2611, 2014

Censorship, plain and simple?

By Richard Black|November 26, 2014|Research|146 comments

A few months ago, I had a visit from a senior diplomat at the Thai embassy in London. A charming, intelligent and urbane man, he had come with a colleague to express concern at the fact that SOAS had advertised a lecture by Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a Thai academic based at Kyoto University in Japan on political developments in Thailand since 2006. Dr Chachavalpongpun is wanted in Thailand for alleged breaches

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0711, 2014

Navigating Open Access

By Richard Black|November 7, 2014|Research|5 comments

There are probably lots of candidates for the title ‘most talked about but least understood’ challenge facing researchers in UK universities, but surely ‘Open Access’ is high amongst these.  For some, the question may simply be ‘what is Open Access?’; more likely the question is ‘why?’, or perhaps ‘why should I pay an article processing charge to publish my work when my Library is still paying a subscription to the

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