The HardiBlog

 We are very happy to talk to Arthur Smith in this Open Voices Interview about Open Access, the role of Green Open Access repositories and how things change as we are getting more transformative agreements! Arthur was until recently the Library REF Manager at Cambridge University Libraries and secretary to the UK Council of Research Repositories (UKCORR) .   Hardy: Thanks for talking to me, Arthur! First, can you please summarize your journey to into Open Scholarship and Open Access? Arthur : Well, it is a bit of a strange journey and one that's had lots of fortuitous turns along the way. I am Australian and I did my PhD in Brisbane at the University of Queensland studying physical chemistry. I published a lot of papers, and towards the end of my PhD my wife and I were deciding what we want to do, and so eventually both of us decided that we would like to do a bit of traveling and we ended up moving to the UK. One thing led to another, and we found ourselves in Cambridge. I

While this year publishers' schedules are still being disrupted by the pandemic, it is always worthwhile to catchup on some amazing recent fiction from NUI Galway graduates.  John Patrick McHugh's debut collection of stories, Pure Gold , set in Achill have been published to great acclaim. John has also secured a major UK publishing deal . Ryan Denis, who completed an MA in Writing and PhD at NUI Galway, published his debut novel, The Beasts they Turned Awa y with Epoque Press. Just to mention two novels that are out a little while but have received sustained attention. Elaine Feeney's, debut novel  As You Were , published at the start of the pandemic, recently won the Kate O'Brien award.   E.M. Reapy followed up her first book, Red Dirt with the well received novel,  Skin .  Finally, Nuala O'Connor worked in the Medical Library in NUI Galway at the start of her writing career and has gone on to great success. Her new novel Nora: a Love Story of Nora and James Joyce