I’ll be talking at the Classical Association conference at Birmingham in a few weeks. I was told there’d be a session on publishing, so I get to be Bora for a day.

The plan is to talk about Peer-to-peer publishing and the creative process. The other speakers seem to be talking about publishing finished work. There’s an space which you could drive open access into, but I’m only intending to talk for about ten to fifteen minutes. Given I’ll be scheduled alongside someone from a publisher and established academics, I don’t think that raising this here would be a viable and could do more harm than good. Instead I’m going to be a bit more subversive – is publishing about publishing finished work?

This is a session for postgrads, and I accept that help is needed to get something published in a timely manner. But I also think that another thing that can help grad students is feedback. This is why many students will be giving papers at the conference this year. (more…)