Author: Helen Kara

Don’t Get Off At Cliché Central

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clicheI went to a meeting recently with some clients, lovely people doing really worthwhile work, and boy did they love a cliché. They were forever touching base, working across the piece, and moving the dial. There were any number of deep dives and light touches, and they were either sold on something or not feeling it. Learning had to be captured (poor thing) and change had to be embedded (though they never said into what).

By the end I was ready to prepare a bingo card for the next meeting. More seriously, though, I was getting a sense that these clichés had a couple of effects. One was positive and one was sinister. On the positive side, the common use of language was serving to create and build group identity. On the sinister side, clichés were so prevalent that they seemed to be reducing the space available for creative thought and discussion.

A cliché is initially a creative, original, sometimes even funny way of saying (or writing) something. It is so effective that it gets repeated a lot, and that is what turns it into a cliché. It stops being creative and original and starts being habitual, almost reflex, and can be stultifying in its effect on speech and prose.

Using clichés is lazy writing. Avoiding clichés requires more effort, more thought and care. Whatever you’re writing – job application, journal article, funding bid, doctoral thesis – aim for the specific. The initial impact of a cliché is lost through overuse, so it can seem quite vague, while particular details often seem interesting and fresh.

Take this short paragraph from a draft research proposal:

We will leave no stone unturned to ensure we get as many questionnaire responses as possible. Then it will be just a matter of time before we analyse the data and write the report. At the end of the day the research report will be fit for purpose.

Compare it with this version:

We will make every effort to maximise questionnaire responses. Our strategies will include: circulating the link by email and by social media; monitoring respondents’ locations regularly and targeting any identified geographical gaps; and offering a prize draw as an incentive. The questionnaire will be live online for one month, and it will take us another two weeks to analyse the data and write the draft report. We will write in plain English and the draft will be submitted for feedback which we will use to produce the final version.

The first version is stuffed with clichés and assertions and tells the reader nothing of substance. The second gives specific details, explaining how the researchers propose to achieve their aims.

It is really sensible to avoid clichés in your writing. Whatever you’re writing. What would you write in a condolence card? “I’m sorry for your loss”? “You are in my thoughts/prayers”? Don’t do that. Take a little time to think about the person who has died. Is there a memory you treasure that you could share in a few words? Perhaps an impact the person had on you that you could describe briefly and which will form part of their legacy? Whoever you are sending the card to will have dozens of others bearing standard clichés. Make the effort to send them something personal, real, authentic. It doesn’t have to be long, or take long, and it will mean a great deal more than platitudes.

One place you can get away with clichés is in titles, as with the title of this piece (which I could equally have called Colour Me Clichéd, or The Cliché At The End Of The Universe, or… you get the idea). But that’s about the only place you can use them in academic writing. So don’t!

This blog is funded by my beloved patrons. It takes me around one working day per month to post here each week. At the time of writing I’m receiving funding of $35 per month. If you think a day of my time is worth more than $35 – you can help! Ongoing support would be fantastic but you can also make a one-time donation through the PayPal button on this blog if that works better for you. Support from Patrons and donors also enables me to keep this blog ad-free. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!

Achieving A Good Work-Work Balance

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work workA lot is said and written about achieving a good work-life balance, as though work is only one thing (and life another). Work is in fact several things and achieving a good balance between them is also important. In fact, a good work-work balance is an essential prerequisite for a good work-life balance.

Let’s start by thinking about paid and unpaid work. If you’re doing more unpaid than paid work, you are more likely to be a woman than a man. For sure some men do more unpaid than paid work, and anyway gender isn’t binary, but nevertheless this is a feminist issue. Having said that, sometimes more unpaid than paid work is inevitable, such as if you’re an unemployed job-seeker or on maternity leave. But if you’re employed or self-employed such that paid work occupies a good chunk of each week or month, you’ll need to take care to balance that paid work with any unpaid work you take on.

Of course people can have more than one job, or a job plus self-employment, or several kinds of paid self-employment. I currently earn money from research, writing, teaching, speaking, private coaching, and occasional bits of consultancy advice. Unpaid work, too, comes in a variety of forms. Although I earn money from my writing, I don’t receive any income until after my work is done, so the actual act of writing is unpaid (except for the rare occasions where some lovely person decides to pay me to write, which I’m glad to say does happen from time to time). But I love writing so I’m going to do it anyway. My visiting fellowship at the UK National Centre for Research Methods is also unpaid, though I do receive access to academic literature and some mentoring in return for providing help with various academic tasks, none of which are overly time-consuming or onerous.

Other forms of unpaid work include:

  • Formal volunteering (I’m currently a member of the publications committee of the Academy of Social Sciences)
  • Informal volunteering such as helping out a neighbour on request, reviewing an article for an academic journal, or joining a community litter-pick
  • Caring for family members who need your care, perhaps because they are very young or very old or living with one or more disabilities, and
  • Domestic work such as cleaning, shopping, and cooking.

We all have to do domestic work, though there are shortcuts – grocery shopping can be done online, ironing is not as important as some people seem to think, and if you have spare cash you may be able to outsource cleaning/gardening/DIY etc. But you will still have to do some domestic tasks. Also, caring may not be optional. If you have children you’re generally expected to meet their needs, while caring for older relatives or those living with disabilities may be optional in theory but is likely not to feel optional in practice.

