by Picasso have been moved to Montjuic where the Miro Foundation is located; my visit there will have to wait until I return after the Christmas break.

The permanent collection in Museo Picasso seems like an exhibition of work by many different artists. It starts off with paintings and drawings he did while still a teenager (like the one I posted here), an art student, and then many works done when he had moved to Paris at the end of the 19th Century. These show him absorbing many influences and mastering many techniques before he found his own original approach. Most of paintings he made becoming famous are elsewhere, but there are examples of later work (including ceramics) in this gallery. The evolution of Picasso’s art is amazing to see.

Here is a selection of what can be seen

A visit to the Picasso Museum is a feast in itself but after almost three hours wandering around we had to leave to get lunch…

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New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on December 12, 2023 by telescoper

I was doing some work on the Open Journal of Astrophysics site and realized that there is a paper we published last week that I haven’t advertised on here yet, so I’m remedying that now.

The paper in question is the 47th so far in Volume 6 (2023)  and it’s the 112th altogether. This one was actually published on Tuesday December 5th. Two further papers are imminent; I’m just waiting for their metadata to be registered with Crossref.

The title of this one is “The SPHINX Public Data Release: Forward Modelling High-Redshift JWST Observations with Cosmological Radiation Hydrodynamics Simulations” and it represents  public data release of Sphinx20, a full box cosmological radiation-hydrodynamics simulation that provides a statistical sample of galaxies for comparison with those observed by JWST. It is in the folder marked Astrophysics of Galaxies.

There are 10 authors: Harley Katz (Oxford, UK); Joki Rosdahl (Lyon, France); Taysun Kimm (Seoul, Korea); Jeremy Blaizot (Lyon, France);  Nicholas Choustikov (Oxford, UK); Marion Farcy  and Thibault Garel (Geneva, Switzerland);  Martin G. Haehnelt (Cambridge, UK); Leo Michel-Dansac (Lyon, France); and Pierre Ocvirk (Strasbourg, France).

Here is the overlay of the paper containing the abstract:

 

 

You can click on the image of the overlay to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.

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The Return of Halley’s Comet…

Posted in Art, Literature, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on December 11, 2023 by telescoper

I was reminded at the weekend that Halley’s Comet has just passed its aphelion (furthest distance from the Sun) and is now falling back into the Solar System towards its next perihelion (closest distance to the Sun) in 2061, by which time I will almost certainly be retired.

Halley’s Comet last visited us in 1986 when I was 23 and living in Brighton. It will next appear in 2061, when I shall be 98 and lucky to be living at all.

This reminded me of a rather poignant cartoon I found a while ago on Facebook. I don’t know the name of the artist. If anyone does please let me know.

The comet’s orbital period of 75 years or so is brief by astronomical standards, as is the duration of a human life. As Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace to you and me) put it in one of his Odes (Book I, Ode 4, line 15):

Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam

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Two weeks to go..

Posted in Barcelona, Biographical, Maynooth with tags , on December 10, 2023 by telescoper

It’s Sunday 10th December, which means I am about to embark on the penultimate week of this stint in Barcelona. I’ve got quite a few things to finish in the next fortnight, and the inevitable glut of telecons to get through, but I also plan to take a little time off to visit a couple of cultural attractions I haven’t got round to yet. I’ll be spending Christmas and New Year elsewhere and returning to Barcelona in 2024 but these will be the last two weeks I spend this nice apartment. For various reasons I don’t yet know precisely when I’ll be coming back after the break so I’ll have to find another place to live when I do. That will be during off season though so I’m not worried. I toyed with the idea of keeping this place on, but thought better of it. It is quite expensive, and I can’t really afford to pay weeks in rent to keep an empty apartment. Since I will be returning, I can leave some of my things with friends here, which leaves plenty of space in my luggage for goodies to be consumed during the holiday.

The entrance to La Rambla from La Plaza de Cataluña

The weather here has changed a bit recently, getting much warmer. It feels a bit strange to be going round in shirt sleeves on 10th December but it was warm enough for that. It’s done my arthritis a power of good anyway. I picked up a bit of a cold last week which has now vanished too. It wasn’t anything serious but generated enough brain fog to make concentration difficult for a couple of days. The unusually warm spell is of course worrying for other reasons, as is the fact that there has been virtually no rain in Barcelona all the time I’ve been here. Drought restrictions are still in place. It seems the weather is a very different story in Ireland!

Here in Barcelona teaching carries on until Thursday 21st December, which is the end of term. Back in Maynooth, teaching term officially continues until Friday 22nd, though I don’t think there will be many students in classes on that day, just three days before Christmas, which also happens to be the day I fly out from Barcelona…

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Bravo, Sorbonne University!

Posted in Education, Open Access with tags , , , on December 10, 2023 by telescoper

Here’s some good news for advocates of open research. Sorbonne University (Paris) has made an important announcement. I quote:

Sorbonne University has been deeply committed to the promotion and the development of  open science for many years. According to its commitment to open research information, it has decided to discontinue its subscription to the Web of Science publication database and Clarivate bibliometric tools in 2024. By resolutely abandoning the use of proprietary bibliometric products, it is opening the way for open, free and participative tools.

That’s the way to do it! Such a decision requires real intellectual leadership, so I’m not sure how many other universities will follow suit. Those paralyzed by managerialism probably won’t.

The Sorbonne statement goes on to explain:

This decision is in line with the University’s overall policy of openness, and it is now working to consolidate a sustainable, international alternative, in particular by using OpenAlex.

Both Web of Science and Clarivate are, of course, fronts for the academic publishing industry and are just as pointless, as they sell to subscribers a biased subset of information which is already in the public domain through services such as CrossRef.

While I’m congratulating Sorbonne for its leadership, I should do likewise (though in a different context) for Utrecht University, which refused to participate in this year’s Times Higher World Rankings. Among their reasons are

  • Rankings put too much stress on scoring and competition, while we want to focus on collaboration and open science.
  • The makers of the rankings use data and methods that are highly questionable, research shows. 

I hope more institutions join the fight back against the box-tickers in this regard too, although I’m not particularly hopeful here either.

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