After a long delay, our debate article “Academic self-publishing: a not-so-distant future” finally appeared at Prometheus, a journal publishing critical studies in innovation. The journal issue hosting our article was originally expected in September 2013, but a series of unfortunate events resulted in an eight-month standoff between the journal’s editorial team and its publisher Taylor & Francis. In short, the debate proposition paper, authored by four academics from the University of Leicester’s School of Management, harshly criticized the large profits made by major publishing firms on the back of academics’ labors and the failure of the Finch report on open access to address this problem.
New article published in PLoS ONE: Impact of Stock Market Structure on Intertrade Time and Price Dynamics
A new article we have been working for some time with Dr. Plamen Ivanov was recently published in PLoS ONE. In the article we analyse times between consecutive transactions for a diverse group of stocks registered on the NYSE and NASDAQ markets, and we relate the dynamical properties of the intertrade times with those of the corresponding price fluctuations. We report that market structure strongly impacts the scale-invariant temporal organisation in the transaction timing of stocks, which we have observed to have long-range power-law correlations.
Our article on University Rankings published in the Journal of Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics
Global university rankings are a powerful force shaping higher education policy worldwide. Several different ranking systems exist, but they all suffer from the same mathematical shortcoming – their ranking index is constructed from a list of arbitrary indicators combined using subjective weightings. Yet, different ranking systems consistently point to a cohort of mostly US and UK privately-funded universities as being the ‘best’. Moreover, the status of these nations as leaders in global higher education is reinforced each year with the exclusion of world-class universities from other countries from the top 200.
In a complex world is it always meaningful to ask why?
As I make my way through an ocean of stimuli and experiences I observe the subtle changes in my mood and try to explain where they come from and what is causing them. My mind is hardwired to look for causes in a linear way. Big emotions are caused by dramatic life events while minor mood changes can have less significant origins, such as something I ate yesterday or an approaching project deadline. This hunt for external causes keeps my mind busy and the conversations with friends going, but is it always meaningful?