However, formal and informal volunteering are optional and when necessary you can resign from formal positions or say no to informal requests. I have posted before about why and how to say no; it’s not always easy but it is essential if you are to create a good work-work balance. We all know people who wear themselves out doing everything for everyone and forget to meet their own needs. Maybe you’re one of those people. If so, you need to look at your unpaid work and think about what you can jettison. This can be difficult: it feels good to be needed, and it can be demoralising to realise that you are not indispensable. But it’s not impossible. And if you don’t control your unpaid work, it may end up controlling you.

In the final year of my PhD, realising that push actually had come to shove and I needed to spend a lot of time writing my thesis, I gave up all of my formal volunteering. I had a few roles at the time and giving them up was the only way I could meet my thesis deadline. I also turned down various offers of unpaid work – some of which were really tempting – on the grounds that I needed to get my thesis written. My doctoral work was also unpaid, as I was self-employed, and spending lots of time writing my thesis was quite enough unpaid work for one year. This meant I had a good work-work balance. (I gave up most of my social life for that year, too, so my work-life balance was terrible, but it was temporary and a means to an end.)

These days I take on one formal volunteering role at a time plus an honorary fellowship. Alongside my unpaid writing work, and the unpaid admin that goes with running a business, this is plenty to set against my paid work. So on the whole I think I have a good work-work balance. What about you?

This blog is funded by my beloved patrons who help with my work-work balance. It takes me around one working day per month to post here each week. At the time of writing I’m receiving funding of $34 per month. If you think a day of my time is worth more than $34 – you can help! Ongoing support would be fantastic but you can also make a one-time donation through the PayPal button on this blog if that works better for you. Support from Patrons and donors also enables me to keep this blog ad-free. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!

How To Check An Index

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index checkingIn August 2012 I was eagerly awaiting publication of my first research methods book, Research and Evaluation for Busy Students and Practitioners: A Time-Saving Guide (now in its second edition). I received an email asking me to check and give feedback on the attached draft index. I had absolutely no clue how to check an index. It looked like a credible index to me so I sent an email back saying thanks, it looks great, and hoped that would pass muster.

In May 2014 I was delighted to receive another email telling me that the book had been positively reviewed in the International Journal of Social Research Methodology. Although the review was indeed predominantly positive, the reviewer – as reviewers will – offered some criticism too. For example, she stated that, in contradiction to the book’s title, evaluation had only been mentioned once in its pages. Almost two years had passed since I’d worked on the manuscript and I began to doubt myself so I turned to my copy to check. I was reassured to find evaluation mentioned on many pages. But then I wondered, how could the reviewer have made such an error? The rest of her review suggested that she had read the book quite carefully. I turned to the index – and found that there was only one page number given for ‘evaluation’.

I could argue here that the reviewer should have been more careful, or that the indexer should have been more thorough. But actually I think it’s my fault because I didn’t know how to check an index. On the plus side, this is a useful cautionary tale which demonstrates that indexes are used by many people in many ways. This is something that indexers understand, though they are not infallible and will never know a book as well as its author – which is why authors are asked to check indexes. But nobody ever explains how to check an index. So I’m going to try to do just that. I’m still no expert, but I have learned some points I can share.

There are three key points to consider: what the index does for the book, what the index does for the book’s readers, and whether the index is a good index by the standards of other indexes. These can be converted into three questions:

  1. Does the index accurately reflect the content of the book?
  2. Does it do so in a way that will make sense to your readers?
  3. Is the index, in itself, a good quality index?

To answer the first question, begin by making a list of key words from your title, chapter headings, and sub-headings. Ensure all of those words are properly and fully represented in the index. If they’re not, don’t try to fix it yourself or even make suggestions about how to fix the problem. Simply explain to the indexer which words need more prominence and why. Then let them sort it out because they will be able to do so far more quickly and effectively than you.

Once you’ve done that, read through the index with your book’s readers in mind. Is the language of the index closely aligned with the language of the book? Are the headings and sub-headings concise and useful? Is the index logically organised and easy to read? Are there double postings when necessary, e.g. ‘data: quantitative’ and ‘quantitative data’? Is the punctuation clear and consistent?

Then consider the more detailed indicators of index quality, usefully set out by the American Society for Indexing. For example:

  • Do main headings or sub-headings have more than 5-7 page numbers attached? If so, they may need to be broken down further.
  • Are there a reasonable number of sub-headings for each main heading? If there are more than a column’s worth then some may need to be combined.
  • Are sub-headings at a sensible level? If not, revision may be needed.
  • Are the page numbers accurate? Spot-check some to make sure.

If you want to know more, the ASI have also produced a book on the subject: Indexing for Editors and Authors: A Practical Guide to Understanding Indexes. I haven’t read it myself yet but it looks comprehensive and useful. (Thanks to Nicola King aka @icemaiden1964 for pointing me to these resources on Twitter.)

When my second edition index arrived and evaluation still didn’t have a high profile, I asked the indexer to make appropriate amendments. Which she did, quickly and cheerfully.

