This category collects blog posts announcing my new work. I rarely manage to have this updated, but it will give you an idea. Click on the titles to find out more.
I am very glad to share here that The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship is open for submissions once again.
Our Call for Papers 2019-2020 for our tenth volume includes detailed information about the scope of the call, our selection, editorial and peer review processes, authorship attribution guidelines, information on copyright and licensing and archiving information.
I would like to emphasise the following section of the Call:
We invite energetic writing that is theoretically and interpretively bold. While academic rigour, the inclusion and close discussion of images and citational correctness are important to us as a precondition, a key feature our editors and reviewers will consider is the argument, the discovery, the evidence-based eureka moments conveyed in economical, precise, and, ideally, subtle prose. We believe academic writing about comics should be as striking and immediate as the medium itself.”
The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship seeks scholarly submissions on the technical, theoretical, cultural, and historical aspects of comics studies that gives vitality to the form and challenges readers’ assumptions about it. This document is the full call for papers published on 30th October 2019 on the journal web site.
The Strip Hay(na)ku Project. A collaborative experiment in sequential graphic poetics
Edited by Ernesto Priego
With contributions by John Bloomberg-Rissman, Sam Bloomberg-Rissman, Amy Bernier, lola bola (Jane Ogilvie), Horacio Castillo, Ira Franco, Ernesto Priego, and Ginger Stickney.
Meritage Press and Laughing/Ouch/Cube/Publications are pleased to announce the release of The Strip Hay(na)ku Project, a collection of hay(na)ku poems in comic strip form, edited and co-created by Ernesto Priego with contributors John Bloomberg-Rissman, Sam Bloomberg-Rissman, Amy Bernier, lola bola (Jane Ogilvie), Horacio Castillo, Ira Franco, Ernesto Priego, and Ginger Stickney.
“Hay naku” is a common Filipino expression covering a variety of contexts—like the word “Oh.” The “hay(na)ku” is a 21st century poetic form invented by Eileen R. Tabios. It is a six-word tercet with the first line being one word, the second line being two words, and the third line being three words. Poets around the world have used the form and have created text and visual variations of the form, including the “chained hay(na)ku” which strings together more than one tercet as well as the reverse hay(na)ku where the word count is reversed. Ernesto Priego started co-creating “strip hay(na)ku” poems in 2008, inspired by examples of Slovenian “strip haiku”.
About The Strip Hay(na)ku Project:
“Hay(na)ku, a 21st century fixed verse form, has inherited haiku-sensibility (with its caesuras or paradigm shifts) and added to it a new kind of game, with 1, 2, and 3 words, perfect for the special needs of alphabetical writings. The inventive collaborators of this book successfully transplanted hay(na)ku – not only its basic form but its spirit as well – into the field of visual writing, and what we get is new and exciting. The book contains real comic strips but almost as soon as I started reading/watching the panels I had the strong impression that instead of the usual multitude of voices, speakers, actors etc. we have only two “heroes”, so to speak, inside and outside, and even they are not so different, to say the least. There is no comic strip without a story, and this time we are told and shown (but the texts and images don’t explain each other, their connection is inspiringly dissociative), how those heroes or perspectives keep changing places. It happens gently, almost invisibly…”
-Márton Koppány
Bios
Ernesto Priego is a lecturer at the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design, City, University of London. He is the founder and editor in chief of The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship. He co-curated, with Ivy Alvarez, John Bloomberg-Rissman and Eileen R. Tabios, The Chained Hay(na)ku Project (Meritage Press and xPress(ed) 2010). He is also the author of Not Even Dogs. Hay(na)ku Poems (Meritage Press, 2006); the amazing adventures of Gravity & Grace (Otoliths 2008); The Present Day. The Mañana Poems (Leafe Press 2010); Ahí donde no estás. De nombres propios y otros fantasmas (Instituto Veracruzano de Cultura 2013); and, with Simon Grennan and Peter Wilkins, the non-fiction comic Parables of Care. Creative Responses to Dementia Care (City, University of London, University of Chester and Douglas College, 2017). He posts things online whenever he is able to on his blog, epriego.blog, and on Twitter @ernestopriego.
