I have a new review of Belfiore, Eleonora, and Anna Upchurch, eds., Humanities in the Twenty-first Century: Beyond Utility and Markets (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) now published in Textual Practice . You can also read the Author Submitted Manuscript version, should you so wish.

Today marked the publication of the Government and RCUK responses to the UK's BIS Committee Inquiry into Open Access.

I'm pleased to say that I was able to participate in the first meeting of the HEFCE Expert Reference Group on Open Access Monographs a few weeks ago. Having confirmed with HEFCE, I can also now make available the minutes of that meeting on the 4th November and would be interested to hear from anybody with comments by either email or Twitter.

One of the aspects that people seem to disagree with most, when I write or talk about open access, is that there is a problem with journal “prestige”. Overly-ventriloquizing on behalf of the stereotypical conversant in this debate, he or she usually accepts (as do I) that, in an economy of journals dealing with niche subjects, some will be held in esteem and that others will not fare so well.

As I'm preparing to speak tomorrow at the Literature off the Page conference, I was, as usual, creating a set of slides for my talk. As I'm looking at the novels of Jennifer Egan, I decided to create some diagrams that show clearly the features of the novels that I am referring to. However, I also decided that this would be a good opportunity to upload this kind of material to Figshare for the first time.

It gives me great pleasure to announce that, should all go to plan, my book Pynchon and Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Foucault and Adorno will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in April 2014. This book presents thorough, comprehensive and previously unaddressed philosophical and ethical readings of Thomas Pynchon's fiction through Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault and Theodor W. Adorno.

I saw, going around on Twitter today, a 2012 article on the Open Access Irony Awards. This site is dedicated to the practice of humorously exposing articles/editorials that are pro-open access, but locked behind paywalls. As someone who has written in support of OA in closed venues, I wanted to quickly write to ask: what is so ironic about this practice?

The below is a piece that I wrote for The Conversation in the state before it was edited for publication there. While the version published there captures better the sense of the sting article and the general background, I wanted to post my unadulterated version here as it shows my true thoughts for those already immersed in the debate.

Quick post to add some Google juice to a problem. If you upgrade to Thunderbird 24 and it no longer underlines your misspelt text in red, go to Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Config Editor and set mail.compose.max_recycled_windows to 0. Fixing broken spellcheck in Thunderbird 24 was originally published by Martin Paul Eve at Martin Paul Eve on September 30, 2013.

It is already a cliché to announce the demise of the book in the wake of the digital revolution. While it might be unwise to stake our futures on the printed-and-bound codex, it seems doubtful that a shift in the way words are delivered will result in the downfall of long-form writing itself. What does seem questionable, however, is the persistence of the current publishing model in which publishers act as gatekeepers.

As a scholar in a literature department, I end up doing some very odd things. Among these is the development of various pieces of software for the typesetting and production of scholarly articles. I'm also going to be co-supervising some computer science MSc places. This digital inflection then leads me to wonder whether what I do should be termed "digital humanities". Does it matter?