These days I feel more confident when I receive an index to check. I hope you will too.

If you have any good index-related stories to tell, please share them in the comments.

This blog is funded by my beloved patrons. It takes me around one working day per month to post here each week. At the time of writing I’m receiving funding of $34 per month. If you think a day of my time is worth more than $34 – you can help! Ongoing support would be fantastic but you can also make a one-time donation through the PayPal button on this blog if that works better for you. Support from Patrons also enables me to keep this blog ad-free. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!

Academic Publishers and Production Values

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pile of booksLast week a book review I wrote was published on the LSE Review of Books blog. (This review is part of the ‘review a book a week’ series I’m running through 2019.) The book I reviewed was The Lost Ethnographies, edited by Robin James and Sara Delamont, and it is an excellent collection with only one problem: poor production values.

In publishing, “production values” is a term that covers the technical parts of the process. These include such things as: paper quality; page layout and cover design; font types and sizes; proof-reading, copy editing and indexing; print quality – essentially all the different factors that go into making a physical or digital book. A publisher with high production values is one that aims for good quality in these factors; a publisher with low production values is the opposite.

The Lost Ethnographies was published by Emerald and I’m sorry to say the production values weren’t great. As a reviewer, this was handy because it gave me something to criticise, but as a reader it was intensely irritating. There were typos on most pages, the print quality was poor, and the index was inadequate. I’m seeing more and more of this with academic books and it’s beginning to annoy me.

I understand from people who work in publishing that some academic publishing, particularly of monographs, is uneconomic. Therefore they have to outsource proof-reading, omit indexes, keep paper costs to a minimum, and so on. I hear from academics that they are really fed up with having to spend time, sometimes a lot of time, on correcting the errors of incompetent copy editors and proof-readers. At times these people are even introducing errors into books and articles. Here are some examples from the last week’s conversations:

“I had a difficult relationship with the people [publisher] outsourced editing to in [overseas country] – big issues were introduced the first time I got the proofs (bits missing, new wrong spelling) and it took a lot of pushing from me to get them changed.”

“I did an article on Jewish [redacted] whose editor changed every mention of midrash to mid-rash. It makes it sound as if I were writing about the aetiology and progression of measles.”

“When I first started writing and publishing I didn’t know how awful it was and consequently I didn’t proof read as carefully. Any newer academics who trust the process will find things are being published with typos, added words and other random deletions and insertions that ruin their papers. It is definitely getting worse and taking hours of my time to undo the damage at proofing stage.”

Worse still, academic publishers with low production values have the gall to charge three-figure sums for their books. From what I hear, Springer, Emerald, Palgrave and Routledge have bad reputations in these areas, while smaller academic publishers, such as Policy Press and Jessica Kingsley have much better production values and pricing policies.

In theory, the trade-off with the bigger publishers is that they’re better at distribution, marketing, and selling translation rights, but in practice this may not be the case. I am also hearing that even getting commitments about things like marketing and pricing into contracts with large publishers may not mean they are met. I heard one sad tale last week about pricing, where the author fought hard to have their book reasonably priced as per their contract, but didn’t have much success. I heard another about a publisher who had made clear commitments on marketing in a publishing contract but then didn’t see them through. The author concerned did what they could to put pressure on the publisher, but couldn’t afford to hire lawyers and in the end had to put up with broken promises and shattered dreams.

It seems it’s no longer the case that authors simply write books and publishers do the rest. It also seems that we have reached a point where academic monographs are being published badly because they are uneconomic. There is a simple solution to this: self-publishing. Perhaps it is time for academic researchers to build self-publishing costs into their funding bids. Authors could commission their own copy editors, proof-readers, indexers, page layout specialists and cover designers. That way they could have full control of the process and ensure that their book’s production values are high. Copy editors and proof-readers can be found via the Society for Editors and Proofreaders and indexers via the Society of Indexers. Page layout specialists and cover designers don’t yet have professional associations, so look for people with experience of academic work and testimonials that you can check such as Blot Publishing, or ask around for a recommendation.

Of course self-publishing isn’t valued by the REF, so some UK-based academic authors will have to continue working with commercial publishers. But I think that might change in time. Also, there are no paywalls for self-published books and articles. Digital self-published materials such as e-books and pdfs can be made available to readers for free, and hard copies can be produced as print-on-demand for small sums to cover costs. So there is a strong argument for self-publishing being the ethical option. (And blogging is self-publishing too!)

This blog is funded by my beloved patrons. It takes me around one working day per month to post here each week. At the time of writing I’m receiving funding of $34 per month. If you think 4-5 of my blog posts is worth more than $34 – you can help! Ongoing support would be fantastic but you can also make a one-time donation through the PayPal button on this blog if that works better for you. Support from Patrons also enables me to keep this blog ad-free. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!

In Praise Of Academic Re-Reading

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Fields Of Play coverI read novels for pleasure, and I often re-read novels for pleasure too. I’ve read all Terry Pratchett’s books, and if I’m a bit down or feeling overwhelmed, a re-read of one of those will always cheer me up. I sometimes revert to the comfort of children’s books when I’m poorly: Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series is a great favourite. Then there are books I re-read because they’re simply too good to read only once, such as Keri Hulme’s The Bone People which I re-read every few years.