Eileen R. Tabios has released over 50 collections of poetry, fiction, essays, and experimental biographies from publishers in nine countries and cyberspace. Her books include a form-based “Selected Poems” series: The In(ter)vention of the Hay(na)ku: Selected Tercets 1996-2019; THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL: Selected Visual Poetry (2001-2009); INVENT(ST)ORY: Selected Catalog Poems & new 1996-2015, and THE THORN ROSARY: Selected Prose Poems and New 1998-2010. Recent poetry collections include HIRAETH: Tercets From the Last Archipelago, MURDER DEATH RESURRECTION: A Poetry Generator, TANKA: Vol. 1, and ONE TWO THREE: Selected Hay(na)ku Poems which is a bilingual English-Spanish edition with translator Rebeka Lembo. Forthcoming is WITNESS IN A CONVEX MIRROR which will inaugurate Tinfish Press’s ”Pacific response to John Ashbery.” She also invented the poetry form “hay(na)ku” whose 15-year anniversary in 2018 is celebrated at the San Francisco and Saint Helena Public Libraries. More information about her works is available at http://eileenrtabios.com.
A new translation of Parables of Care makes comic about creative responses to dementia care available to German-speaking audiences
Download Parables of Care (original English version) from City Research Online, City, University of London: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/18245/
Download Parabeln der Pflege. Kreative Reaktionen in der Demenzpflege, von Pflegenden erzählt [Parables of Care German version]from City Research Online, City, University of London: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/21252/
Parables of Care. Creative Responses to Dementia Care, As Told by Carers is a research-based comic book originally published in English in October 2017.
Parables of Care has now been released in German translation, translated by Dr Andrea Hacker, from the University of Bern, Switzerland.
About working on the German translation, Dr Hacker said:
“I wanted to share Parables of Care not only with my family and the wonderful carers that help us but with a wider German-speaking audience: Alzheimer, dementia – these affect hundreds of thousands of families in the world regardless of language. Widely sharing our experiences of what works will give everyone a chance to make the best of the affliction – patients and families alike.”
The comic book was created by Dr Simon Grennan, from the Department of Art and Design, University of Chester, UK; Dr Ernesto Priego, from the Centre for Human Computer Interaction Design, City, University of London, UK; and Dr Peter Wilkins from Douglas College, Vancouver, Canada.
The short comic book includes 14 informative and touching stories, drawn by Simon Grennan with Christopher Sperandio, which were adapted from more than 100 case studies of real-life dementia care situations described by a range of carers. These case studies are available at http://carenshare.city.ac.uk/
The small international team looked to expand the accessibility of this archive of carers’ stories and found that by creating short graphic art stories they could portray the emotional power of these situations. Each story is only four panels and just one page long.
Unlike clinical descriptions, this form enhances the affective aspects of each story, putting the reader at the centre of situations that often verge on incomprehensibility, but which are all resolved. In this respect, each story is universalised and becomes a parable.
The book is available open access to dementia carers and the general public as part of ongoing engagement, training and development programmes at City, University of London, the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust and The Faculty of Health Sciences at Douglas College, Vancouver, Canada.
About the Translator
Dr Andrea Hacker is an editor, translator and open science professional who lives in Switzerland where she works at the University of Bern. She has previously lived and worked in the US, Russia, Ireland and Germany. She was mentored in literary translation during her graduate studies at UCLA by Michael Henry Heim.
Download Parables of Care (original English version) from City Research Online, City, University of London: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/18245/
Download Parabeln der Pflege. Kreative Reaktionen in der Demenzpflege, von Pflegenden erzählt [Parables of Care German version]from City Research Online, City, University of London: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/21252/
This week saw the publication of a new journal article coauthored by Peter Wilkins and yours truly:
Priego, E. & Wilkins, P., (2018). The Question Concerning Comics as Technology: Gestell and Grid. The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship. 8, p.16. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/cg.133
In glorious open access.
I have also deposited the article at the following open access repositories:
This article’s peer review and editorial processes were managed independently by Benoît Crucifix, Björn-Olav Dozo, and Aarnoud Rommens.
We are very grateful to the editors and peer reviewers for their rigorous, robust, extensive and thoughtful critical review and feedback, which enabled us to significantly improve the original submission into its present form.
We have had an overwhelmingly kind and positive response so far– thank you everyone for reading and for your feedback.
Today I am pleased to announce the launch of Just Another Day: A Comic About Brexit, in both English and Spanish language versions. We are very grateful to Latin American House and MPB Solicitors, for allowing us to make a comic about an issue which is so urgent for so many people.
de la Mora, F., Priego, E., Peláez, R., Behar, M. P., and Rocha, D., 2018. Just Another Day: A Comic About Brexit. Available from: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.6210227
The uncertainty generated by Brexit motivated us to prepare a comic that explains in an educative and informative way the different options that Europeans and their families have available to minimise the impact of Brexit.
