Tag Archives: ARC

Australian Cultural Data Engine-2 year LIEF

Academic, Architecture, digital heritage, Digital Humanities, Grant, infrastructure, Linked Open Data, virtual heritage, , ,

Just been given the green light to be officially on the following #ARC #LIEF grant: “Australian Cultural Data Engine for Research, Industry and Government” (announced in December but took this long):

“…Australian Cultural Data Engine for Research, Industry and Government. The project aims to develop an Australian Cultural Data Engine (ACD-Engine), which will be an open software engineering facility that interacts with leading existing cultural databases in architecture, visual and performing arts, humanities, and heritage to build a bridge to information and social sciences. The ACD-Engine will unify and expand these disparate and previously unconnected systems to allow advanced analysis techniques to be performed. It will deliver innovative and searchable formats that ensure interoperability, improved search, interactive design and interpretation aids that will benefit the policy and planning for national and international alignments between researchers, industry and government.”

This will be my fourth Australian Research Council grant (Chief Investigator)* since 2018. The University of Melbourne leads this grant, it runs for two years.

*Also an expert advisor on 5-year ARC Indigenous Discovery grant.

6 month Research Assistant position

Announcements, infrastructure, Linked Open Data, virtual heritage, visualisation, , , , , , ,

I require a research assistant for an ARC LIEF project:

Fixed Term Research Assistant for Time Layered Culture Map Project (Web-based Mapping and AR/MR/VR technologies] 

  • Develop exemplars of cultural heritage data integrated with GIS data, on open source web platform Recogito [https://recogito.pelagios.org/] or equivalent.
  • Advise and develop related semantic web ontologies, features and supporting data.
  • Develop working examples of cultural heritage sites on this platform along with requested visualisation and annotation features (requested by supervisor)
  • Help integration with envisaged virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality platforms and related devices
  • Assist development of reports, tutorials, scholarly publications and grant applications based on the above including sourcing earlier papers and case studies
  • Store all examples and codes on accessible software repositories as requested by supervisor
  • Demonstrate, where required, the above GIS, mapping and semantic web examples.
  • Expertise required: knowledge of GIS, GeoJSON or similar, programming, familiarity with recent AR/VR technologies would be an advantage.
  • SALARY: G05.3  level.
  • The work is based at Curtin and can be shared but covers 6 months fulltime worl starting ASAP.

The job will be advertised soon but please contact erik dot champion at curtin edu au for any questions.

Publish or Perish?

Academic, Digital Humanities, , , , ,

In Australia the Prime Minister has recently criticized academic publications,  they aren’t value for money as they don’t directly lead to commercial outcomes, patents etc.

Prime Minister Turnbull wants to end the “publish or perish” culture in which academics are pressured to focus on constant publishing rather than producing work with commercial and community benefit.

Does that mean the government will support open access journals or reduce academic funding? Or transfer that money to STEM and business partnerships?

Under Dr Finkel’s proposal, the amount of revenue generated from industry and other users of research would be used to help determine how university research is funded.

I am afraid it will be the latter. While I am a supporter of closer relationships between universities and business – something our Australian Research Council grant system does not adequately address – there is always a need for non-commercial research.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull last week told a public forum: “Everyone I talk to thinks that the problem is that academics have got – their incentives are very much associated with publish or perish.”

And if the Prime Minister ever bothered to ask me, I would reply support OPEN ACCESS publications, which are currently not recognized by your Excellence in Research for Australia system!

The problem is more:

  • The reduction of funding to universities even though 20 of our universities are in the top 400 in the world.
  • The Australian government’s lack of funding support for innovation and exchange with the EU’s Horizon 2020!
  • The government reducing funding cuts for research centres and universities (and the government funding to science research hits a 30 year low).
  • The government and university focus on large and time consuming grant applications rather than effective grant applications that are evaluated to ensure they do what they promise and not just say they are new.
  • Grants should be given to people on merit rather than on previous grant success!
  • The government’s determination of national science and research objectives as reliance on pipeline science and technology when
    1. Science is more than just applied manufacturing; it requires critical thinking and fundamental research (not always directly and immediately applied to commercial returns).
    2. International education is Australia’s fourth largest export market.
    3. The Australian coterie of lawyer trained politicians owes its members’ education and subsequent careers to Plato and Aristotle i.e. humanities…
    4. The lack of suitable funding for Australian research infrastructure cripples everyone, scientists and humanities scholars.
    5. Lack of funding into community-based research puts you behind Europe and New Zealand and won’t prepare us for social problems such as potential conflict in the future.

Dramatically and instantly removing funding for publication only further destabilizes the higher education system, creates ruptures between academics here and overseas, and will not encourage academics to come to Australia.

That said, a strategic and thoughtful investigation into research funding and dissemination of results would be most welcome.

OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHERS

Speaking of Open Access here are some of the open access publication schemes NOT recognized by the Excellence in Research for Australia framework:

  1. http://punctumbooks.com/titles/the-digital-humanist/
  2. http://openhumanitiespress.org/plastic-bodies.html
  3. http://www.matteringpress.org/news/first-four-books-will-be
  4. http://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/367/vertical-readings-in-dantes-comedy/54e1823d42b1f797e97bb800dda4b22c

 

Thanks to the Open Humanities twitter feed.