Right now, though, I’m doing something I don’t usually do: I’m re-reading an academic book. It’s Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life by Laurel Richardson. Richardson is an American feminist sociologist and her book came out in 1997, two years before I started my MSc in Social Research Methods. I read it first for that course, admired and loved it, and have referred to it often since then. But it never occurred to me to re-read the book until now.

I chose to re-read it because I’m embarking on a new writing project focused on creative writing in academia. I knew I wanted to draw on Richardson’s work, and I thought to myself that I should re-read her book. You know what? This is the very first time it has ever occurred to me to re-read an academic book. I have occasionally re-read an academic journal article, but I don’t do that often either. Yet I regularly re-read novels. So why is this?

I think there are a few reasons. First, novels are stories, and stories are essential. They’re important for my wellbeing in a very different way from academic literature. I could live without academic literature much more easily than I could live without stories. Second, let’s face it, some academic books aren’t particularly enjoyable or interesting to read. Third, not all academic books need reading from cover to cover in the first place. For example, some are reference books to dip into, others are edited collections where not all chapters are equally relevant to each reader.

But then there are the other books: the ones that are engaging and inspirational, exciting and even at times hard to put down. Fields of Play is one of those. It’s a fabulous book. When I first read it, it was radical, inspiring, full of feminist rage and joy which spoke to me as clearly as the concepts and arguments set out by the author. Richardson dismantles the rationale for conventional academic writing with its passive voice and authorial authority. Then she creates a rationale for using fiction techniques, poetry, drama and other creative approaches in academic writing. And she practises what she preaches within the text, to excellent effect.

Reading this book again after almost 20 years, I find there is very little that has dated. Richardson’s experiences of discrimination at the hands of male colleagues are similar to those I hear of regularly from women in academia today. I’m also aware that the fight against conventional academic writing continues, as I frequently hear from doctoral students in despair because their supervisors won’t let them write in the first person. These are disheartening messages. But they also mean that this angry, loving book is still highly relevant.

I’m really happy to be re-reading this book. I’m learning new things because of course I have a very different context for Richardson’s work than I did two decades ago. So when I’ve finished this one, I’ll be thinking about other academic books I’ve loved and might be glad to re-read. But in the meantime, I wonder if there are any academic books that you re-read, as opposed to dipping in and out for reference. Maybe everyone is a re-reader except me! If you do re-read, I’d love to know which books you return to, if you could take the time to leave a comment.

This blog is funded by my beloved patrons. It takes me around one working day per month to post here each week. At the time of writing I’m receiving funding of $32 per month. If you think 4-5 of my blog posts is worth more than $32 – you can help! Ongoing support would be fantastic but you can also make a one-time donation through the PayPal button on this blog if that works better for you. Support from Patrons also enables me to keep this blog ad-free. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!

The University Of Kindness

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kindnessA few things have got me thinking recently about what seems to be a lack of kindness in UK universities. And that’s an odd sentence in itself, because a university can’t be kind or cruel; only people can do that. Universities don’t really exist except through the magic of consensus: enough people agree that a collection of buildings and activities can be called ‘a university’, and that that phenomenon may be accorded human attributes. Seems strange to me, but that’s how we humans roll, so I’m going with it for now.

So here’s what happened. On 9 March I gave a keynote at the Enquire conference at the University of Nottingham. The conference theme was ‘uncertainty’ so I thought it might be a good idea to give my keynote while standing on my wobble board, to embody the uncertainty we would be discussing. I ran this idea past the organisers who responded, ‘We have discussed your idea and think it sounds fantastic.’ Then in their next email they said, ‘With regard to your presentation, if you decide that you want to use the wobble board, I have been advised to inform you that you will have to accept liability, and that the university is not responsible for health and safety implications arising from the choice of presentation style.’ These people were some of the kindest and most thoughtful conference organisers I have ever encountered, which helps to explain their next sentence: ‘Apologies if that comes across as overly defensive on our part, but it is something I have been informed that I need to make you aware of.’

Then on 19 March I taught creative research methods at Coventry University. The organiser there had given me directions to a car parking space and told me I needed to ask at reception for a parking permit. The reception staff member was kind and helpful, and this is what he gave me:

Cov Uni parking permit

These types of institutional microaggressions say to me, ‘We don’t have to care about you because we are big and powerful.’ I’ve been imagining another way this could be. For example, I think the Nottingham conference organisers would have been happier to email me saying, ‘We’ve been advised to check whether you have experience of using a wobble board and whether there are any safety precautions you need to take that we might be able to help with.’ (I do, and there are: it’s not safe for use on a smooth floor, but the room we were in was carpeted, otherwise I would have brought a square of carpet to set the board upon.) And perhaps the Coventry parking permit designers might have said, ‘Please let us know if you experience any problems while you are parked on our premises and we will do all we can to help you.’