Concept and story by Francisco de la Mora and Ernesto Priego.
Art by Ricardo Peláez.
Graphic design by Daniela Rocha.
The single-page comic also comes with an additional information sheet prepared by Manuel Padilla Behar, from MPB Solicitors. The text in the comic was translated from the original Spanish into English by Ernesto Priego.
With special thanks to Helen Calderon for proofreading and feedback.
The comic can be also downloaded as a PDF file and cited from figshare:
de la Mora, F., Priego, E., Peláez, R., Behar, M. P., and Rocha, D., 2018. Just Another Day: A Comic About Brexit. Available from: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.6210227
de la Mora, F., Priego, E., Peláez, R., Behar, M. P., and Rocha, D., 2018. Just Another Day: A Comic About Brexit. Available from: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.6210227
As you know I strongly believe that sustainable open access to research and open research data can break barriers of all types and empower the researchers of the future.
I personally hope we’ve been able to share an optimisitc message of empowerment and encouragement.
There’s too many reasons to get dispirited and to just get with the programme. We can change the future by the actions we take in the present- sharing and collaboration are inherently optimistic expressions of trust.
I have faith that what we do today, no matter how apparently insignificant, will have an effect on others tomorrow.
Thank you to Martin Eve and James Smith from the Open Library of Humanities for interviewing me for their Open Insights series today, part of their EmpowOA programme.
On February 1, 2015, the global information and analytics corporation Elsevier and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) established the agreement UNAM-Elsevier contract DGAJ-DPI-39-081114- 241, which saw the transfer from UNAM to Elsevier for the “production and hosting, advertising and support” of 44 Mexican open access academic journals published by UNAM.
On Saturday 25 November 2017 we published a pre-print that documents said contract and describes a Freedom of Information Request enquiring the total cost of the contract and its corresponding response. It also shares a series of considerations that, based on this case, can be helpful to other institutions that may face similar circumstances in the future. We conclude scholarly publishing and academic self-determination are interdependent and a crucial point of future debate for the future of University presses and Open Access worldwide.
I made a remote presentation on this article at OpenCon Santiago 2017, held at the Universidad Autónoma de Chile, on Saturday 25 2017. With many thanks to co-author Ricardo Hartley for making it possible.
I am very pleased that Parables of Care. Creative Responses to Dementia Care, as Told by Carers is now available. It is a 16-page publication presenting true stories of creative responses to dementia care, as told by carers.
Parables of Care can be downloaded as a PDF file, under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, from City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/18245/.
If you live in the UK you can request printed copies at no cost here.
Parables of Care was edited and adapted by Dr Simon Grennan (University of Chester) Dr Ernesto Priego (City, University of London) and Dr Peter Wilkins (Douglas College). Parables of Carewas drawn by Dr Simon Grennan with Christopher Sperandio.
Research has shown that comics have the potential to have a positive impact on the health and quality of life of people who engage in comics reading and creation, contributing to transform attitudes, awareness and behaviour around illness and contributing to create new opportunities for empowerment and more positive behaviour (Cardiff University 2014). Parables of Careexplores the potential of comics to enhance the impact of dementia care research in particular.
Parables of Care seeks to make a contribution to enhancing the public impact of the best practices in dementia care resulting from City HCID research by exploring and embracing the communicative affordances of graphic storytelling in general and graphic medicine in specific.
We hope that Parables of Care contributes to enabling stronger links between academia, dementia care practice and comics scholars and practitioners.
The response so far has been amazing. Read this review by John Freeman at the British Comics site Down the Tubes, published shortly after we announced the comic publicly.
Stay tuned for news regarding distribution points, events and more information about the project!
Abstract: ‘Predatory publishing’ refers to conditions under which gold open access academic publishers claim to conduct peer review and charge for their publishing services but do not, in fact, actually perform such reviews. Most prominently exposed in recent years by Jeffrey Beall, the phenomenon garners much media attention. In this article, we acknowledge that such practices are deceptive but then examine, across a variety of stakeholder groups, what the harm is from such actions to each group of actors. We find that established publishers have a strong motivation to hype claims of predation as damaging to the scholarly and scientific endeavour while noting that, in fact, systems of peer review are themselves already acknowledged as deeply flawed.
Keywords: Open Access, Scholarly Communications, Predatory Publishing, Evaluative Cultures, Academia
Acknowledgement: The authors wish to thank Ross Mounce and David Prosser for helpful comments on the manuscript of this article. Parts of this article on the problems of peer review are derived from and share a narrative with a chapter by Eve that is currently under submission.
