According to John Green, “All writing is rewriting.” In this week’s collection of posts from around the web, we have a number of revised methods for research and writing efforts discussed.

Beginning with a discussion of the impact of Plan S on researchers, a new approach to Eva Lantsoght’s “This is How I Work” interview series, and the criteria for choosing a research approach, we explore changes that impact academic writing on many levels. Our list continues with a discussion of the thoughts that lead to light bulb moments, mixed, virtual, and augmented realities in scholarly publishing and social research, and a collection of global insights compiled by Scholarly Kitchen.

Perhaps your rewriting efforts this week are literal revisions of your latest article. Perhaps they’re more a revision of thought or process. Whatever change you are experiencing, however, embrace it this week. Rewrite your draft or your mindset and happy writing!

Plan S: What about researchers?

There has been a plethora of excellent articles on Plan S, all beginning with the September 2018 announcement of the plan. Two of the best articles on the details of Plan S are naturally to be found here in The Scholarly Kitchen (“PlanS: Impact on Society Publishers”: Michael Clarke, September 5th, 2018) and (“Plan S: A Mandate for Gold OA with lots of Strings Attached” by Angela Cochran December 7^th, 2018).  What appears to be missing (although not completely) is a sense of what matters to researchers across academic disciplines. In this article, I try to disentangle authority, money, and motivation, providing a sense of balance that I would implore Plan S leaders and funders to take to heart.

I am Lauren Drogos, and this is how I work

This time, I tried something new – we did the interview through Skype and recorded it for publication on the blog. Let me know how you like this form of the interview series! Here’s the interview – in which we talk about tech tools, Lauren’s research work, and parenting twins.

Criteria for selecting a research approach

Given the possibility of qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods approaches, what factors affect a choice of one approach over another for the design of a proposal? Added to worldview, design, and methods would be the research problem, the personal experiences of the researcher, and the audience(s) for whom the report will be written.

Idle thoughts while reading? It may be a light bulb moment

But sometimes those vacillating procrastinating thoughts are very useful.  You’re reading, or trying to, and one of three thoughts just pops into your mind. Unsolicited. You’re reading long and – woah – here is this thought. Don’t dismiss any of these three thoughts – it’s good to listen to them – they are telling you something helpful. In fact, you may even have a light bulb moment. That idle thought is actually something important.

Mixed realities, virtual reality, and augmented reality in scholarly publishing: An interview with Markus Kaindl and Martijn Roelandse

For many of us, augmented reality is primarily associated with gaming and other forms of online entertainment. But it is also increasingly being used in scholarly publishing — in expected and unexpected ways. Springer Nature has been experimenting with this, and anyone who visited their booth at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF) had the opportunity to experience the results firsthand. In this interview, their Senior Manager of Semantic Data, Markus Kaindl, and Head of Innovation, Martijn Roelandse, answer some of my questions about mixed realities, virtual reality, and augmented reality in scholarly publishing and tell us about some of their work in this area.

Virtual reality: The future of experimental social research?

The recent improvements in VR – enhanced realism, more accurate body movements, and full-body presence – have greatly increased its validity, sometimes lending it as the best tool for social science research. I strongly believe that its essential advantages over real life scenarios and vignette-based research (reproducibility, ability to control the experiment and develop scenarios that are hard to implement in the real world) will render VR the go-to method for social scientists, especially those working on social phenomena.

Different places, different voices

One of our ongoing goals at The Scholarly Kitchen is to increase the range of voices and opinions found on the blog, particularly bringing in more geographic diversity. Our core set of bloggers are all based in the US and the UK, but as scholarly research from outside of these regions continues to increase both its quantity and its importance, an understanding of the scholarly communications global landscape is increasingly useful.