I’m not picking on Nottingham and Coventry here, because these phenomena are common among UK universities. And worse; much worse. Academics with disabilities have a difficult time at many universities. For example, Kay Inckle has been fighting for her rights at the University of Liverpool for a long time. In a media report from mid-August 2018, the university spokeswoman said, ‘We are eager to work with the trade unions and have agreed to meet with them to discuss this further as soon as possible.’ Yet another media report from late February 2019, over six months later, suggests nothing has changed. Vik Turbine, from the University of Glasgow, has blogged about how she is leaving academia after ten years in her dream job because of her institution’s inability to accommodate her chronic and progressive illness.

The UK has good quality legislation on disability discrimination which these universities are failing to use. That is close to maximum unkindness. And they get away with it because they are big and powerful, and because the people they are being unkind to rapidly become exhausted because they needed more help in the first place, not more barriers to overcome. People are having to fight when they should not need to fight. As the legislation makes clear, they should be supported in doing their jobs.

I have a couple of chronic and progressive illnesses myself. I think about how my own institution, i.e. my family and friends, have responded. They readily make accommodations for me, often putting themselves out in the process. Those who love scented candles don’t burn one when I visit because they know it will make me wheeze. Social evenings are arranged earlier than anyone else would like so I can enjoy a few hours of company before my inevitable early night. If I’m having a bad day and we’re going somewhere on foot, people will amble to stay with me even if they would rather stomp along. My friends and family go out of their way to ensure I have food and drink that my body can tolerate. I think I worry about and resent needing all this far more than it bothers any of them.

On the whole – of course there are exceptions – people seem able to be kind in most circumstances. Even extreme circumstances. Daoud Nabi, who originated from Afghanistan, greeted a white man at the door of the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, with the words ‘Hello, brother,’ even though that man was holding a gun. Shortly afterwards Daoud Nabi got in the shooter’s way to protect another man and in the process lost his life. That is maximum kindness. Then New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has demonstrated enormous kindness in response to this atrocity. She immediately described it as a terrorist attack (when conventionally ‘terrorist’ has been reserved for violence perpetrated by people of colour on white victims), dressed in mourning black with a headscarf to show respect, asserted that ‘they are us’, hugged victims, and began her next statement in New Zealand’s parliament with the Islamic greeting ‘Salaam Alaikum’ which means ‘peace be upon you’. Furthermore, she didn’t just empathise, she initiated far-reaching changes to New Zealand’s gun laws. Jacinda Ardern also recognised that the impact of this incident was not limited to New Zealand. When Donald Trump asked her how the US could help, she replied, ‘Sympathy and love for all Muslim communities.’

Imagine if vice-chancellors and their equivalents demonstrated this type of kindness in their leadership of universities. Imagine if universities really valued all of their staff, students, and visitors. It would be great if we could harness the magic of consensus here, too; then we’d have a University of Kindness. But a University of Kindness would require flexibility and responsiveness, and large institutions are notoriously bad at those. They’re much better at bureaucracy and processing people. This is one of the main reasons I prefer life as an independent researcher. I have more time and space to offer kindness to others (not that I’m infallible in that department, but I do my best). And others are so kind to me. In these last few days alone I’ve experienced a great deal of kindness from people on Twitter and from my Patrons.

I think this is important too, particularly in these days of political upheaval when the media would have us believe that the whole world is hurting and fighting and angry and sad. We need to recognise and acknowledge the kindness that exists.

It is kind of you to read my blog. Thank you.

This blog is funded by my beloved patrons who are super-kind. It takes me around one working day per month to post here each week. At the time of writing I’m receiving funding of $32 per month. If you think 4-5 of my blog posts is worth more than $32 – you can help! Ongoing support would be fantastic but you can also make a one-time donation through the PayPal button on this blog if that works better for you. Support from Patrons also enables me to keep this blog ad-free. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!

Collaborating Through A Book-Finishing Frenzy

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collaboration on bookIn Meredith Belbin’s terms I am a Completer-Finisher which means I love to finish projects. The term describes a team role rather than a personality type, though it goes with personality traits such as having high standards (yep), being conscientious (yep), and anxiety (yes, though not to a debilitating level). Attention to detail is a feature of completer-finishers which is probably why I made a success of being a freelance proof-reader and copy editor for some years before I became a researcher.

Over the last few months I’ve been collaborating with Dr Janet Salmons (aka @einterview) from Boulder, Colorado, on a book called Publishing From Your Doctoral Research which will be published by Routledge next March. Janet, too, is a professional writer, who has produced some excellent books about online research. Like me, she is fascinated by methods and ethics, so we have a lot in common. We’re almost done with the manuscript of our book and had a Skype meeting last week to plan the final stages. Janet is dealing with all the tables and figures, the chapter summaries and good practice points, and reviewing the exercises and reflective questions that we have set. I have been dealing with the overviews, illustrative case studies, and the referencing. These tasks have involved pulling out each of these elements from the individual chapters into a Word document of their own and then reviewing them for consistency. This is an amazing way to spot glitches. For example, we realised our chapter overviews varied in length from 71 to 922 words. That’s such a big variation that our readers would have been likely to notice – or at least to pick up a sense of inconsistency, which is not what we’re aiming for. On the other hand, I don’t have the perfectionist/obsessive tendencies that can be the downside of the Completer-Finisher, so I didn’t think we needed each overview to be exactly the same length. We agreed that 300-500 words would be about right. Then we had a chunk of work to do to make that happen, adding to some overviews and deleting from others, which meant figuring out whether we could swap sentences between each overview and other places in that chapter or whether we had to gain new words or lose old ones altogether.