I‘ve just published a translation of an interview with the slain Mexican journalist Javier Valdez at Nieman Storyboard (Neiman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University).
The tragic situation that Mexican journalism iexemplifies a level of impunity that no degree of mass media coverage or social media engagement seems to be able to deter. However, as Valdez put it, “the truth must be told”, and remaining silent is being complicit.
I translated the interview into English because I think it offers insights into what motivated Valdez and that it’s important that English-speaking readers learn more about his life, work and commitment to journalism.
It won’t take you long to read it if you click on the link. If you do, thank you.
Any frequent readers of this blog will be aware I am interested in article level metrics. I am particularly interested in the work done by Altmetric. Last week they published their annual top 100 list. I wrote this post about it.
The Altmetric Explorer is a tool for measuring the attention that scholarly articles receive online, and its intuitive user interface works as a live searchable database that allows users to browse the journals and repositories Altmetric tracks and obtain detailed reports.
On a weekly basis Altmetric captures hundreds of thousands of tweets, blog posts, news stories, Facebook walls and other content that mentions scholarly articles on the Web. The Explorer can browse, search and filter this data. The data can be exported by the user as ‘reports’ as simple text or spreadsheets, which can be then analysed in different forms. For example, The Explorer provides demographic data of the Twitter users found mentioning specific outputs, and thus works as a mechanism for the study of academic users of social media.
In the past few years I have often suggested, online, in talks, workshops and lectures, that the Altmetric Explorer can be useful to researchers as well. Librarians with access to the tool can help students and researchers get new views of recent articles that are receiving attention online. People often focus on ‘altmetrics’ as indicators of online activity around published outputs, but I often insist the Altmetric Explorer is useful as well as a tool for searching, discovering, collecting, creating, archiving, sharing and analysing bibliographic reference collections as datasets including not just bibliographic data including identifiers and/or URLs but also historical data of any metrics the service has tracked and quantified at the time of the data query/collection.
Inspired by Altmetric’s annual Top 100 list I used the Altmetric Explorer to search for the top articles with keyword ‘comics’ mentioned in the past 1 year. I did this particular search on the morning of Tuesday 20 December 2016. Dating the collection (and indicating the specific query) is always important as social media metrics are hopefully dynamic and not static (i.e. we expect an output’s altmetrics to change over time).
After my query I saved as usual my search as a ‘workspace’ on the app and then exported the dataset as a CSV file. I then manually cleaned and refined the data to obtain a file listing the top 100 references specifically on comics including their altmetrics. Data refining was needed to ensure the list included articles about comics, eliminating any non-relevant outputs (i.e. they were not about comics) and to correct text rendering errors, add missing data (like output titles when missing from the initial export) and limit the set to only 100 items by deleting the extra outputs.*
I have deposited and shared the dataset as
Priego, Ernesto (2016): The 2016 Altmetric Top 100 Outputs with ‘Comics’ as Keyword Mentioned in the Past 1 Year. figshare. https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.4483631.v4 Retrieved: 17 06, Dec 21, 2016 (GMT)
Hopefully it will be of interest to some of you out there. For comparison here’s these other datasets I have deposited on figshare in previous years:
Priego, Ernesto (2015): Almetrics of articles from the comics journals mentioned at least once in the past 1 year as tracked by Altmetric (20 August 2015). figshare. https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1514985.v3 Retrieved: 17 21, Dec 21, 2016 (GMT)
and
Priego, Ernesto (2014): Comics Journals Articles Tracked by Altmetric in the last year (Dec 2013-Dec 2014). figshare. https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1273850.v4 Retrieved: 17 23, Dec 21, 2016 (GMT)
Though the two datasets above are outputs from different search queries (focusing on specific comics journals tracked by Altmetric rather than in any articles with keyword ‘comics’) we should we able to continue collecting data for future transversal studies.
Having yearly datasets obtained from the same queries, over a series of years, would provide evidence of comics scholarship’s presence online, and of the field’s (and Altmetric’s) evolving practices.
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*It is possible the degree of relevance varies. Some outputs do not have ‘comics’ in their title but do discuss comics, for example ‘A randomized study of multimedia informational aids for research on medical practices: Implications for informed consent’ (Kraft et al 2016). It is possible however that a non-comics article or two remained, if you spot one do please let me know or leave a comment on the figshare output and I will correct and create a new version. It might also be noted that various outputs included are from The Conversation, which is not an academic journal, but it is tracked by Altmetric as it focuses on academic research news written by academics. For information and context about how Altmetric sources the data please read this.
