Authors:Gareth J Johnson Abstract: In this introductory editorial, the journal’s Editor-in-Chief explores some of the ongoing changes behind the scenes at the journal: specifically the forthcoming expansion of its Editorial Board. Following this, the editorial offers a brief overview of each article with the main body of the issue. Topics tackled in this volume include: fakery within academic publishing, motion picture shot duration, the five forces framework, insights into research practice, the unpublished work of Anita Mason, reviewing Arnstein’s Ladder literature and autoethnography through collage. The editorial concludes by refreshing readers’ memories on the journal’s thematic ‘authentic interdisciplinary’ and general call for papers, alongside highlighting the various routes to interacting with the title and its team outside of the issues. PubDate: 2022-10-27 DOI: 10.31273/eirj.v10i1.1241 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Jaime Teixeira da Silva, Aceil Al-Khatib Pages: 1 - 20 Abstract: Academic publishing has become considerably stringent in the past few years because of increased scrutiny focused on an overwhelming number of challenges. One of the greatest challenges that academia faces is the notion that certain elements within science publishing have entered an era of ‘fake’. There are few moral arguments in favor of anything fake in academic publishing, including fake identities (authors, reviewers, or editors), fake peer reviews, or fake publications. We argue – humor aside – that a zero-tolerance approach is likely essential to prevent the proliferation of fake aspects in academic publishing, independent of the publishing venue, i.e., journal or publisher. Sting operations against ‘predatory’ publishing outlets, which involve the use of fake authors, papers, or editors, continue to be selectively praised, including by some media. In this opinion article, we focus on the personification of animals assuming roles within academic publishing, such as authors or editors, to emphasize that while perhaps there is an element of humor, such actions may further endanger scientific integrity, precisely at a time when academic publishing is in the phase of a crisis of trust. We believe that while the authors of such hoaxes and sting operations involving animals, as well as some readers, may find humor in these actions, academic publishing cannot and should not be equated with reality shows. We ultimately argue that such hoaxes and sting operations have no place in academic publishing, nor do they have any scholarly value. Finally, we put forward a set of guidelines that could assist academics, including early career researchers, editors, publishers and ethics-related organizations, in dealing with these threats. PubDate: 2022-10-27 DOI: 10.31273/eirj.v10i1.843 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Nick Redfern Pages: 21 - 42 Abstract: This article illustrates the use of quantiles as a means of describing and comparing motion picture shot length distributions. This approach is conceptually and computationally simple and leads us to think distributionally about shot lengths rather than focusing on individual values. The result is a better understanding of how this element of film style of two (or more) films differs. PubDate: 2022-10-27 DOI: 10.31273/eirj.v10i1.853 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Pavel Fedotov Pages: 43 - 56 Abstract: Global warming and urban pollution have directed public policy towards sustainability and development of cleaner sources of energy. Electric vehicle industry provides a viable trajectory towards energy efficient transportation. From the standpoint of strategic management, we apply the five forces framework that outlines the dynamics in the electric vehicle industry and highlights the relative attractiveness of substitute products in terms of price and available infrastructure. In addition, the paper advances discussion of Porter’s widely used Five forces model in strategic management by appropriating the concept of strategic action field that allows for the inclusion of human element. Finally, the paper bridges the gap for refinement and involvement of human element through the application of strategic action fields. PubDate: 2022-10-27 DOI: 10.31273/eirj.v10i1.362 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Huayi Huang Pages: 57 - 93 Abstract: Scientific and Critical Realism attracts increasing attention as a new paradigm of explanation, for many empirical knowledge disciplines. This new approach to explaining our social and material worlds is underpinned by its ‘depth ontology’, encompassing the reality of our senses to the more meta-physical. In this article we introduce and explore this ‘depth ontology’, through rich illustration of these alternative ideas about reality in context of our everyday and early career research experiences. We explain and clarify the realist compromise - between its positivist and constructivist ancestry. We then trace the flow of these philosophical premises into conceptual variation evident around the realist sense of ‘mechanism’, in current evaluation research literature. To further clarify its possible meanings, this synthesis contextualises past and current realist thinking in light of historical ideas of change from Aristotle and Plato, as improvement and degeneration. This article offers a new view on realism and its foundations then, to aid readers’ own understandings and explorations of the natural and social reasons for existence and its changes, sitting in the depths of the universe of the realist. PubDate: 2022-10-27 DOI: 10.31273/eirj.v10i1.815 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Colin Hutchinson Pages: 94 - 107 Abstract: Anita Mason was a Booker Prize-nominated novelist who taught Creative Writing at the University of Warwick from 2007 until 2009. At the time of her death in September 2020, she left behind three unpublished short novels that provide a powerful, if disturbing, coda to the main body of her work. The novels are typical of Mason in that their settings are diverse: Chuichui is set in Haiti; Suppose in contemporary Israel; and Andromeda in a dystopian south-west England. Thematically, their concerns are contemporary and seem equally varied: political violence and corruption in Chuichui; the falsifying of history and culture in Suppose; and the consequences of the abuse of the natural world in Andromeda. This article contends, however, that beyond this diversity these works share deeper concerns that indicate a darker authorial outlook than that suggested by Mason’s published work, and that amount to a crisis of faith in artistic representation and even in human civilisation itself. PubDate: 2022-10-27 DOI: 10.31273/eirj.v10i1.846 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Simon Varwell Pages: 108 - 144 Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic continues to deeply impact education and wider society, with consistent disruption to relationships between authorities and citizens. As higher education sees continuing turbulence overlap with a strengthening of student engagement, this systematic literature review reappraises how students as ‘citizens’ are enabled to shape their learning. It does so in a Scottish tertiary context and through the prism of Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation, a classic framework whose eight rungs present a spectrum of ways that stakeholders can be engaged in decisions. The article explores the use of the ladder over half a century in planning, housing, health, schools and, finally, higher education, analysing critiques and adaptations of the ladder, conducting meta-synthesis across the literature to extract conclusions for student engagement. It concludes that Arnstein’s ladder has continuing value to conversations about partnership in tertiary education, and that the centrality of power to both the ladder and student engagement in a sector and wider world of increasing democratic citizenship presents a challenge to decision-makers. These conclusions, and the study’s limitations, point to further research opportunities that could enhance the understanding of engagement and partnership at a time of change and uncertainty. PubDate: 2022-10-27 DOI: 10.31273/eirj.v10i1.1156 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Harriet Richmond Pages: 145 - 154 Abstract: In this critical reflection, I will explore my use of collage in critical autoethnography. This reflection was prompted by my participation in a seminar that took place in June 2022, entitled ‘Being a Researcher’. This seminar was co-organised by the Non-Traditional Research Methods Network (NTRM), of which I am one of three founder members, and the Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE). I reflect upon two properties of collage. I suggest that embodiment in the process of making collage, enables researchers to draw upon embodied and affective ways of understanding the world. Furthermore, I propose that the constructive and deconstructive properties of collage enable a critical engagement with one’s personal narratives in autoethnography. I conclude that the literally messy aspects of collage pose questions about tidy and messy ways of knowing, and in so doing raise questions what it means to be a researcher in practice. PubDate: 2022-10-27 DOI: 10.31273/eirj.v10i1.1218 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
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