We have spent the last few days in a finishing frenzy. Emails have been hurtling back and forth at speeds hitherto unknown to science. I don’t know what Janet’s Belbin role is but I figured she was probably a Shaper. I ran this past her and she said yes and she also thinks we are both Plants because we’re creative and undeterred by obstacles. Makes sense to me, particularly as Plants work well alone on the whole, but also benefit from collaborating – that’s us both to a T! We’ve collaborated with each other before and she’s a joy to work with: responsive, inventive, diligent. It’s not easy, though, for either of us. We have to keep an eye on the whole picture (‘here’s the latest word count’) and the tiny details (‘can we think of a better title for our case studies?’) all at the same time. This makes your brain hurt. We have had the occasional version control problem, which is almost inevitable at this stage if you’re working at speed, and the odd thing has been overlooked here and there. Luckily we’re both forgiving of each other’s flaws and disinclined to sweat the small stuff.

All I really want to do is get the book done. It’s irritating to have to stop to do things like eat and sleep and answer emails. Hang on a minute, though – wasn’t I just claiming not to have obsessive tendencies? Oh… But I do stop for food and rest and correspondence! So… yeah. OK. You can stop rolling your eyes now, I admit I can be a teeny bit obsessive. (Just as well Janet is so tolerant!)

On the plus side, we can easily put in a 16-hour day between us. When I start work in the early UK morning, Janet is sleeping sweetly in her cosy bed. When she starts work, first thing in the US morning, it’s the afternoon here. We overlap for a few hours when we can Skype and whizz emails back and forth, then I knock off for the evening and Janet carries on into her afternoon. When I get to work the next morning there will be new emails from her, and by the time she gets to work there will be new emails from me. We both find that this is a very efficient and effective way of working.

In some ways it’s a bit odd having a sprint finish at the end of a marathon. I find it helpful, though, because otherwise it can be hard to let go. I have experienced that with my sole-authored books before. I don’t foresee any such problem with this book, perhaps partly because it’s a collaboration. When collaborations work well, as this one has, it’s so encouraging. Janet and I both feel very positive about this book; we think it will offer information, advice and guidance that late-stage and post- doctoral students really need but often struggle to find. It’s almost as if she and I are racing neck-and-neck to the finish, though we’re racing together rather than against each other. And that is what would make me drag my feet if anything could. I won’t be sorry to see the back of the book, but I will miss working with Janet.

This blog is funded by my beloved patrons. It takes me around one working day per month to post here each week. At the time of writing I’m receiving funding of $26 per month. If you think 4-5 of my blog posts is worth more than $26 – you can help! Ongoing support would be fantastic but you can also support for a single month if that works better for you. Support from Patrons also enables me to keep this blog ad-free. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!

Independent Research: The First 20 Years

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20 yearsI began work as an independent researcher 20 years ago. The first project I took on was an evaluation of a county-wide substance misuse training strategy, in my home county of Staffordshire, for the Drug Action Team. Drug Action Teams were partnerships at local authority level set up by the Labour government to bring agencies together to address substance misuse of all kinds: illegal drugs of course, but also alcohol, pharmaceutical drugs, and other substances such as solvents. The Drug Action Team worked with staff from nightclubs and prisons, schools and hospitals, magistrates’ courts and housing providers – the remit was broad and training was a central part of that work. My previous experience, of working for four years as a training administrator in blue-chip City of London companies in the late 1980s, was very helpful.

My records show that the first meeting I attended was on 8 March 1999. I followed this up with a memo which I emailed to some colleagues and printed and posted for those who didn’t have email. Yes you read that right: in 1999 not all professionals had email, and I was lucky that I did. However, I didn’t have a laptop or a mobile phone. I knew a few people with mobile phones but I didn’t want one – in fact, I didn’t get one until my clients switched from saying “Do you have a mobile?” to asking “What’s your mobile number?” I got a laptop first, a Hewlett-Packard Jornada 690 ‘Pocket PC’ that ran Windows. But in 1999 I took meeting notes by hand and typed them up later on my desktop computer.

I did semi-structured interviews with interesting people all around the county, and also took notes for those by hand. And I had no data analysis software so I did that by hand too. The interview notes are long gone but I still have the analysed data in Word documents.

I thought that project would be a one-off. At the time I was earning my living as a freelance proof-reader and copy editor for academic publishers which was paying £10-£20 per hour. The project appealed to me as a chance to use my research skills once more and to earn a chunk of money – the budget was £5,000 and I charged £15 per hour for my time. But the people I worked with liked what I did, and word got round, and before I knew it I had a whole new career. I did a part-time MSc in Social Research Methods at Staffordshire University from 1999-2001 to improve my skills.

I worked at a desk in the corner of my small dining room, sometimes spreading out onto the dining table. It was a quiet place to work apart from the intermittent sound of my external dial-up modem. By the summer of 2001 I was too busy to cope alone so I started my limited company, We Research It Ltd, and took on another researcher to help with the workload. The two of us were quite cramped in my little dining room and it soon became apparent that we needed an admin assistant as well. I ended up moving to a place nearby, that I’d spotted while out on a bike ride, which had an office in the garden.

