Behind the Fluff

These last few weeks and the impact of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) have seen scores of events cancelled including London Book Fair, Redux, and UKSG. In fact, the last conference I attended was Researcher to Reader and I haven't been to one since. Not only are we missing out on chatting and networking together at venues, but we're also missing out on the valuable content and discussions that we were seeking to learn more about. Now that many are having to work remotely, this presents opportunities to create exciting environments to engage and learn.

Explore the full transcript and links: Bring your own (BYOB) - putting the fun into virtual networking and conferences (internationalbunch.com)

Hi, this is Lou Peck from The International Bunch, and I'm going to talk to you about TikTok in under 60 seconds.

Beijing-based company ByteDance created the video social network Douyin for the Chinese market in 2016. They then launched TikTok in 2017 for those outside of China.

Users create short lip-sync, comedy and talent videos of 3 to 15 seconds and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds. Made by young people for young people it is now seeing worldwide adoption across the age ranges.

TikTok is having phenomenal success, challenging YouTube in the video space. In 2019 it was declared the 7th most downloaded app of the decade.

There are four primary ad formats:

1. in-feed vertical video

If you're looking to engage with digital adopters and early career researchers, this is a great tool.

Discover more helpful resources at internationalbunch.com/resources

A recent paper published in February 2020 in ALPSP’s Learned Publishing has highlighted some of the significant changes in research output and quality in China. Back in December 2019, The International Bunch published a blog post reporting on the increase in R&D funding, and the focus on publication ethics and quality we saw in the China publishing industry.

Explore the full transcript and links: https://www.internationalbunch.com/post/china-increases-research-output-new-findings-and-a-response-to-coronavirus-covid-19 

We're delighted to bring you our third instalment in the new series covering academic marketing hints and tips. This third podcast looks at key themes and optimizing your account for Twitter. Ensure you subscribe to this channel to receive updates of great content we post and let us know your thoughts, or what else you want us to cover in our videos. The next podcast in this series will be about LinkedIn. These videos are useful for those in academic and scholarly marketing. Discover our helpful resources:

• Blog - https://www.internationalbunch.com/blog

We're delighted to bring you our second instalment in the new series covering academic marketing hints and tips. This second instalment looks at optimizing your bio and activity.

Ensure you subscribe to this channel to receive updates of great content we post and let us know your thoughts, or what else you want us to cover in our videos and podcasts. The next in this series will be about Twitter. These videos are useful for those in academic and scholarly marketing. Discover our helpful resources:

• Blog - https://www.internationalbunch.com/blog

We're delighted to bring you our new series covering academic marketing hints and tips. This first instalment looks at three key strategies and common mistakes to avoid with YouTube. Ensure you subscribe to this channel to receive updates of great content we post and let us know your thoughts, or what else you want us to cover in our videos and podcasts. The next in this series will be about Instagram. Useful for those in academic and scholarly marketing.

Discover our helpful resources:

• Blog - https://www.internationalbunch.com/blog

Hi, this is Lou Peck from The International Bunch and I’m going to talk to you about DORA – The Declaration on Research Assessment in under 60 seconds.

DORA recognises the need to improve how we evaluate scholarly research outputs like removing such heavy reliance on impact factor as a key measure. It acknowledges that the evaluation of scholarly and research outputs should be based on the accomplishments of those individual outputs, rather than on journal-level metrics.

It was developed in 2012 during the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in San Francisco, then published on the 13th May 2013.

DORA has become a worldwide initiative covering all scholarly disciplines and all key stakeholders including publishers, funders, professional societies, researchers and institutions.

As of January 2020, 1,800 institutions have signed the declaration and 15,500 individuals.

Discover more helpful resources at internationalbunch.com/resources

Hi, this is Lou Peck from The International Bunch and I’m going to talk to you about the six most common types of peer review in under 60 seconds.

1. Single-blind peer review – reviewers know who the authors are, but the authors do not know who the reviewers are

Discover more helpful resources at internationalbunch.com/resources

The landscape of research and scholarly communications is continually changing. To balance the priorities of researchers, institutions, funders, publishers and intermediaries means that we have an ecosystem with significant challenges. In this post, we look at the research landscape in India and explore three challenges facing the scholarly community: research quality, open research, and predatory publishing.

Explore the full transcript and links: Addressing three major challenges for the Indian research community (internationalbunch.com)

On Giving Tuesday - December 3 - controversial ethicist and Princeton University professor Peter Singer releases, free in ebook and audiobook editions, an expanded and fully updated 10th Anniversary Edition of his influential book, The Life You Can Save, previously published by Random House.

Explore the full transcript and links: https://www.internationalbunch.com/post/peter-singer-free-ebook-and-audio-book-on-ending-global-poverty