An [article in the Times Higher Education yesterday](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/several-london-post-92s-see-falls-battle-students) got me thinking about institutional stability, finance, and the ongoing "reforms" to UK higher education.

Yesterday, I attended my university's official training course for Ph.D. examiners. It was an extremely useful day to familiarize myself with the regulations at the University of London and to hear about incoming procedures for independent viva chairs. However, one thing did leap out at me that I'd forgotten but that, in light of much thinking about scholarly communications, struck me as interesting. One of the criteria for the award of a Ph.D.

A central anxiety for literary studies in the era of scientific dominance pertains to the extent to which groupings, taxonomies and classifications are methodologically derived and how far they help us to understand literary production. We all invariably use and create such classifications as terminological shorthands.

Today, I gave a talk at Royal Holloway for the TECHNE consortium of Ph.D. students on open access and scholarly communications. In the second part of the session, as I often do, I opened up into a "blue-skies" game where I ask those present, in groups, to think through what they want from a system of scholarly communications and how they would design it from scratch today if they were freed of practical and social constraints.

New provisions in UK copyright law look promising for text and data mining. Last year, the government signed into effect an exemption to copyright for the purposes of non-commercial research.

This post is the final in an [ongoing series](https://martineve.com/GreenPaper/) where I intend to develop my full _personal_ (_not_ institutional) response to the HE Green Paper. Comments are welcome to refine this. You can now [download my full response in a Word document format](/images/Eve-Green-Paper-Response.doc). The document total is 18,750 words. I hereby release this work under a [CC0 license](https://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/).

This post is part of an [ongoing series](https://martineve.com/GreenPaper/) where I intend to develop my full _personal_ (_not_ institutional) response to the HE Green Paper. Comments are welcome to refine this. The Green Paper asks in Question 28: >How could the data infrastructure underpinning research information management be improved? The emergent challenge for the UK's research data infrastructure is in ensuring twofold that: 1.

This post is part of an [ongoing series](https://martineve.com/GreenPaper/) where I intend to develop my full _personal_ (_not_ institutional) response to the HE Green Paper. Comments are welcome to refine this. The Green Paper asks in Question 27: > How would you suggest the burden of REF exercises is reduced?

This post is part of an [ongoing series](https://martineve.com/GreenPaper/) where I intend to develop my full _personal_ (_not_ institutional) response to the HE Green Paper. Comments are welcome to refine this. The Green Paper asks in Question 26: > What are the benefits of the REF to a) your institution and b) to the wider sector? How can we ensure they are preserved?

This post is part of an [ongoing series](https://martineve.com/GreenPaper/) where I intend to develop my full _personal_ (_not_ institutional) response to the HE Green Paper. Comments are welcome to refine this. The Green Paper asks in Question 25: >a) What safeguards would you want to see in place in the event that dual funding was operated within a single organisation?

So, probably against my better thoughts with respect to quantified self stuff, I got a fitness tracker for Christmas: the Jaybird Reign. The trouble was, regardless of what I tried, it just wouldn't pair with my phone (I'd followed all the instructions). I grudgingly waited until the tech. support team was open and got in touch, thinking I'd have to RMA the unit.