The three of us worked there together for a couple of years until I decided that I didn’t really want to go the employment/expansion route and made them redundant. They were nice people and good workers but I was struggling to bring in enough work to keep all three of us afloat and none of us were really happy with the situation. I continued to work with the researcher through sub-contracting until the recession hit in 2010.

The MSc was a huge help and I went on to do a PhD which I was awarded in 2006. But there was much I had to learn from experience, because the qualifications didn’t teach me how to work effectively with clients, or manage my company finances, or promote my business. Nobody told me that as an external team member I could become a scapegoat for events beyond my control; I had to learn that the hard way. No lesson explained that sticking to your ethical principles can become more difficult when you really need to earn some money. Nothing taught me how to combine being professional with being humane in a wide range of complex situations.

The period between gaining my PhD in 2006 and the change of Government in 2010 was a golden time. I rarely had to bid for work; I had good statutory and third sector networks across the Midlands and beyond, and most of my work simply arrived in my inbox. Then the new coalition Government brought in austerity measures and my networks imploded. I hadn’t seen that coming at all because I didn’t believe any UK Government could decimate public services (I do now). In 2011-12 my income plummeted. That year my company turned over less than £11,000 and I couldn’t pay myself anything out of that so I had to get a part-time job for a couple of years to make ends meet. But less work meant more time. I could finally write the book I’d been thinking about writing for the previous five years and start networking with academia. Fortunately for me, the writing and networking paid off, and I got my career back.

It took a few years to recover from the recession but I think I’m there now though there’s still a dent in my savings. I’m pretty good at my job these days, even if I do say so myself, though I know I can still make mistakes. But I’ve learned such a lot over the last two decades. I have been, and am, so lucky to be able to keep doing the work I love.

This blog is funded by my beloved patrons. It takes me around one working day per month to post here each week. At the time of writing I’m receiving funding of $17 per month. If you think 4-5 of my blog posts is worth more than $17 – you can help! Ongoing support would be fantastic but you can also support for a single month if that works better for you. Support from Patrons also enables me to keep this blog ad-free. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!

Australasian Research Ethics

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AHRECS logoSystems of research ethics regulation differ around the world. Some countries have no research ethics regulation system at all. Others may have a system but, if they do, it is only available in their home language so people like me who only speak and read English are unable to study that system (Israel 2015:45). The main English-speaking countries tend to have formal systems of research ethics regulation, stemming from biomedical research in response to ethical crises such as Nuremberg and Tuskegee. These are usually implemented through research ethics committees or their equivalents such as institutional review boards in the US.

One big difference in Australasia is that work on research ethics by and for Indigenous communities seems to be further ahead in Australia and New Zealand than in any other continental region as a whole. Australia has the Guidelines for Ethical Research in Australian Indigenous Studies produced by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). AIATSIS is a statutory organisation, set up by white settlers in the 1960s and governed by a Council, with the first Aboriginal Council member joining in 1970. The Council is now predominantly made up of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders. The latest edition of the Guidelines is dated 2012 but they are under review at the time of writing. In New Zealand, Māori people with experience from research ethics committees came together to write Te Ara Tika, a document offering guidelines for Māori research ethics published in 2010. These kinds of guidelines help Indigenous peoples to claim their right of research sovereignty, i.e. control over the conduct of and participation in research that affects them. However, they are not necessarily aligned with each other, or with other systems of ethical governance for research that may exist in the same jurisdictions. This may hamper collaborative or multi-area research and lead to increased separation rather than reconciliation between peoples (Ríos, Dion and Leonard 2018).

So it’s a complex and fascinating picture. I am fortunate to be working on a project at present with three experts in Australasian research ethics: Gary Allen, Mark Israel, and Colin Thomson. (The sharp-eyed among you may notice that I cited Israel in the first paragraph above. He has written a rather good book on research ethics subtitled Beyond Regulatory Compliance and now in its second edition.) Together they are the senior consultants of the Australasian Human Research Ethics Consultancy (AHRECS), established in 2007 to provide expert consultancy services around research ethics in Australasia and Asia-Pacific. AHRECS also works with Indigenous consultants from both Australia and New Zealand, one of the latter being Barry Smith who is a co-author of Te Ara Tika.

The amount of expertise in AHRECS is enormous. Better still, they offer to share some of this expertise to anyone who wants to sign up for their free monthly e-newsletter on research ethics (and I can confirm from experience that they don’t spam you). Link here (scroll down, it’s on the right). Their blog provides a useful archive and they accept guest posts on relevant topics; I just wrote one for them on The Ethics of Evaluation Research. So you get two for the price of one this week!

This blog is funded by my beloved patrons. It takes me around one working day per month to post here each week. At the time of writing I’m receiving funding of $17 per month. If you think 4-5 of my blog posts is worth more than $17 – you can help! Ongoing support would be fantastic but you can also support for a single month if that works better for you. Support from Patrons also enables me to keep this blog ad-free. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!

