The Research Whisperer

Remember, peeps, when you leave the journal, tidy up after yourselves and turn the lights out. https://lnkd.in/gRC9YeqA Via Eleanor Colla's Little Library (ish) Links newsletter. #ThatsHowWeGetAnts #Editors

Helen Kara is running researcher development sessions online. This is great news! Helen literally wrote the book on how to include creativity in your research program. She built a working system for independent researchers in the UK to gain research ethics. She is one of the editors of the Insider Guides to Success in Academia. She knows her stuff. Some free sessions, some paid sessions: * Creative research methods. * Radical research ethics. * Creative academic writing. https://lnkd.in/g2DdPYb8

The Verification Ladder: A Framework for Evaluating Video When You Can’t Tell What’s Real * Rung 1: Authentic Footage * Rung 2: Real But Edited * Rung 3: Real Person, Fake Elements * Rung 4: Generated From Scratch Hana Lee Goldin provides great advice on evaluating and dealing with videos, on Card Catalog blog, 9 January 2026 https://lnkd.in/gt5GQQ7X #HanaLeeGoldin #DealingWithDeepFakes #ECRchat

There's so much genAI hype and endless pushes to use it, often coming from our own institutions. This project is v. v. timely and we're already looking forward to what it finds! Pls share with your networks and participate if you can! Posted on behalf of Neil Selwyn (Monash University). ------------------------ NEW: Survey on academics’ ‘grey area’ uses of GenAI   We are running a small project to better understand why academics are increasingly feeling the need to turn to GenAI to do things that they know/feel they should ideally be doing themselves.   This might include using GenAI to write peer reviews, draft papers, write student feedback etc. We're sure 99% of this is well-intentioned and about self-survival/managing academic workload, but we'd love to know more about people's different circumstances and reasoning. We've got a very short (3 minute) & totally anonymous drop-box where academics can write their own examples and reasons for turning to GenAI to do things that they'd otherwise want to be doing for themselves.Find out more and complete the survey at this link:   https://lnkd.in/gcCMfeXQ

New at RW this week - an invitation to make research culture better! Jonathan O'Donnell has started an entry on Wikipedia about "research culture" and would like you to contribute, develop, and improve it. Check out what he's done so far, and read his invitation in full: https://lnkd.in/gjPWUeYR

New at RW this week: My mental health protocol: a glossary for the frustrated contemporary researcher (by Abel Polese) In this post, Abel shares the "small practices that allow [him] to keep [his] balance" - and we all need ways to manage our stress and workloads! What kinds of things help you with a sustainable way of working? https://lnkd.in/guUjAkrk

Planning for sustainable research programs and lowering risk to researchers themselves - surely not a 'nice to have' but essential?

Started writing an update to share our latest post and found that Wade Kelly had already done a fabulous post about it! Thanks, Wade. 😍 If you get frustrated / angry / incandescent with rage about exploitative scholarly publishing, read on!

Survey About Public Engagement - barriers to communication Charlotte Vaughn (U Maryland) and Sharon Unsworth (Radboud) are conducting a survey about some of the interesting content challenges for communicating with general audiences. It’s not targeting the usual stuff about barriers to public engagement like lack of time or incentives, but about the actual content of our work that can make it feel tough to connect with members of the public. Looking for respondents who: Are active researchers (PhD students, post docs, faculty, etc.) And, have done any kind of public engagement in the last 3 years (defined broadly: giving public talks, writing popular books, presenting demonstrations at festivals, doing interviews with news media, teaching high school students, etc.) https://lnkd.in/g85mYa9H

New post at RW: Cooking outside the PhD "Put simply: most academic development pipelines assume ideal conditions. But the people most in need of support often inhabit the least ideal ones. That includes me. After completing my PhD in Aotearoa New Zealand, I returned to the Philippines deeply motivated to publish and extend my research. But I also faced immediate limitations: a full teaching load, a lack of postdoctoral options, and the ongoing challenges of managing ADHD in a bureaucracy-heavy system. I didn’t lack drive. I lacked structure that matched my way of thinking. So I designed one." - Karl Patrick Mendoza https://lnkd.in/g6ASUGMu #neurodivergence #phdchat #academia #acwri