The Scholarly Letter

The Scholarly Letter

A weekly letter for scholars, para-academics, and curious minds who care about the integrity of thought, the future of scholarship, and the deeper meaning of intellectual work.

Featured Posts

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The Scholar Manifesto

The Scholar Manifesto

We produce and discard knowledge like the way clothes get produced, consumed, and discarded in fast fashion.

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The Tech-bro-ification of Research

The Tech-bro-ification of Research

And with them, what cultural and ideological imports are we quietly welcoming into how we conduct our research, how we produce knowledge, and how we relate to knowledge itself?

The DigestThe Digest
Visualising, Violating, and Humanizing Scholarship

Visualising, Violating, and Humanizing Scholarship

Three weeks ago, COPE published new guidance for how to handle retractions of published articles - highlighting just how pressing the problem is becoming.

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On Successful Scholarship

On Successful Scholarship

“The job of the scholar is to contribute to society, and if they are not doing so, they are not successful.” And here, we will agree but with one vital amendment.

Archive

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Anti-University: Scholarship Before, Within, and Beyond The University

Anti-University: Scholarship Before, Within, and Beyond The University

Private universities now receive government funding, public universities prize industry partnerships, and liberal arts colleges emphasise the development of graduates capable of contributing to a nation's economic prosperity and security.

The DigestThe Digest
Scholarship with Impact, Identity, and Disagreement

Scholarship with Impact, Identity, and Disagreement

One such partnership is the Raytheon–UMass Lowell Research Institute, established in 2014 to cement a multimillion-dollar collaboration between the company and the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

The DigestThe Digest
Research and Scholarship: Simple, Independent, Humble

Research and Scholarship: Simple, Independent, Humble

In doing so he provides the reader with rich contextual information about how an academic of his time viewed problem-solving - a cornerstone of research - without speaking of research itself.

EssayEssay
On Publishing At Least One Paper This Year

On Publishing At Least One Paper This Year

After all, has not our understanding of the pinnacle of academic excellence become entirely about getting single-authored journal articles in ‘top-tier’ journals?

The DigestThe Digest
On the Limited Academy, LABraries, and Formative Figures

On the Limited Academy, LABraries, and Formative Figures

When addressing the possibility of a revival in independent scholarship, one of the most pressing questions hangs over those research disciplines which rely on extensive equipment.

EssayEssay
The Year of The Scholar

The Year of The Scholar

Indulging in a future in which the practices of scholarship had been fostered under a different culture and a different set of conditions, his fiction playfully – yet definitively – set forth the kind of scholarly future we are setting ourselves up to work towards.

The DigestThe Digest
Scholarly Crisis, New Labs, Old Preprints, and Unexpected Beauty

Scholarly Crisis, New Labs, Old Preprints, and Unexpected Beauty

The authors conclude that current cutting edge deep research models can understand the task they must perform, but are unable to search for and synthesise the information needed to complete it - not surprising to anyone who has interacted with an AI model in the context of research.

The DigestThe Digest
On Academic Gatekeeping, Conceptual Thinness and Publishing Crap

On Academic Gatekeeping, Conceptual Thinness and Publishing Crap

As preprints increasingly become seen as reliable scholarly sources - particularly in fields such as physics and computer science - the value of having such articles on your CV has also increased.

EssayEssay
Scholars Pay Themselves

Scholars Pay Themselves

Rather than waiting around for university employment to permit them to be scholars, relying on universities as middlemen who decide how much their scholarship is worth, scholars can directly turn their expertise and skills into livelihood.

The DigestThe Digest
On Living For Scholarship

On Living For Scholarship

It does not confuse the appearance of a scientific article, with its hypotheses, tests, and conclusions, all neatly laid out, with the ways in which the research was actually carried out.

Creation of Knowledge

Creation of Knowledge

These scholars took pleasure in their work, finding joy and beauty in the act of scholarship. As the months passed, Richard became ever more infatuated with them.

The DigestThe Digest
On Academic Freedom, Security and Flattery

On Academic Freedom, Security and Flattery

Luxury conferences in the Swiss Alps, featuring cocktail parties and high profile speakers, like the secretary general of the UN, still continue today.

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