Ten Ways To Reduce Negative Mind Chatter

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talkingSo many of my friends and colleagues mention negative mind chatter. Only the other day I had a woman tell me she doesn’t feel like a good enough mother (she is), and a man tell me he doesn’t know how he got to where he is in life (because he’s clever, kind, and hardworking). I could quote numerous other examples, and I think writers are particularly prone to this.

Negative mind chatter sits in between the social self-deprecation that is practised by some cultures, including mine, and full-on impostor syndrome. It is the little voices in your mind that tell you you ought to work harder, you’re too fat/thin, your writing is rubbish. And so on. Almost everyone has them, I think, to some degree or another. They’re a nuisance at best, hard to get rid of, and can be destructive, sabotaging our conscious wishes to move forward in our lives.

The good news is there are things we can do to help reduce our negative mind chatter. Here are ten ideas to consider. None of these will work for everyone, but each of them should work for some people.

  1. Aim for calm acceptance of each voice and its message. If it can’t upset or scare you, it will have much less power; maybe even no power. Imagine it has come to visit; welcome it in politely, as you might a tradesperson who has come to fix something in your house, then let it do its own thing while you focus on whatever you want to be doing.
  1. Visualise the character who is speaking. Feel free to make them as comic and grotesque as you like. Then visualise yourself batting that creature away in any way you choose. This is your visualisation so there are no holds barred: if you want to visualise yourself pushing it off a cliff, or punching it into oblivion, that’s your call. Mine is a little coal-black goblin who I belt out of sight with a frying pan. I have no idea why, but it is, and it works – at least for a while.
  1. Take a step back from the voice. Think about what it’s saying to you and why. Then imagine one of your friends is in the position you are in, and think about what you would say to them. I bet you anything you like it’s not the same. Then try saying to yourself, out loud, what you would say to your friend.
  1. Flip the voice. Whatever it is saying, find the opposite and say it out loud. So if you have a voice that says you don’t work hard enough, you might choose to say ‘I work effectively and well and I value my work-life balance’. You could also write your statement on a Post-It note and stick it somewhere you’ll see it regularly.
  1. Positive affirmations may sound airy-fairy but they can be helpful. They should be in the present tense, include the word ‘I’, and contradict some of your mind chatter. So if you have a voice muttering that you’re unattractive and nobody will ever love you, you might decide on the affirmation ‘I am beautiful/handsome and I am loved.’ Say it out loud, ten times, every day, with as much conviction as you can muster.
  1. Meditation helps to rest the mind from all thoughts, not only the negative ones. For seated meditation, find somewhere quiet that you can be comfortable and close your eyes. Focus on your breath at the tip of your nose: in and out, in and out. If thoughts intrude don’t worry, let them go and bring yourself back to your breath. Any single moment free of thought is a success. It takes years, maybe decades of practice to let thoughts go for a sustained period. But don’t let that worry you either because even sitting and focusing on your breath for five minutes, with a couple of moments within that where you’re truly thought-free, will leave you more rested than you expect.
  1. Walking meditation is also great, particularly if you’re restless or don’t have easy access to quiet space. Walk slowly and steadily, through a green space if you can. Focus on the movement and sensation of walking and the sights and sounds around you in the present moment. Feel your connection to the earth and the sky. Hear the traffic or the birdsong, notice the air on your face, any aromas – pay attention as fully as you can to all the sensations from your body walking and the place you’re in. If thoughts intrude don’t worry, let them go by or walk away from them and bring your focus back to your body and your surroundings. Some people find this easier or preferable to seated meditation; others like to use both depending on their mood, the weather, etc or as a complement to each other.
  1. Writing can be useful for particularly persistent voices. Divide a page into two columns, whether hard copy or electronic. In the left column write whatever the voice says. In the right column write a counter-argument. Repeat this, always writing the same thing in the left column and something different in the right column, until the arguments in the right column become convincing. Keep the document handy and refer back to it any time that voice starts up again.
  1. Smile at yourself in the mirror and give yourself three honest compliments, out loud. This can be a great way to start and finish the day. If you use this regularly, vary the compliments. They can be about small actions or qualities: ‘Well done for letting that woman with the crying baby go ahead of you in the queue.’ ‘Good job staying calm when your co-worker was being really annoying.’ Or of course they can be about bigger things when that’s appropriate.
  1. Remember that thoughts, and their associated feelings, move and change. They are not static and you are not stuck with them. Look back and remember times when you thought and felt differently from the way you think and feel today. Know that you can think and feel differently in the future.

If you suffer from negative mind chatter I hope you will find something here to help you and so help your writing. If none of these work for you, or your negative mind chatter feels overwhelming, please consider seeking professional help. I’ve used professional help in the past, and I still use some of the tactics above, to quiet my own negative mind chatter. It’s not completely gone but I can deal with it now. So can you. Good luck!

This blog is funded by my beloved patrons. It takes me around one working day per month to post here each week. At the time of writing I’m receiving funding of $17 per month. If you think 4-5 of my blog posts is worth more than $17 – you can help! Ongoing support would be fantastic but you can also support for a single month if that works better for you. Support from Patrons also enables me to keep this blog ad-free. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!